by R. G. Thomas
“Well, I’ll leave you in Hannah’s care now,” Ruby said, and, to Thaddeus and Teofil’s amusement, she patted Astrid on the head before letting herself out the front door.
A hallway runner decorated with designs in dark colors was soft beneath Thaddeus’s feet as they followed Hannah along the second floor hallway. The first bedroom was at the top of the turret, and it was large enough to hold two double beds, two dressers, and a vanity table. It shared a bathroom with a smaller bedroom that contained two single beds and two dressers. Across the hall was an even smaller bedroom that also contained two single beds, but only had room left over for a narrow chest of drawers.
“The bathroom for this bedroom is at the other end of the hallway,” Hannah explained as they all peered around her into the tiny bedroom.
“These are perfect,” Nathan assured her. “Why don’t you and I go talk about money and where we might be able to pick up some new clothes and supplies.”
Hannah looked them all over, her gaze lingering on Thaddeus a moment before she looked back at his father. “A large-capacity washer and dryer are in the basement and available for no charge for use by paying guests.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Nathan said. “We’ll take all three rooms.” He looked at Miriam. “I’ll leave you to split us all up as you see fit.”
“I know just the way to do it,” Miriam assured him.
Thaddeus let out a sad sigh. He had become accustomed to sleeping next to Teofil on this adventure, but he had a feeling that would be out of the question here. Sure enough, Miriam assigned Astrid and herself to the larger bedroom with the two double beds, Thaddeus and Nathan to the connected room with the single beds, and Dulindir and Teofil to the smaller room across the hall.
Teofil folded his arms and looked at Dulindir. “You know you snore, right?”
Dulindir gave him a cool stare. “Elves don’t snore.”
“Maybe you’ve been away from your kind long enough to forget that,” Teofil countered.
“Manners, Teofil,” Miriam said over her shoulder as she entered the larger bedroom and dropped her pack on the floor. She turned with hands on hips and said, “I suggest you all look through your packs for something relatively clean to wear. We might need to wash these clothes twice.”
As Teofil followed Dulindir into their room, Thaddeus gave him a sympathetic look. Thaddeus entered the bedroom he was sharing with his father and chose the bed closest to the window. He set his pack on the tile floor inside the bathroom, not wanting to dirty the thick carpet and soft rugs that lay scattered about the bedroom. Then he peered out the window, which overlooked the neighboring backyard, similar to his bedroom window back home. The view, however, was quite a bit different. In place of Teofil’s garden, he saw a backyard mostly of dirt, interrupted by a few patches of dried grass. From the looks of it, the neighbors owned a dog that liked to run the fence line. There was no sign of the dog at the moment, and Thaddeus hoped it wasn’t put outside at night and left there to bark at anything that moved.
He found a few articles of clothing in the bottom of his pack that were as close to clean as he was likely to get with what they had all been through. He spread them out on the bed and turned to enter the bathroom once again, but stopped when Astrid leaned out of the doorway.
“I call first shower,” she said and immediately pulled the door shut.
Thaddeus grumbled, “By all means.”
He stepped out into the hall and saw Teofil and Dulindir in their room across the hall, arguing over who would sleep in which bed. That left the bathroom down the hall open, and he grabbed his clean clothes and hurried to it. This bathroom was more cramped than the one between the bedrooms, and only had a shower stall instead of a bathtub, but Thaddeus didn’t care. He locked the door and stripped out of his dirty clothes, leaving them in a pile in the corner, and pointedly avoided looking at himself in the mirror. He didn’t want to know how bad he looked.
The water washed off the dirt and sweat in rivulets that circled the drain of the shower. A half-dozen bottles of bodywashes lined a shelf built into the wall. Thaddeus sniffed each of them as the water beat against his shoulders and the back of his neck. Some of the washes were a bit flowery for his taste, and he finally settled on one with a light pine scent. After squeezing a good amount into his palm, Thaddeus took his time washing up. The lather left his skin clean and soft, and the pine scent swirled around him. A similar assortment of shampoos stood next to the bodywashes, and Thaddeus once again sniffed each one before settling on a pine-scented bottle. He discovered blades of grass and a few burrs in his hair as he worked in the shampoo, and extracted them. With his fingernails he scratched at his scalp, removing dirt and other things he was sure he didn’t want to identify. When he rinsed off, his entire body felt clean and tingling.
