I woke from my sleep after the Native American spirit bore me to this world unknown to me with a luxurious stretch against the mound.

The mound looked much like the one in the other world, and I made note of this in my log. It is indeed possible that there exists pathways through the seemingly trackless wastes of the Multiverse. It would surprise me little if a people known for vision quests had secret ways between one physical world and the next.

Ways that with courtesy and gifts, I might borrow at need.

So I sketched the mound, and left a box of ammunition as a gift.

Others might leave a poem, or a basket of corn, but I am a sledgehammer in the search of people that need to be smashed. So I left bullets.

Walking across the nearly identical cornfields of that other world, it occurred to me that I might have been tricked. That spirit might have taken me nowhere. If so, I’d be back. I have spells to bind spirits, even if it is not an especial study of mine.

It goes hard against my instincts to bind, when I would free. Besides, spirits are chancy to mess with. But I do not suffer insult gladly; and indeed it would be an injury since I strongly needed to leave that world for fear of causing a temporal loop.

And would not that have been a pretty fix?

But, as I approach town, and read the German signways, I realize my paranoia is showing. And indeed my other worry of being in a parralel world seems unlikely.

Into Beinvald, I hike. My German is a bit rusty, but travellers are welcome in the beer garden, even with bad language. Especially, at this time of year, I am assured.

So I spin a gold coin toward my serving lass who was authentically German tavern wench in mood, even if red-headed and blue-eyed. She took the money, and summoned a goldsmith to change it for me.

My food and drink took the least of the coins I got in return.

Grand, a cheap world. It made it so much easier to buy things when a pound of gold was not required for a sausage.

The cool, and well lit room with its high glass framed ceiling was peaceful save for the chatter of people playing chess and their attendant kibbitzers. I soon saw they had some variant rules, I’d never heard of, and knew that my skill while decent, for an amateur, in my style game, would not match me with these.

The great hall, nearly a square two hundred feet on a side was abruptly disrupted by boys, schoolboys, rushing in for their lunchbreak and appallingly enough their pint of beer. The girls followed more sedately, and were served at their tables while the boys opted for the less service required and larger ‘Boy’s Meal.’

Both sipped their beers, as young as age nine, I’d say. I had to bite my lip to keep the objections in.

My food came, and it was in plenty. Sausages, and kraut, and cornbread (which spoiled the theme), and rice terriyaki with vinegar sauce, and my beer.

Well, I hardly drink, but I’ve learned to a bit. In some worlds, its the only safe beverage if you don’t want dysentery. Now my intestines are rather reinforced by methods of science and magic, but I had a theory to test.

So, I sipped and relaxed. It was yellow water, practically. If you chugged it, you might get a buzz.

The waitress came back with a plate of cookies. Gingerbread with frosting which I found rather odd.

“Where I come from these are Christmas cookies?” I ventured softly not wanting to start any trouble, but curious all the same.

It took some doing, but she reassured me that these were indeed Christmas cookies. This being Christmas Eve and all, they should be.

I looked about for a calendar, and found it. May 10th, 1987 Anno Domini was the date inscribed on the wooden block calendar.

I mentioned the idea of the birth of Christ in midwinter, and the farmers laughed at me. Who would want a frail creature to be born in midwinter? They thought God a better planner than that. Besides, what governor would order his charges to travel in midwinter for taxes or any other purpose?

And they thought my idea of paper calendars silly even if they allowed pretty pictures. No, a man made something to last, so he would not have to do it again. That gave him more time for the important things in life like drinking beer with his friends.

Feeling surprisingly relaxed, I nodded, and soon got talked into a game of chess which I lost quickly.

Christmas was fine indeed. Or should I say, the twelve days were fine.

I got myself a job as a farm laborer during a game of chess one night as fireworks blew outside the beer garden in honor of the fifth day of Christmas. In the meantime, I slept and ate at the hostel for a very reasonable price.

On the eight day of Christmas, I checked out the town library for a history. It started with German becoming the official language of America. And in the first World War, we came to the aid of the Kaiser against Britain. But, the Kaiser felt a bit guilty about the war, and refused along with the Americans to punish the Britons despite the cries of certain parties who begged for retribution.

