What Feasts at Night

Tomorrow, in my experience, is only worth worrying about when there’s something you can do about it.

Blessed Virgin,” I whispered, even though I couldn’t even hear myself. “Why must you keep sending me innocent monsters?

Though you might consider building a sauna. It won’t hurt, and even if it doesn’t help, at least then you’ll have a sauna.” Which, as medical advice goes, was not the worst I’d ever heard by a long shot.

Bors looked around the hunting lodge, the grounds, the stableyard. “It’s not the place’s fault,” he said reasonably. “It was here before she was. It doesn’t deserve to fall apart because something bad happened here.” Another of his long silences, and then he added, “Something bad happened to both of us, too. We don’t deserve to fall apart either.

A poet once wrote that the woods of Gallacia are as deep and dark as God’s sorrow, and while I am usually skeptical of poets, I feel this one may have been onto something.

When you talked to Bors for very long, you realized that he was slow, and if I had meant stupid I would have said that instead. Bors had a mind like a lava flow. It took a long time to get where it was going, but there was no stopping it. I quite liked him.

May we always have the choice to err on the side of mercy,” I said, lifting my wine.

The commander- may he shit pinecones in Hell.

And before you say anything about Madeline Usher, she wasn’t a ghost. What happened in that house on the edge of the tarn was unspeakably awful, but there was nothing supernatural about it. Nature creates horrors enough all by itself.

It's a place I go to, even if nobody else can see that I've gone. I can smell it and certainly hear it, even if I can't always see it. That's the problem with all those well-meaning people who try to comfort you by telling you that everything's okay, you're home now, and the war's over, as if you're the idiot who can't read a newspaper and see that an armistice has been declared. It's like telling someone that Greece is over, or England, or Russia. It's nonsensical. Places aren't ever over, except maybe Pompeii. Still we pretend we believe it, all of us who sometimes fall over into that familiar place. Trying to explain that the war will never be over just makes you sound either mad or self-pitying, and makes your relatives look at you worriedly and pat your hand, and that's far more exhausting. You learn to just smooth over the conversation and get on with things. It doesn't even feel like a lie. As long as you don't hurt anybody and don't act too obviously strange, most people will let it go. The other ones like you understand. We all realized long ago that we're dual citizens now, that we come from two different places. Gallacia. And the war.

It’s just a mushroom, Bors. We don’t need to go buying deceased cats.

It’s not the place’s fault,” he said reasonably. “It was here before she was. It doesn’t deserve to fall apart because something bad happened here.” Another of his long silences, and then he added, “Something bad happened to both of us, too. We don’t deserve to fall apart either.

Grief does strange things to people, and there isn’t always a logical explanation.

The silence didn’t feel peaceful. It felt thick. Like the layer of fuzz on your tongue after a hard night of drinking, which you can’t see or touch but you can damn well taste.

Something bad happened to both of us, too. We don’t deserve to fall apart either.

The thought had never crossed my mind, and if it had, I would have chased it out with my pistol in one hand and a horsewhip in the other.

Unfortunately, the commander—may he shit pinecones in hell

Are you saying that you believe in ghosts?” I raised my eyebrows. Despite my personal view on the existence of ghosts, I had expected Miss Potter to be far more skeptical. “But you’re a scientist.” “I am a mycologist, Lieutenant.” She tapped my shin with her umbrella. “My intimate knowledge of fungi does not translate to a knowledge of spiritualism or souls or life after death. I loathe people who assume that because they are an expert in one field, they are therefore infallible on a totally unrelated topic, merely because they gave it five minutes of thought.

Unmarried women shouldn’t stay in a house full of men without a chaperone.” “I’m not exactly a man,” I protested. “As far as English propriety is concerned, a sworn soldier is not a respectable guardian of virtue.” “Well, they’ve got me there,” I said philosophically. “Respectable I am not.” (The English have no sworn soldiers, so far as I know. Hardly anyone does, outside of Gallacia.)

(The greatest city in Gallacia is fine, I suppose, but I didn’t feel the need to linger. Imagine if an architect wanted to re-create Budapest, but on a shoestring budget and without any of the convenient flat bits. While fighting wolves.)

I am skilled at preparing exactly two meals: handful of dry stuff pulled from saddlebags, and burnt thing on a stick. It would have been a violation of both hospitality and common decency to offer either to Miss Potter.

You take things away and leave behind emptiness, and everything you remove—every sheet and pillowcase, every lost sock and old razor—erases a little bit of the dead person’s footprint in the world. You picture your own home being carted away, piece by piece, hopefully by loved ones and not by strangers.

I sometimes think the fundamental disconnect with civilians is that they think a war is an event, something neatly bounded on either end by dates. What anyone who’s lived through one can tell you is that it’s actually a place. You’re there and then you leave, but places don’t stop existing just because you aren’t looking at them.

(Do you have the Noon Witch in your country?

One of the skulls rolled its eyes at me.

If you have ever dealt with the possessions of the dead

Blessed Virgin,' I whispered... Why must you keep sending me innocent monsters?

Paris, when we left, had been in full glory. Much is made of springtime there, but for my money, a warm autumn is just as spectacular and you don't trip over nearly as many poets.