He adjusted the knobs to make the water a little hotter and let it beat against his shoulders and the back of his neck. As he stood beneath the spray, he looked down along his clean body, inspecting his palm and then his leg where the Bearagon’s claws had dug in, amazed that both injuries had been completely healed by the water from the Well of Tears without a mark or scar remaining. If that water could heal his injuries, cure his father of troll poison, and revert Isadora into her wicked self, it had to be able to change his mother back from her dragon form.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door, startling him out of his dreamy state, and his father’s voice followed. “Thaddeus? Others need to shower too.”
“Okay,” Thaddeus called. “Almost done.”
He shut off the water and grabbed a thick towel off a shelf. He shivered as he dried off, and quickly pulled on his clean clothes before opening the door. Nathan was leaning against the wall outside the door, holding a clean set of his own clothes. He looked tired but healthy, and Thaddeus was amazed all over again at the potency of the well water.
“Sorry I took so long,” Thaddeus said with a shrug. “It just felt so good.”
“Just wait until you brush your teeth,” Nathan replied.
“Oh, I forgot to bring my toothbrush with me.” Thaddeus used his finger to scrub at his teeth. “Now that you’ve said that they feel dirtier than ever.”
Nathan chuckled and stepped past him into the bathroom. “I hope you left me some hot water.”
“You might need to blame Astrid for that,” Thaddeus said.
“Astrid and Miriam are both already done with their showers.”
Thaddeus gave a derisive snort. “Well, I doubt they’re even close to clean, then.”
Nathan smirked and closed the door. Thaddeus walked back to the bedroom and stood with his dirty clothes held out from himself, looking for a place to put them down. Miriam stepped out of the bathroom with a laundry basket piled high.
“Oh, perfect,” Thaddeus said, dropping his clothes on top of the pile, then smiled at Miriam. “I was wondering where to put these.”
“Well, there you go,” Miriam said, holding the basket out toward him. “Your father said you’d be the perfect one for this chore since you do the wash at home.”
Thaddeus sighed. “Oh, he said that, did he?”
“And we’ve never used a machine like that before,” Miriam added with a smile. “We wouldn’t want to break it.”
Thaddeus took the basket and, grumbling to himself, turned toward the hallway. Teofil and Dulindir stood outside their bedroom door, both wearing robes they must have found in their closet. As they added their clothes to the basket, Thaddeus couldn’t help peeking down the V of Teofil’s robe. Dark blond hair covered Teofil’s broad chest, and the sight of it made Thaddeus’s mouth go dry and his stomach tighten.
Teofil met his gaze and smiled. “Thanks for taking care of the washing.”
Thaddeus rolled his eyes. “Like I had a choice.”
He plodded down the steps in his bare feet, then walked along the thick hallway runner to the large kitchen in the back of the house. Hannah sat at a desk built into a corner of the kitchen.
She was writing on a small notepad, but when Thaddeus stepped into the kitchen, she pushed the chair back and got to her feet as she stuffed the notepad and pen into a large pocket on her cardigan.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Thaddeus said.
“You didn’t,” Hannah replied, but her clipped tone made Thaddeus believe otherwise. “What do you need?”
He held the basket up a bit. “You said there was a washer and dryer we might use?”
“Oh, of course. It’s in the basement.” She crossed the kitchen and opened a door to reveal a set of wooden steps that descended into darkness, then flicked a switch, bringing to life a low-wattage bulb situated halfway down the steps. “There’s a light on a motion sensor to the left of the steps, near the washer and dryer, so don’t be startled when it clicks on. You’ll find detergent and softener on the shelves nearby.”