And so, Europe passed into a modern age leaving behind aristocracy, but not entirely. A happier land that avoided the Weimar and the Nazi’s, and mustered the strength to save the Tsar even if he got exiled. But Anastasia went back to oust Lenin and become a constitutional monarch of the Kerensky Government.

And thus, no dark shadows troubled consciences, and fewer lies were spoken, and the weight of the world did not rest on the United States, and thus we came to my good neighbours who worked hard when they had to. But mostly drank a lot of very mild beer, and spent time on community and family before work.

My job as a farm laborer got me a bit more muscle, since I’d been slacking off on exercises. And it took me through to spring while I wondered what to do.

In this world, there seemed no need to smash things.

Oh, they had faults, as did my home world. And these people defined the terms ’smug’ and ‘middle-class’. Unlike my Americans, they were not interested in learning things of other ways of doing things. They mostly knew it all already.

So, the Japanese pushed ahead of them in production, and no phoenix-like effect like in my land would save these people from second status. But maybe, the Japanese of this world would find that winning the rat race just made one a winning rat.

Maybe, smug middle-class values with a smidgeon of thrift and craftskilled hands, and a code of honor outlining duty to community and family could take over the world, and a slumberous and virtuous peace descend on the globe and smother ancient monsters that had taught my people so much, but at such cost.

Maybe some of my people were better paladins than these, but certainly many of my people were worse monsters, as well.

After the first year, I quit fretting, and started to get really involved in the community. Ten years later, and I started to paint my hair with touches of ‘premature gray’. Thirty years later, and I attended my ‘funeral’ as a ‘distant cousin’ who inherited.

Ten more years, as I worked in the Grain Mercantile Floor across from the rebuilt and expanded beer garden, I received notice that the town had decided to honor my ‘cousin’ by naming a street after him.

The Japanese did indeed submit to a virtuos slumber. Wars did not leave this world, but they were polite things by my standards. Innocents still died, in ways more, because super accurate weapons were not available, but mass casualties were avoided.

Common sense, and a light beer prevailed over the wild-eyed idealism of idealogues with utopias in their brain.

And I once again worked on becoming the ‘Old Gentleman’ until one day, a man with an asundry of weapons walked into the mercantile house. A ringing swish of fletchettes sliced into the noble columns of marble that held up the roof.

The traders fled, except for I. For I had heard some words.

“Verser, Tadeusz, come out!” Followed by a burst of gunfire. So I walked out, cane in hand. He sneered at me.

“Is this the great Tyrantsmasher? Where are your weapons? Swords?”

“Why would I need them?” I replied in the echoing emptiness of the now dust-filled room as electric lights flickered and something arced high above us.

He sneered. But eventually he told me that he and his clan of ubermenschen had been on the verge of greatness, until I stopped them with a bullet while they slept. And he had searched long and hard in ancient occult texts to find a spell that would deliver me to him.

I waited, and asked him about this greatness in the German, and he told me of eugenics camps, and brilliant breakthroughs and all made possible by brave men who cast aside traditional morality.

“I wish I could say Requiescat in Pace.” I said, as the farmers and traders marched back into the great hall of trade with their fowling rifles in hand. I nodded acceptance, and before my mad opponent could spin completely around to gun them down, nearly forty shotguns fired.

Instantly fatal for him, and fatal for me as well, but not instantly as I only caught some of the shot.

They rushed over to me, and shortly gave up trying to assure me that I would be okay. They were farmers, and they knew what life and death looked like.

So finally one asked me.

“We knew you were strange, indeed our fathers knew you were strange. We always figured you were one of the old ones come back to walk the Earth for a while, and see if we were righteous, and if we needed you back.
Tell us, Wotan-son, is this monster of shame more what we are known for in the many worlds of Yggdrasil, or …”

They were asking me what the Germans were known for in the Multiverse, in a deluded way. How could I tell them of the horrors attached to their land? I lacked the strength to lie, and yet I needed to take the poisen of the other one’s words away from these people.

And then I had it.

“Perfect love casts out fear. Indeed, my friends, it casts out a lot of other evils. Maintain your circles of love, and I doubt you shall meet another one such as him.”

And then I prayed to Jesus on Christmas Eve, as these fine folks had it, for peace as I transitioned to another world.

Tadeusz