What Moves the Dead (29)

Hares don’t do that, of course. Hares aren’t like rabbits, who actually post sentries around their warrens and alert each other to danger. Of course, with these accursed things, who knew anymore? Maybe I was right, and there was a disease. Maybe it was making the hares as paranoid as Roderick.

Something clicked inside my head. I was suddenly back in that sheep farmer’s hut on the mountain, listening to him rant about sheep diseases. “Th’ hydrophobia,” he’d allowed. “Aye, they get it. Not th’ same as dog, y’hear? Dog gets mean. Sheep gets stupid.”

Suppose there was a disease, and it had two forms. One like Madeline’s. But Roderick had also declined, hadn’t he? Fear. Acute sensitivity to sounds. Could those be symptoms, not of stress but of pathology?

Hob slowed. I looked up, pulled from my thoughts, and saw another hare at the edge of the road, sitting bolt upright. My horse gave it a wide berth and I didn’t try to rein him in. For a moment, I was half-afraid the thing might dart out and bite at Hob’s legs.

I saw two more of the hares before I made out a far more welcome silhouette, that of Miss Potter sitting on her little stool, umbrella deployed over her head, carefully dabbing at a painting of a mushroom. I was seized with a sudden fear for her, that the hares might be watching her as well. Watching her and preparing to … what? Bite? Attack? Spread their disease somehow?

Miss Potter bent over her easel, no doubt in contemplation of boletes or one of the other myriad fungi that infested Usher’s land.

Fungi.

A second click inside my head. Fungi. I jerked my head up. Not even the blaze of tinnitus that followed the movement could drown the thought. Fungi. Of course. The mold that coated the wallpaper and crept into the library books, the mushrooms that hunched themselves up from the earth, the affliction of Angus’s fish?

What had Miss Potter said, upon our first meeting? I do not know what you know of fungi, but this place is extraordinary … so many unusual forms.

Could it be a fungus, not a disease? Worse, one unique to this region? Was that why Denton could not identify it?

“You said there are fungi that infect living beings,” I said, sliding off Hob’s back. “You mentioned fish. What about humans?”

“Of course,” she said, as if we had been in midconversation and I had not just galloped up to her on horseback as if the Devil himself were on my tail. Hob, always pleased to have an audience, pretended that our great sliding halt had been his idea and pranced to show Miss Potter that she should be impressed. “Ringworm is a fungus. Thrush, which you find on infants, is caused by a yeast that is found on many species. There are others, though some are rare.”

“Are any deadly?” I led Hob closer. He rolled his eyes, clearly thinking that it was walk and run and stop and walk and his rider needed to make up kan damn mind.

Miss Potter tapped her finger against her lips. “Yes, though I don’t know that they are identified as such as often as they should be. People came back from India with little bumps that covered their face and neck, and that is believed to be a fungus. Men have died of it. And there are molds that form in houses that were strongly believed to contribute to miasma. Now, of course, we have germs, so miasma is no longer in vogue, but I cannot say that the mold could not have weakened a person’s lungs so that germs might take hold.” She shrugged eloquently. “In short, yes, I believe there are likely fungi that affect humans that are deadly. Certainly they kill fish. And there are the ones that hunt worms, which is not the same as infection, but—”

“Wait, what?” I held up a hand. “Did you say a fungus that hunts worms?”

“Oh yes. It caused quite a stir in the proceedings of the Society last year. A German named Zopf discovered a fungus that actively seeks out nematodes.”

It was a sign of how disordered my nerves had become that I did not derive nearly enough enjoyment from hearing Miss Potter pronounce the word “nematode” with an accent so British that it very nearly had its own stiff upper lip. I could only imagine packs of mushrooms leaping across the moors in pursuit of prey. It should have been funny. I told myself firmly that it was funny. “Hunt how?”

“Adhesive properties,” said Miss Potter. “They secrete a sticky net of hyphae, and once the worm is ensnared, the net cells germinate on the worm and extend a network through it, devouring it.”

“Does that kill it?”

“Eventually, yes.” Her eyes flicked away. I gathered that it was not a pleasant experience for the worm.

I licked my lips. “Hyphae?”

“Multicellular filaments. What differentiates a mold from a yeast, in essence.”

An idea was forming in the back of my mind. I didn’t like it one bit. “What do they look like, these hyphae?”

“They can take a number of different forms,” said Miss Potter. “But the most common one is white filaments.”

“Filaments.” I thought of Angus’s description of the fish. “Like slimy felt?”

“Felt, certainly, if it’s a thick enough mat.” She smiled tranquilly up at me. “But in small amounts, it would look like fine white hairs.”



* * *



“Lieutenant Easton, where are we going?”

“A crypt,” I said. “It’s … it’s very hard to explain. I just need you to look at something under a magnifying glass.”