Thaddeus peered down into the gloom of the basement for a moment before he nodded to her in thanks and started down. The walls of the basement were made of gray stones, and he wondered whether they had been carved straight from the mountain that towered above the town. As he stepped off the bottom riser, the cold concrete floor against his bare feet sent a shiver through him. He turned to the left and nearly shouted when the light across the basement clicked on. It was a bare bulb, bright enough to reveal the stretch of basement with the washing machine and dryer in the far corner. A variety of plastic storage tubs and other items were stacked against the opposite wall. Among the items Thaddeus saw what looked like a sprayer tank for pesticide or weed killer.
“Well, this isn’t creepy at all,” Thaddeus whispered before he crossed to the laundry area and started to sort the clothes.
As he dropped the first load of clothes into the washer, he tried to curb a growing sense of impatience. Here they were at the base of Wraith Mountain, the stop before the final leg of their journey, and he was stuck doing laundry. He may as well be back home in Superstition, or any of the many other small towns they’d lived in instead of out on a magical quest.
“Soon,” he whispered to himself. “Another day, maybe two, and then you’ll be on your way.”
He added detergent and softener to the washer and studied the controls a moment before figuring out how to select the proper settings. The sound of water rushing into the tub was familiar and soothing, and he stared at the stone wall behind the washer, gripping the side edges of the machine. He could be patient a little longer, but they were far behind Isadora and the Bearagon. If they didn’t find his mother soon, he wasn’t sure what might happen.
With a heavy sigh, Thaddeus turned to walk back across the basement and climbed the steps to join the others.
Chapter FOUR
LATER THAT evening as Thaddeus folded the last of the laundry, Nathan entered the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Thaddeus watched his father cross to the bathroom and close that door as well.
“Uh-oh,” Thaddeus said as a nervous tremor started in his belly. “What’s wrong?”
Nathan frowned in his direction but did not meet his gaze as he sifted through the piles of clothes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You came in here and closed both doors,” Thaddeus said. “I kind of get the feeling you want to talk to me about something you don’t want the others to know about.”
“You’ve always been too smart for your own good,” Nathan muttered, still looking through clothes.
“Two thinks ahead of you, remember?” Thaddeus asked.
Nathan stopped going through the clothes and grinned as he finally looked at him. “I remember.”
The depth of sadness in his father’s expression sent a jolt of fear through Thaddeus. He dropped the pair of shorts he had been folding and moved to stand beside him.
“Dad, what is it? Are you sick? Is the troll poison stronger than we thought?”
“No, nothing like that. I’m fine, I promise.”
Thaddeus let out a relieved breath and sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, that’s good. But why do you look so sad?”
“I feel like I’m always failing you, Thaddeus, and I’m sorry for that.”
“Failing me? What do you mean?”
“All the years we moved around with no explanation. The secrets I’ve kept from you, the lies I’ve been forced to tell.” Nathan shook his head and looked down at the laundry on the bed. “It all just kept building. And because we were never able to stay in one place for very long, I’ve never been able to earn a decent salary. It’s all been retail or handyman or food service jobs to pay the bills.”
“But you kept us fed, and we always had a clean, safe place to sleep.”
“You’re too forgiving of me,” Nathan said, his voice almost a whisper.
“Dad, what’s this all about? What brought this on?”
Nathan pushed the clothes aside and sat beside Thaddeus. He leaned forward and stared for a long time at his hands hanging between his knees. Just when Thaddeus was about to ask a second time, Nathan finally started to speak.
“We have no money to pay for the rooms. Not enough anyway. And just barely enough money to buy a few groceries.”
Thaddeus frowned. “Do we need to leave? If we do, that’s okay. We’ve spent the last two weeks or more sleeping outside. We can do it again.”
“I wanted us all to be able to get some good rest before we start up the mountain,” Nathan replied. “The climb is relatively easy a quarter of the way up. There’s a hiking trail that leads to the hot springs. But after that plateau, it becomes more difficult. We’ll all need to be well rested to make it to the caves where I figure she’s hiding.”
