What Moves the Dead (18)

The lake was full of reflected stars. The strange water gave them a faint green tinge, flickering slightly as I watched, probably from ripples. Not that the ghastly lake ever seemed to ripple when I watched. I looked up, away from the water, hoping to find an anchor in the familiar constellations.

There were no stars.

I believe I stared for at least half a minute, while this knowledge worked slowly through my brain. It was an overcast night. The sky was dark gray with a sliver of moon just edging through.

I looked back down, at a lake full of stars.



* * *



Once, on a ship in the Mediterranean, I saw the sea glow with a thousand motes of blue light. Plankton, the first mate told me. Bioluminescent plankton. After he walked away, one of the sailors said, “Don’t listen to him, sir. The dead carry lanterns down in the deep.”

The light in the lake was akin to that light in the sea, though more green than blue. Hundreds of individual glowing dots with no discernable source. Glowing plankton? Did that happen in lakes? I had no idea. Perhaps Miss Potter would know.

I gripped the edge of the balustrade. As I watched, I began to make out a pattern in the lights. The faint flicker was a sequence, not merely the motion of the water. A dot would brighten and then fade, and then the one next to it would do the same, giving the appearance of a light jumping along a track. Then it would begin again at the beginning.

The lights seemed to outline multiple flat, irregular sheets standing on edge in the water. I leaned forward, peering into the depths, and it seemed like there might actually be something there, something that reflected the light just a hair differently than the rest of the water, although it would have been a transparent substance. Sheets of glass? Or gelatin? Whatever made some parts of the water’s surface appear matte during the day?

The moon edged out from behind the cloud, but the lights did not halt. If anything, they grew brighter and more frenzied. Algae, Miss Potter had said dismissively. Did algae have leaves made of jelly and outlined in light?

The lights on the Mediterranean had been beautiful. Perhaps if I had seen these on a ship, I would have found them beautiful as well. But in this dark, miserable lake, in this grim, blighted land, it was just one more unpleasantness. Perhaps this was even the source of Madeline’s ailment. She had put her feet in the lake and God knew what kind of poison such things exuded into the water around them.

I turned away. Behind me, the lake continued to pulse and dance under the worried sliver of moon.





CHAPTER 6


The next day was good. I say this because it stands out so starkly alongside all the rest. The house was still damp and dark and falling down around us, Maddy and Roderick still looked like a pair of corpses headed for the bier, Denton still didn’t know whether to stand up when I entered the room or not, but still … it was good. Roderick played the piano and we sang badly together. Maddy’s voice was barely a thread and I can just about belt out the chorus to “Gallacia Will Go On” if somebody else handles everything past the first verse. Denton didn’t know most of our songs, and we knew none of his. But none of that particularly mattered. He sang something about John Brown’s body, and I picked up enough to bellow, “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” at the appropriate moments.

Roderick was a genius on the piano, though. When we had exhausted ourselves mangling popular tunes, he played dramatic compositions by great composers. (Mozart? Beethoven? Why are you asking me? It was music, it went dun-dun-dun-DUN, what more do you want me to say?)

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. We had fun. Maddy laughed and clapped her hands and there was color in her cheeks. I hoped like hell that the beef had been having some effect, even if the cook had to use mortar fire to tenderize the beast.

Maddy went to bed and I broke out a bottle of livrit. Livrit is a Gallacian specialty, which means it’s uniquely terrible. It strongly resembles vodka, although vodka would be ashamed to acknowledge the connection, sweetened, as livrit is, with the cloudberries that grow in the mountains. That might actually be palatable, though, and we can’t have that, so lichen is also included. The resulting drink starts syrupy, ends bitter, and burns all the way down. No one actually likes it, but it is traditionally made by widows as a means of supporting themselves, so everyone drinks it because you can’t let little old ladies starve to death when they could be climbing mountains and scraping lichen off rocks instead.

Every Gallacian soldier I know carries at least one bottle of livrit with kan. It reminds us that we are part of a great and glorious tradition of people doing gallant things in the service of a country that can’t find its arse with both hands and a map. Being as I was an officer, I carry three, in case I run into some poor sod who’s drunk kan only bottle.

We toasted Gallacia and Ruravia, and Denton gagged and Roderick and I cheered on this completely normal response to livrit. Then we toasted America and the taste buds her son had lost that day. Then we toasted a couple more things, including Maddy’s beauty, fallen comrades, and the foolishness of armies.

And then we parted and went to bed, and that was the last remotely normal day in the house of Usher.



* * *



I was just sitting down on the bed to pull off my boots when I heard the creak of floorboards outside my room. Was it truly that late? We’d been carousing for a few hours, long enough that Maddy might have begun sleepwalking again. I shoved my foot back in the boot and threw open the door.