The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,76

and warm. A chorale of female voices began to sing around him as a voluminous creature he couldn’t make out properly with his watery eyes lowered herself upon him.

“O Ostara, hear us,” chanted the chorale. “O Belial, hear us!”

There was a smacking sound. The odor of soil was overwhelming now; Johann could smell fresh humus, grown and perished in the everlasting circle of life. Large, heavy breasts appeared in front of his face, and he reached for them, still feeling like he was in a dream. Someone groaned with pleasure, and he gave himself up to the rhythm, to the up and down, like waves in a sea of blood. The groans grew louder, eventually turning into cries, and Johann realized it was his own voice. He was crying out with pleasure and lust. He thought he could also hear Poitou and Tonio cry out and laugh in the distance. The cawing of the raven and the two crows sounded like the laughter of the insane.

The crimson waves grew higher and higher, and Johann sailed on their crests. More hands tugged at him, and suddenly everything around him was naked skin tasting of soil and blood. He grasped a handful of long, matted hair like that of an animal—black curls, and blonde, brown, and red. Countless naked arms, legs, full breasts, and soft buttocks rubbed against him. Tongues licked him everywhere, and he licked, too, tasting salt and also something fishy, like from the depths of the ocean. As the chorale rose and ebbed around him, Johann let himself flow in the wild whirlpool of bodies. Voices whispered in his ear, urged him on, cried and exulted and moaned, together pushing toward the imminent climax.

Then his semen spilled and the moaning stopped abruptly.

Johann fell into a deep black hole.

When he came to, he could see clearly again: the huge, dying fire, and surrounding it, wrapped in blankets, sleeping men and women, exhausted from their shared ritual. Above them, small, lifeless bodies hanging in the branches like burned-out lanterns. Everywhere around him was silence and death. The potion’s effect had let up, and reality hit Johann like a bucket of cold water. He scrambled to his feet and ran—stark naked—into the woods. Twigs and thorns tore at his skin, and a cold wind whistled through the trees, but he felt none of it. He ran away like prey running for its life.

Suddenly, an angry scream rang out behind him, followed by the familiar, demanding voice.

The voice of the master.

“Come back, Faustus!” he yelled. “Come back! I command you!”

Ignoring the voice, Johann ran on.

“Stop! Don’t do this to me! Don’t do this to you!”

Something in his voice made Johann slow down. It sounded like he was begging him, pleading with him.

“Come back, Faustus! I can teach you so much more. The world could lie at your feet—at our feet. You have the power to set the world on fire! Homo Deus est! Faustus, I’m begging you.”

Johann paused for a moment, but then he ran on. He leaped over bushes and fallen tree trunks, crossed streams and ditches, stumbling and falling but getting back up every time, pressing on without looking back. The voice behind him grew more and more plaintive and eventually began to scream furiously.

Johann was still running when the voice fell silent.

Tonio del Moravia, the magician, keeper of the seven times seven seals, had vanished from Johann’s life.

Act III

The Train of Jugglers

8

THE EFFECT OF the potion didn’t fully wear off until daylight broke. Until then, Johann ran through the forest like a restless wolf, naked and filthy. Whenever his strength failed him and he needed to rest, he’d find a dip in the ground or a rotten, fungi-covered tree trunk to hide behind. But his fear of Tonio and the horror he was running away from was greater than his exhaustion.

Johann kept running as if the devil was after him.

Every now and then he thought he was being pursued by a flock of black shadows attacking him like bats. He screamed and lashed out at them even though he knew they weren’t real. He could hear whispering voices; the roar of a great, angry animal; and the soft crying of children. The crying was the worst, because then he again saw the small, lifeless bodies hanging in the trees, and the blood dripping down from them.

Finally Johann’s steps slowed. He staggered and then fell flat on his face. He managed to cover himself with twigs and rotting leaves before sleep