52 pages • 1-hour read
What Feasts at Night
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Chapters 11-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of suicidal ideation, animal death, substance use, graphic violence, sexual violence, cursing, illness, and death.
Chapter 11 Summary
When Easton wakes, ka feels sore—especially in kan shoulder, where an old war injury lingers. The Widow scolds kan, assuming that ka drank too much, and Easton replies that the pain is from moving the rock at the springhouse. Hearing this, the Widow grows furious and rushes to Bors’s room. The boy lies asleep and is struggling to breathe, so she splashes him with water until he wakes. Clutching him, she murmurs her love, and Easton feels uncomfortable to witness the private moment, knowing that she will resent kan for it. Bors whispers, “It was her, Nana […] It was the woman with the broken face” (107). The Widow urges him to fight, but Bors says that the attacks happen in dreams, so he cannot remember to resist.
Easton returns to the kitchen. The Widow soon follows, roughly toasting bread and chastising Easton for moving the stone. She says that ka has severed the moroi from its body, stating, “You cut the cord, and the baby is on its own” (107). She explains that the creature is now trapped in Bors’s dreams. Horrified, Easton asks how to undo this, but the Widow says they cannot. She shoves kan aside before hurrying back to Bors, prepared to rouse him each time he stops breathing.
Angus enters and Easton asks what to do. He advises taking Bors home, noting that many people in Gallacia have died similarly this year. After drinking livrit, Easton goes to speak with the Widow, intending to tell her to bring Bors home. However, when Easton hears her pleading with the moroi to spare the boy and take kan instead, ka retreats to kan own room.
That night, Easton dreams again. A moth slips into the room, and suddenly the moroi is upon kan. This time, Easton recognizes her. Ka confesses to moving the rock, and as the moroi looks down, her face “[tears] apart.”
Chapter 12 Summary
In the dream, the moroi’s face splits open, revealing the interior of her skull. The sight reminds Easton of a moment when ka witnessed the death of a fellow soldier named Peter. Now, the moroi steals Easton’s breath, and ka notes, “It was like having the air wrenched out of me” (113). When she pauses, Easton gasps painfully and asks her to stop, but she resumes. Easton collapses into unconsciousness within the dream.
Easton wakes and feels cold. Breathing in shallow, painful pulls, ka debates whether the moroi attacked kan or if something else caused the episode. Weak and unsteady, ka rises and walks toward the lodge. In the stable, Easton sees Hob. When ka reaches out to pet him, kan hand sinks into the horse’s hide, coming away with loose skin. Hob “falls apart,” releasing a cloud of moths. Angus’s horse nudges Easton’s shoulder, but Easton refuses to look into the stall and is instead rapt at the sight of the pieces of rotted skin clinging to kan own arm. Realizing that ka is still trapped in a dream, Easton tries to awaken and fails.
As the dream continues, ka goes outside into the moonlight, and the walk back to the lodge lasts for subjective “years.” Inside the lodge, Easton struggles down the hallway toward Angus’s room. However, ka hesitates to wake a sleeping soldier and fears that Angus might disintegrate like the horses. Unable to speak, ka turns instead toward kan own room, where Bors lies in Easton’s bed and the Widow keeps a vigil beside him. When the Widow reacts to the door shifting but cannot see Easton, ka wonders if ka is a ghost. Bors appears beside kan and explains that the Widow cannot see him either; Easton and Bors conclude that they are dreaming, and this realization gives Easton hope of escape.
The Widow talks to the moroi, offering her own breath if the creature will spare Bors. She then cuts a lock of Easton’s hair with scissors wrapped in red thread. Easton feels the moroi draw near, rise from the bed, and lunge for the Widow. Easton intervenes, taking the blow and getting stabbed in the hand before falling and landing in the mud of Bulgaria.
Chapter 13 Summary
Easton hits the ground hard, gasping, and mud splashes. Ka realizes that ka is back in the mountains near Slivnitsa, scouting under King Milan’s command. For a moment, Easton considers lying still and freezing so that ka will not have to return to the war at all. However, a fellow soldier named Birdy urges kan to get up and pulls kan to kan feet. Easton is relieved when Birdy does not crumble apart. Ka can breathe more easily now, but ka is disoriented, unsure whether this is a dream or reality.
