What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2)

by T. Kingfisher

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. The war’s still there. I don’t live in it anymore, but it’s right over there, just on the other side of … I don’t know. Something. Maybe the mystic veil that the spiritualists are always going on about, except there’s nothing mystic about it. And sometimes, for a little while, I slip over into that other place. The war. It’s not like just remembering something bad. I have plenty of bad memories, many of them related to the war, in fact, but remembering them doesn’t mean I’m there, any more than remembering that I had the flu as a child means that I run a fever now. This is more like rounding a corner and finding myself unexpectedly in a familiar neighborhood. 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 an 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, ex...