The blackness when Nick lost his brother had lasted only a few seconds. He felt cold rain on his head, and he realized he had instinctively closed his eyes. He quickly opened them and found himself on a street lined with brick buildings. The sky was gray, making it hard to guess the time of day, and the rain was pouring down. There were only a few people on the street, none of them looking in his direction.
The buildings looked very different from any buildings he had ever seen, and the people looked somehow different too. He shivered, as much from the shock as from the rain that soaked his shirt, and realized he had to find some place dry. Picking a direction at random, he ran down the street.
All the houses looked the same, and they all had their doors and shutters closed against he weather. Nick kept on running until he noticed a large door with a cross above it.
The door opened when he pulled on it and he stumbled inside. He found himself in a small church. It looked very bare and empty, no decorations, no statues, but it was clearly a church. He walked along the pews to the front and sank on his knees.
“God in heaven, forgive me for my sins,” he prayed. “I should not have gone into the woods and should not have led my brother into danger. I will confess as soon as I find a priest to hear my confession. But I am lost now, and I don’t know where to go and what to do. Please, Lord, give me a sign.”
A man had sat down in a pew behind him while he was praying.
“Are you praying in German?” the man asked with a heavy accent when Nick paused.
“Yes, sir.”
“You are not from here?”
“Forgive me, sir, but I’m not entirely sure where here is. I’m afraid I’m lost.”
The man nodded and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“You have come to the right place. I am Father Smeets and this is my church. I thought I heard someone speak the language of Luther. Tell me, my son, what has happened to you...”
⁂
Nick ran down the alley, taking a shortcut to the house of master Guido. His mistake had been to stop at the candy store, thinking about what he would be doing with the nickel he could be earning for delivering the message. He had been looking at the different sugar candies, unable to make up his mind, for far too long. Now he had to hurry to catch the Leather Guild master before he closed his shop.
Nick was acutely aware of how lucky he had been that he had sought refuge from the rain in that particular church, now over a year ago. As a Lutheran, Father Smeets had learned German so he could read the texts of his hero in their original language. He had taken pity on the ten year old boy who could only speak a German dialect, and had offered Nick room and board if he would study and help out where needed.
By now, Nick knew all the shortcuts in Amsterdam since the priest had never hesitated to have him run all kids of errands. He had often used this alley to cross through to the next canal.
Now, he stopped in his tracks as he found the alley almost blocked by a large wooden box painted dark blue. It looked so completely out of place that he was afraid to approach it.
As he stared at the box, a door opened and a man stepped out. Nick could not clearly see the face in the dim light of the alley as the man approached him, but he definitely looked old.
“Who are you?” the man asked. “Why are you here? What are you doing?”
“You speak German!” was the first thing Nick exclaimed in surprise.
“I do? Sure I do. Of course I do. But how about you?”
Nick had become quite adept at the Dutch the people in Amsterdam spoke, but this man sounded as if he were from Lindow where Nick was born. Yet he did not recognize him at all.
“My name is Nicholas, sir. Nicholas Braun. I am on my way to deliver a message to master Guido of the Leather Guild.”
“You don’t belong here,” the stranger determined as he waved a strange metal object in front of Nick. “You shouldn’t be here at all. Why are you here? Did the Altons bring you?”
Nick had not told anyone except father Smeets about the clearing in the forest back in Lindow, and how he miraculously had found himself more than a century later in Amsterdam. Father Smeets hadn’t believed him, but fortunately hadn’t pressed him on another explanation either. This reception had been enough to teach Nicholas to keep his fantastic story to himself. So how did this stranger know about him?
“I don’t know why I’m here, sir. It was a year ago that my brother and I were in a forest, and a storm came up and blew us away. When I woke up, I was in a gutter and everybody around me spoke a strange language. I have never seen my brother since.”
The man looked at him, deep in thought. “That was no normal storm. It must have been an Alton defense mechanism. You say that happened a year ago?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It wasn’t. More likely a century ago. You were thrown out of the way, in time and space. But why here? Why now? And—you had a brother you said?”
“Yes, Klaus is his name. He is my little brother. I wish I knew what happened to him!”
“I’ll have to find him. Something is going on. Something fishy.”
The man continued to murmur as he went back into his box, which a moment later disappeared with a lot of noise. Nick looked at the spot where the box had been and rubbed his eyes, wondering if he had been dreaming. Then he remembered the message for master Guido and hurried on his way.