Introduction
Like the previous book in the series, The Midnight Gardener, this book also started life as weekly serial posts to my blog, each chapter based on a different writing prompt shared by a group of writer friends. I started this story immediately after finishing The Midnight Gardener, and submitted it to Harmony Ink Press shortly after I submitted TMG. The Well of Tears was published in June of 2016, and I started working on the third book in the series.
At the beginning of 2020, I requested the series rights back and set to work building on the previous versions of the stories. For this second book, I wanted to make sure Thaddeus’ emotional journey came across more clearly, and I needed to fiddle with the timeline a bit to make sure things lined up. Now, with almost 10,000 more words and a fresh edit, I’m happy to release The Well of Tears for what is essentially the third time, with an all new amazing cover and series logo courtesy of Alexandria Corza.
The bones of the story remain the same, but hopefully if you’ve read it before, you’ll come to appreciate some deeper emotional passages and a few new scenes to strengthen character motivations and help smooth out the timeline. If this is your first time traveling with Thaddeus and Teofil, I hope you enjoy your time spent enough to continue on with the next books in the series, all of which will be released throughout the remainder of 2020.
Thank you for reading The Well of Tears, and thanks to all the people who have supported this strange and sweet series of mine. Now, sit back with your favorite beverage, hot or cold, and get to know Thaddeus, his father Nathan, Teofil, Astrid, Fetter, and Miriam as they journey through dark and dangerous lands on their epic quest.
Best,
R. G. Thomas
For Fred, who makes every day feel like magic.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Lee Brazil and Havan Fellows who continually root for Thaddeus and Teofil. Mooshberry wine for everyone!
Chapter 1
Thaddeus Cane knew he was still in the world of his birth. He knew this with his heart and his mind. But the landscape he had been traveling through the last day seemed intent on convincing him he’d been dropped into a magical place. Which made sense, seeing as how he reached this far point by stepping through a doorway Leopold conjured up on his basement wall.
He hadn’t known what to expect when he’d followed his father through the doorway. There’d been a gentle resistance, like putting his hand through bread dough, followed by a tingling sensation all over his body. And then he stood on the bleached and warped front porch of an abandoned cabin, looking out over a grassy meadow that spread out under a deep blue sky. In the distance, a thick line of tall, weathered trees stood tall and stoic, like guards for some ancient magical palace. When Thaddeus had looked behind him, he caught a glimpse of Leopold inside the front door of the cabin, the cinderblock walls of the basement of the house in the town of Superstition where Thaddeus lived with his father faintly visible behind him. The old wizard leaned in closer and squinted out at Thaddeus, then raised his wiry eyebrows and winked before closing the magical doorway. The golden glow had dissolved, leaving behind the dark and splintered wood of the cabin’s true door.
There was so much Thaddeus needed to learn about magic.
They’d walked a good distance that first day, their small but determined group of six led by Thaddeus’ father, and included their neighbor—who Thaddeus liked to think of as his boyfriend, although neither of them had said the word yet—a handsome garden gnome named Teofil, as well as Teofil’s mother, Miriam, and his brother and sister, Fetter and Astrid. They had no definite destination save for the mountain range in the far distance. They were hiking across the land in search of the Bearagon, a vicious beast that was a combination wolf, bear, and dragon, as well as looking for a dragon that was, in actuality, Thaddeus’ mother, Claire.
And, apparently, they couldn’t have driven instead.
They had to walk.
Thaddeus worked hard to reign in all the questions filling his mind as the tall grass whispered against his jeans, the seeded tips brushing his fingers. By the time they’d decided to stop for the night, his shoulders had ached from the weight of the backpack, and the leg wounds from the Bearagon throbbed in time with his pulse. His father had taken him a short distance from the others and had him lower his jeans so he could inspect the stitches and apply a layer of antibiotic ointment.
“They hurt?”
“Yeah, pretty much constantly,” Thaddeus had replied, pulling his jeans up and buckling his belt. “But I’m okay.”
“Okay, let me know right away if that changes.” His father had squeezed his shoulder and given him a tight smile. “You’re a brave young man, and I’m proud you’re my son.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Thaddeus had said, following his father back to the others.
Thaddeus and his father had never gone camping, so he watched with interest as his father set up a camp site for them all. He’d built a fire and helped Miriam gather herbs and berries for dinner, and even helped them all find the softest spots to lay out their blankets.
And Thaddeus’ father had also taken the first watch.
That was the moment it had really sunk in for Thaddeus that they weren’t simply on an extended nature hike. If someone had to keep watch, that meant they were on a serious and dangerous journey.
Now, a day after stepping through Leopold’s magical doorway, they still walked through the tall grass. A good distance beyond the line of trees ahead of them, a mountain range rose from the flatland, its peaks hidden by clouds.
“And we’re still sure all this walking is faster than if we’d driven?” Thaddeus asked.
“For the last time,” his father said over his shoulder, “yes. The head start Leopold gave us saved us a lot of time.”
“But we still have to walk for days?”
“Even a wizard as powerful as Leopold has his limits. Transporting all six of us took a lot of energy, so he got us as far as possible.”
“Yeah, okay.”
A short time later, Teofil, who was following after Thaddeus, asked him, “Doing all right?”
Thaddeus looked over his shoulder and into Teofil’s blue eyes. “I’m doing okay. How about you?”
Teofil smiled and lowered his voice to whisper, “I like my view.” Teofil looked at Thaddeus’s butt, then looked up at him again, grinning.
Heat rushed to Thaddeus’s face and dropped down his body, spreading out through his limbs and into his fingers and toes. Teofil seemed to have that effect on all parts of him, and it both scared and excited Thaddeus.
“Oh, well…” Thaddeus said. He caught his foot on a rock and fell forward onto the path forged through the grass by his father. He felt a sharp pain in the heel of his left hand as it scraped along another rock hidden among the stalks, and then a numbness. A gasp of surprise rushed out of him, and he lay still a moment, taking stock.
What just happened?
“Thaddeus!” His father knelt beside him. “Are you hurt?”
Thaddeus got to his knees, hissing at the pain in his hand, and the tug of the stitches in his left thigh. He looked at his palm and winced at the raw, red scrapes that dotted his skin, which had joined the scratches he’d received while yanking the drachen narcosis out of the ground in Leopold’s yard. As he watched, blood welled up within the injuries, bright red against his pale skin.