“I’m not following. You wanted us all to be able to rest, but we don’t have money for the rooms, so what do we need to do?”
Nathan looked at him. “Chores.”
“Chores?”
Nathan nodded. “I agreed to help Hannah fix some things around here in exchange for our room and board.”
“Oh.” Thaddeus thought a moment. “Like cut the lawn and weed the flower beds?”
“Yes, and paint the house and clean and fix the water heaters and furnace, and other things on Hannah’s list.”
“She has a list?”
“Oh yeah,” Nathan said, widening his eyes as he nodded. “And it’s pretty long. Since she bought this place after losing her husband at the beginning of the year, she’s discovered it needs more work than she expected.”
Thaddeus looked toward the window. Through the sheer curtains he could see the craggy granite face of the mountain. “What about Mom?”
“We can’t just climb the mountain with the clothes we have,” Nathan replied. “I want to get to her as much as you do, trust me. But we need to travel smart now, not fast.”
“Can’t you just zap us up there? I mean, you and Miriam both know magic, so can’t you get us all there in no time?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Nathan said, his voice soft and tired. “I wish it did, but it just doesn’t.”
“But earlier you said that magical people can transport to a place they’ve been before,” Thaddeus said. “And you told us you and Mom had spent time up on the mountain.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he replied. “It takes a lot of energy and concentration to do that for myself, let alone move a group of people. I’m out of practice with magic that complicated, and the terrain may have changed. It’s not like we’re talking about going from one room to another, all right? It’s a narrow mountain ledge or a cave that may have collapsed in the sixteen years since I’ve been here. I could kill all of us without intending to, and that would end this trip pretty damn quick, wouldn’t it?”
Thaddeus took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. I get it.”
“Look, I know you’re upset by this, but we need to plan a route and purchase heavier clothes as well as climbing equipment. And then everyone will need to learn how to use it. It’s going to take a little longer.”
Thaddeus pushed up f
rom the bed to pace. “We’re losing time with all of this. We need to get up there and stop Isadora from… from….”
“From what?” Nathan asked.
Thaddeus had moved to the other side of the room, putting his father’s bed between them. He turned on him, fully angry now and not really sure why. “From torturing Mom! From turning her into something wicked and evil and deadly and turning her against us!”
Nathan approached Thaddeus and took hold of his arms. “Isadora needs the same things we do.”
Thaddeus frowned. “Do you mean she’s here in town?”
Nathan shook his head. “I think she had enough of a head start that she and Logan have already started their ascent.”
“Then we should go too!” Thaddeus shouted, and pulled out of his father’s grip to stalk to the window and point toward the mountain. “Now! Right now, so we can catch up to them and stop her once and for all.”
“We won’t do your mother, ourselves, or anyone who’s depending on us any good by rushing into a confrontation with Isadora.”
“You mean me, don’t you?” Thaddeus folded his arms. “You don’t think I’ll be able to handle myself against Isadora and Logan.”
“That’s part of it, but…,” Nathan said. He put his hands on his hips and looked at the floor in silence a long moment. When he finally met Thaddeus’s gaze once again, he looked so sad and so exhausted, it deflated some of Thaddeus’s anger.
“Dad, what is it?” Thaddeus took a step closer.
Nathan smiled and shook his head. “I’ve failed you yet again, Thaddeus. All these years I kept your heritage a secret, and I should have been teaching you about it. If I’d trained you in the ways of magic, taught you how to be a wizard from a young age, we’d be ready to go after Isadora and Logan sooner. But I thought it was better you didn’t know. I thought that if you were questioned by any of Isadora’s supporters about magic or wizards and witches, you’d be able to respond with believable ignorance.” He shrugged and put his hands up. “I made a decision as a suddenly single father and now, with everything that’s happened, I’m second-guessing myself. It’s the story of my life.”
