“1694, but it wasn’t right.”
The poor guy must have dementia, she thought and patted the large hand to which she was shackled. He looked to be in his late fifties-early sixties. She smiled and spoke in a softer voice. “Maybe if it brought you here, it wants you to speak to the president, and not the king.”
When he nodded, she pulled her arm free. “There we go,” she said gently. He was sick and Fable knew how to care for the sick. She cared for her mother most of her life. “Now, let me just call for help with seeing to what you need.”
She dug into her pocket and produced her old flip-phone. When the screen lit up, the man in front of her pulled free the long sword from the scabbard at his side and swung it, stopping only inches from her throat. She yelped and fell back on her rump. “What are you doing with that thing? Now I’m calling the cops!”
An instant before she touched the screen again, she stopped. Had she frightened him? Is that why he attacked? Not wanting it to happen again, she lowered her voice. “This is a phone. It lights up so I can see. Put the sword away. Wait…” she gave the metal pointing in her face a better look … “is that blood?”
“Do you know her? Do you know my wife? I’ve been searching for her.”
“What? Oh, y…yes, I might. The police station has books with pictures of people who are lost.”
He waved the sword at her, though he’d moved it a careful distance away. “Send word to them immediately,” he ordered as if she were his servant. She quirked her mouth at him and tapped 911. “You can’t get more immediate than this.” She stepped away and held her phone to her ear. After she asked for help and gave a description of him, she tried to explain what was happening. “He has a big sword and I’m pretty sure there’s blood on it.”
Four minutes, she thought releasing a deep, calming breath and putting her phone away. The cops would be here in four minutes. She eyed her blanket. She was sleepy. “Okay, help is on the way. And…um…keep the sword in its scabbard.”
“Miss, will you help me?”
“The police will help you,” she corrected gently.
“You have to help me find her and bring her home to our children.”
Fable took a step closer to him. “What happened to her?”
“He held out the pocket watch in his hand. “This thing ate her up. I’ve been searching endlessly. I cannot go home until I find her. I finally figured out how it works. She’s here. Somewhere.”
Gosh, he was really not well. “We’ll find her,” she assured him with a gentle smile. Her expression didn’t change as the distant sirens grew closer.
He turned to the whirling lights on the police car when they pulled up onto the sidewalk. He watched the doors open and the officers rush out, hands on their guns, shouting orders. His dark eyes slipped to her and sent a warning that he was capable of terrible things. “The first thing they will try to do is take this.” He held up the pocket watch. “And then I’ll have to kill them all, including you for betraying me.”
Fable’s blood ran cold. She wanted to run. What if he chased her with his bloody sword? She hadn’t been this afraid since Pug Grady and his thug friends kidnapped her from her mother when she was seven and held her ransom for the hundred dollars her mother owed him. Pug had waved his gun around in her face in an effort to frighten her and make her cry. He had failed. Crying was a waste of time in her world. She had stopped doing it for good when she was eight.
She wouldn’t do it now.
“Just…please, relax, Sir,” she tried gently.
And then, in an instant, the cosplay soldier leaped behind her and curled one arm around her neck, close to his bloody blade. In his other hand, he still gripped the blue pocket watch.
“Is this the thanks I get for being nice to you?” she muttered under her breath and then pushed his arm holding thesword away, reached over for his wrist and began the process of flipping him. Then something strange happened when the air waved and grew distorted. The ground shook and then it was over. One second she was standing on the street defending herself against a crazy man with a sword, and in the next, she was overwhelmed by daylight standing behind what appeared to be a barn, gasping for breath that was scented with manure. She bounded to her feet and looked around, but the man trying to hold her hostage wasn’t there. What just happened? She lifted a shaking hand and found herself gripping the pocket watch. How did it end up in her hand? She almost flung it away. She squinted at the people staring dumbfounded at her under the sun. Why were they dressed like the peasants from the medieval festival in her neighborhood park every year?
Clutching the pocket watch, she looked around for the crazy ‘time traveler’ guy. What had he done? Her blood suddenly went cold as she blinked curiously at the small group of people staring at her.
“Where am I?” she called out.
“You’re in Belstead,” one of the onlookers replied.
“Belstead?”
“That’s right, Miss. Belstead in Ipswich.”
Ipswich? Where was that? Her heart pounded so hard she grew queasy. Did she have the courage to ask the same question the time-traveler guy had asked her? “What…what year is this?”
They turned to one another with curious, concerned faces. Then, one woman stepped forward. “It’s the year 1718.”
This was some kind of trick. A terrible one, at that. But the vibrating pocket watch in her hand proved her theory wrong. The time traveler must be coming. She had to run.
Colchester, England
