Summary

Just weeks after Tyll’s father has been hanged, Tyll and Nele accompany a once-revered juggler named Pirmin who agreed to manage the two after seeing them perform. The itinerant life is hard on the two teenagers. Pirmin is not a kind manager. He intimidates the two, bullies them despite his advanced years and his own failing health. They are runaways and, hence, dependent on him for survival. To get them to accept long, grueling practices, Pirmin resorts to threats of violence and, far worse, threats to withhold what meager food the traveling troupe has. In addition, Pirmin relishes reminding the two scared kids that, out along the roads of remote forests in between villages, they were always surrounded by soldiers, most often drunk, who were not governed by any laws of civility. He threatens them that at any time they could be taken...