What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)

by T. Kingfisher

Battlefields are grim, of course, but no one questions why. This was just another gloomy lake, with a gloomy house and some gloomy plants. It shouldn’t have affected my spirits so strongly.

“Perhaps that’s it. But this place has made me afraid. This dreadful house. I think I would rather face a line of rifles, even now. At least that’s a human enemy.”

“For,” he said, “the Good Lord may look out for fools, but it won’t hurt to have another set of eyes helping.”

“That said, mushrooms are not the only fungus. There are many, many types in the world. We walk constantly in a cloud of their spores, breathing them in. They inhabit the air, the water, the earth, even our very bodies.”

It was fun. People get hung up on happiness and joy, but fun will take you at least as far and it’s generally cheaper to obtain.

This place breeds nightmares.

But death is when you are allowed to ask foolish questions and to say all the unforgivable things that will be immediately forgiven.

“She did not suffer,” said Denton from the doorway. “Or rather, her suffering is at an end.”

I could not tell that it was Maddy. I could not tell that it was anything human at all.

It was terrible, but a hangover seemed like a great idea. Headache is always preferable to heartache, and if you’re focusing on not throwing up, you aren’t thinking about how the friends of your youth are dying around you.

Mushrooms don’t think. Yes, and the dead don’t move either.

The dead may walk, but I will not walk among them.