Easton and Birdy head off in search of the horses. Ka remembers where they were kept and examines kan revolver, wondering when it was last cleaned. The two soldiers learn that the Army camp that should be nearby is missing. When Easton turns to speak to Birdy, Birdy is gone and has been replaced by a moth. Shaken, Easton follows hoofprints in the snow, hoping to find kan horse Skipper and ride to safety, but ka feels the moroi pressing close. Suddenly, the prints vanish, and Easton remembers that Skipper died long ago; ka realizes that ka must still be dreaming.
As ka moves through the mountains, ka sees the moroi slipping between the trees. Wherever she touches, trunks crumble or snow bursts into moths. Easton considers climbing higher to escape her but realizes that ka must fight. Someone must have fought her once, Easton thinks, and ka reasons that people have simply forgotten how.
Ka stops running and turns to face her, firing kan revolver. The shot tears her side open, but she pins kan down, “as heavy as guilt” (132), drawing the breath from Easton’s lungs. Thinking of Bors, Easton realizes that she will kill him next. With a final effort, Easton fires again. The moroi collapses on top of kan, and Easton, stunned that kan ploy has worked, understands: “This isn’t just a dream, though. It’s the war” (133).
Chapter 14 Summary
Easton wakes to find Miss Potter urging kan to sit up. With kan eyes still closed, ka wonders if ka, Miss Potter, and Angus (whose voice ka hears next) are dead. Angus barks, “Easton, report!” and Easton bolts upright, realizing that ka is alive, though kan breathing is painful. Angus hands kan a foul-tasting drink, and Miss Potter explains that Easton has pneumonia and that the doctor has already visited. Bare-chested and covered in a poultice, Easton asks for a shirt, and Miss Potter leaves to fetch tea. Angus helps kan dress, scolding kan for wandering outside in kan nightclothes, but Easton has no memory of doing so.
Miss Potter returns with tea. Easton offers her all kan lands, but she declines, calling the lodge “unlucky,” and the comment reminds Easton of everything that has happened. Ka asks after Bors, and Angus says the boy is recovering at home; he and the Widow left three days earlier. Easton tries to recount the dream-visions of the horses falling apart, but Angus insists that the horses are fine. Easton then asks about the “propriety” of Miss Potter being in the house without the Widow as a chaperone, and Miss Potter waves kan concerns aside. She suggests that Easton was simply sleepwalking, but Easton privately doubts it. Ka sleeps again, dreamless at last.
Days later, Easton has “preternaturally” recovered and goes with Angus to the springhouse. They begin digging and work for hours without any results until a recovered Bors joins them and quickly widens the hole. Soon they strike cloth. Now digging with their hands, they are joined by Miss Potter, and they soon they uncover a cloak. Beneath it lies a skeleton.
Angus and Bors carry the remains to Father Sebastian for burial. Before they leave, Easton asks why Bors returned; and the boy explains that he came for his clothes and axe. Bors also implies that the Widow will not be coming back. Easton retrieves the scissors that the Widow used when pleading with the moroi, then lies down to rest.
Angus escorts Miss Potter to the train station for her trip home, leaving Easton alone at the lodge. Later, Father Sebastian and Bors return to report that the burial is complete. Easton invites them inside and asks whether the body was identified. Father Sebastian says there are no records, but va believes that the woman was likely a victim of a violent lord who owned the lodge 140 years ago. Before leaving, va mentions that the lord died young—of pneumonia.
Bors then asks to become the new caretaker of the lodge and promises to send Easton letters. Surprised but pleased, Easton agrees, laughing when Bors remarks that the Widow probably won’t visit him much.
Chapters 11-14 Analysis
In the novella’s emotional and narrative climax, psychological trauma collides with Gallacian folklore and the supernatural threat of the moroi as Kingfisher crafts an intense confrontation that blurs the boundaries between illusion and reality. Shifting from the novella’s earlier ambiguity into a more visceral form of horror, the author employs graphic imagery and depicts Easton’s altered state of consciousness in order to collapse the boundaries between the protagonist’s past and present, mind and body, dream and reality.
