"He's confused," Granny explained.
"How can you be here?" Wilhelm turned and pointed at the ship. "And there?"
Before anyone could explain, Nottingham pulled handcuffs from his jacket and clamped them around Wilhelm's wrists. "Ask him if he understands he's under arrest."
Nottingham led Wilhelm from the marina toward the town jail. Granny was at the head of a crowd demanding the man's release, while also doing her best to explain what was happening to the family's bewildered ancestor.
As she left, Granny instructed Sabrina and Daphne to stay with Mr. Canis and to help make sure that no one else rowed from the
New Beginning to shore or from the marina to the ship.
"I'm on that boat," Briar Rose said as Uncle Jake took her hand. "I mean, I was on that boat. I mean... I don't know what I mean."
"How did this happen?" Mr. Seven asked, pushing his way through the crowd.
Sabrina and Daphne looked at each other. They knew exactly how it happened. They just didn't know who or what was causing it. Apparently, their conspiratorial look wasn't lost on Mr. Canis. He snatched them both by the arm and dragged them out of earshot of the crowd.
"You know something," he said.
Sabrina did her best to play innocent. She glanced over at Daphne, who was whipping her head around, trying to avoid the old man's eyes.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Sabrina mumbled.
"Child, this is no time for lies," Canis growled.
"We promised Mr. Charming that we wouldn't say anything," Daphne blurted out. Sabrina scowled. Daphne was just no good at lying.
Canis bristled. "I should have known he had something to do with this."
"You've got it wrong, Mr. Canis," Sabrina said, throwing her hands up in surrender. "He's trying to help."
"Help who?"
"It's going to sound crazy."
"Try me," the hulking man said. Sabrina looked up into his face. She saw his wolfen features, clearer every day, and realized he might actually understand. "It's a tear in time," Sabrina said. "It's been happening all over town, but this is the biggest incident yet."
"A tear in what?"
"In time. Things are slipping out of the future and the past."
"And how do you know this?"
"Because we slipped through one ourselves," Daphne said. "Yesterday when you took us out into the forest we didn't get lost. We got sent to the future!"
"We went fifteen years ahead," Sabrina added.
"How does Charming have anything to do with this?" Canis asked impatiently.
"He was stuck there too. He'd been pulled into one of these tears right after the election," Daphne said. "He had been trying to find a way back for months."
"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Canis asked.
"Charming made us promise to keep it to ourselves. We know things... about the future. He thinks that we should keep them a secret so we can change things without anyone getting in the way."
"What is so bad about the future that needs to be changed?" Canis asked.
A tear rolled down Daphne's cheek. "You weren't in the future. The Wolf was."
Canis looked shaken but controlled himself.
"We're trying to change as much as we can," Sabrina said. "You can't tell anyone, not even Granny."
"How do we stop these time tears?" Canis asked.
"We don't know," Daphne said. "We've got something that helps us find them, but I'm not very good at using it yet."
"We think that all those stolen magical items we've been investigating are being used together, and they're causing the tears," Sabrina explained as best she could. "We know that in the future we never found the missing items. If we can locate them, we might be able to fix the tears and change the future at the same time."
Just then, an enormous fiery explosion smacked into the beach, sending rock and sand in all directions. When Sabrina searched for the source of the attack she noticed that one of the cannons on the ship had smoke coming out of it.
"They're firing on us!" Sabrina exclaimed.
"Of course, we just arrested their captain," Canis said, rushing back to the dock. "Those aren't pebbles they're throwing at you, people. Get back!"
Another blast rocked the beach.
"Are we going to stand here and let them fire on us?" King Arthur shouted as he stepped through the crowd. "Shouldn't we fire back?"
"Not if you don't want to wipe out your own existence," a saggy-jowled man said from the crowd. Sabrina thought at first that he was just an old man, but then she realized his wrinkled skin wasn't skin at all but an old burlap sack. He had straw sticking out of his cuffs, and he wore an old farmer's hat on his head.
"What are you talking about, Scarecrow?" Mr. Seven shouted.