Yet well before Easton experiences kan psychological battle against the moroi, the omnipresence of Gallacian fatalism imbues the narrative with grim tension. This mood is exacerbated by Easton’s anguish over Bors’s worsening illness, and ka becomes more willing to accept the Widow’s folkloric worldview. The Widow’s certainty also feeds the novella’s fatalistic tone, for as Angus observes, “She’s convinced it’s the moroi, and it seems she’s convinced Bors” (109). This assertion stresses the communal nature of belief, and as the narrative unfolds, it is clear that Easton also begins to lend credence to the legend of the moroi. In Gallacia, folklore holds the same weight as medicine, because spiritual explanations often fill the gap left by limited healthcare or resources. Kingfisher ultimately uses The Tension between Folk Belief and Rational Inquiry to show people’s desperate attempts to explain their suffering when they believe rational answers to be inaccessible or inadequate.
Within this fatalistic and collapsing world, Easton’s moral crisis reaches its height when ka feels guilt over kan decision to move the rock at the springhouse, believing that ka has unleashed catastrophe through kan ignorance. The decision to fight the moroi reflects Easton’s sense of responsibility, guilt, and entrenched combat reflex. Ka does not fight for kan own survival; ka fights because ka refuses to allow Bors to die. In this context, Easton’s climactic confrontation and battle of wills against the moroi transforms kan caretaking instinct into a courageous, if desperate, act of protection.
As Easton grapples with kan dreams, the looming specter of the moroi becomes a vivid physical threat, and the blending of this danger with Easton’s war memories emphasizes The Tangible Nature of Trauma. Specifically, the moroi’s body is rendered in grotesque detail as Easton describes “the pulse of a wet, rigid meat inside her skull” (133), and when ka tries to speak, “the word stop came out […] like a shard of glass, trailing blood and torn edges, to vanish into that empty cavern of skull” (113). This imagery literalizes the violence of Easton’s trauma, particularly as the moroi’s exposed skull, torn flesh, and impossible movements evoke Easton’s memories of the battlefield. As the treacherous present merges with the traumatic past, the protagonist’s perception is so completely distorted that even the grotesque feels familiar, and the horror becomes a physical manifestation of wounds that Easton carries but cannot fully articulate.
The Tension between Folk Belief and Rational Inquiry also intensifies in this section as Easton’s dream-within-a-dream sequence collapses the narrative boundaries. When Easton states, “I learned that it was possible to lose consciousness in a dream” (114), this line signals the total erosion of kan psychological safety, for ka must now navigate a dangerously blended landscape of dream, nightmare, and memory. These elements blur as Easton shifts from the stable to the mountains of Bulgaria, and from the lodge hallway to the mud and gore of the battlefield. Yet even as this phantasmagoria twists and bends around the protagonist, Kingfisher maintains the precise balance between empirical and folkloric explanations, for the moroi’s pursuit has the same logic exhibited by trauma-based flashbacks. Just like Easton’s abrupt episodes of “soldier’s heart,” these psychological shifts are sudden, intense, and cyclical, and the protagonist proves resistant to waking. Even kan sensory experiences break down, and the very silence behaves like a force, brushing against Easton as the snow swallows both hoofprints and pathways. This collapse of all rational boundaries mirrors Easton’s understanding of “the war” that ka survived as a place, not an event. Now, in the moroi’s realm, war and haunting become indistinguishable.
By contrast, the resolution resolves the novella’s focus on Caretaking and Camaraderie as Countermeasures to Dread, for the Widow’s willingness to sacrifice herself—by offering her breath in place of Bors’s—reflects a culturally inflected form of love that mixes superstition with selflessness. Although her rituals and prayers are ineffective against the moroi, these methods nonetheless underline the emotional truth at the heart of Gallacian folklore: that belief is a form of care in a world that holds few other safeguards. Later, when Angus and Miss Potter stabilize the stricken Easton, offering pragmatic and emotional support, kan recovery illustrates the idea that the simple yet vital gestures of camaraderie can temper the aftermath of horror.
Ultimately, the true resolution comes not from defeating the moroi but from giving the dead their proper place. The exhumation and burial of the mysterious woman’s body effectively restore moral and narrative order by addressing the theme of improper burial that shadows the folklore. Bors’s recovery then becomes part of the healing arc. When the boy observes, “It’s not the place’s fault […] Something bad happened to both of us, too. We don’t deserve to fall apart either” (146), he offers a quiet reflection on the interwoven nature of survival, trauma, and self-worth, and his hard-won wisdom suggests that although Gallacia itself remains haunted by hardship, he and the other characters have emerged with a deeper understanding of themselves and each other. This closing affirmation underscores the novella’s core truth that true healing requires acknowledgment, care, and the shared labor of surviving that which haunts the soul.
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