What Feasts at Night

Angus serves as Easton’s steadfast companion and as a pragmatic counterbalance to the narrative’s elements of psychological and supernatural instability. Described as Easton’s batman, valet, groom, and lifelong voice of reason, Angus is a man of few words, and his “usual unflappable calm” (5) serves as both comic relief and emotional ballast. Throughout the series, Angus’s calm practicality complements Easton’s emotional volatility; whenever Easton spirals into unbridled introspection or trauma-driven anxiety, Angus offers grounded, immediate responses to the situation at hand, imbuing the most deeply horror-driven scenes with an element of practical realism. This dynamic makes Angus the series’ archetypal “anchor character”—a stable, emotionally resilient figure who helps to reorient the protagonist.

Kingfisher builds Angus’s depth through subtle characterization, and the fact that “no one knows Angus’s last name…not even [Easton]” (83) suggests that Angus is a man whose identity lies primarily in his service and his loyalty. Even so, he exudes a strong competence that does not tip over into obsequious servility, and he is more deeply attuned to danger than Easton initially realizes. As the mystery of the moroi unfolds, Angus navigates between Miss Potter’s scientific curiosity, the Widow’s folklore, and Easton’s wavering perceptions, offering a pragmatic middle ground to the characters’ psychological chaos. In this context, Angus’s competence, clarity, and refusal to panic counterbalance Easton’s trauma-induced fragmentation, and his constancy allows the story to explore weighty topics such as trauma, mental health crises, and supernatural threats without collapsing entirely into despair. In this way, Angus symbolizes the everyday resilience that undergirds both horror and healing in Kingfisher’s work.

Eugenia Potter, who was first introduced in What Moves the Dead, is a British mycologist whose scientific rigor and sensible demeanor make her a vital member of the group in What Feasts at Night. Miss Potter plays a dual narrative role, serving as both a rational counterpoint to Gallacian superstition and a source of emotional warmth and connection. Described as “a sturdy, gray-haired Englishwoman, wearing sensible waterproof boots” (44), Miss Potter is a woman who radiates intellectual delight and uses her enthusiasm to disarm the fear and tension permeating the lodge. Her presence brings continuity to the series, and her habit of approaching mysterious phenomena with curiosity rather than dread also reinforces The Tension between Folk Belief and Rational Inquiry.

Despite her dedication to seeking empirical evidence, Miss Potter wisely navigates the group’s cultural differences without aiming any condescension at the Widow’s fears or at Easton’s recurrent anxieties. Her immediate rapport with the Widow demonstrates her ability to create connections across linguistic and ideological boundaries, and her calm steadiness contrasts with Easton’s self-deprecating anxiety and Angus’s gruff pragmatism. In this way, her presence forms the emotional center of the lodge’s temporary micro-community.

Miss Potter’s role in the climax is understated but essential, for her rationality stabilizes the group during Easton’s illness. In the end, she departs the novella much as she entered it—sensible, practical, and compassionate—but her interactions deepen the emotional and thematic complexity of the story. As a character, Miss Potter offers a model of curiosity without arrogance and an attitude of scientific inquiry tempered by kindness, and she therefore stands as one of the series’ most grounded and compassionate figures.

The Widow Botezatu embodies the weight of poverty and the resilience of Gallacian folklore. From the moment she arrives at the lodge, she presents a complex mixture of hostility, competence, and emotional restraint. Kingfisher characterizes the Widow as a woman whose uncompromising worldview has been shaped by a lifetime of hardship. For example, although she “needed the money” that came with the job “and was grateful to have it,” she also “resented both the need and the gratitude” (34). Rather than serving as a simple skeptic or believer, the Widow stands as a representative of those form whom Gallacia’s folklore is a tangible reality. In this light, her various rituals involving red thread, salt lines, and iron knives, represent her inherited knowledge, which has been passed down through generations.

Despite the Widow’s flaws, her brusque manner disguises her deep love for her grandson, Bors. As his illness worsens, she oscillates between fierce protectiveness and near-panic, and this crisis culminates in her most vulnerable moment, when she offers her own breath to the moroi in exchange for Bors’s safety. Her rituals often seem irrational to outsiders, but within the narrative, they hint at a worldview shaped by a blend of grief, poverty, and a staunch faith in folk wisdom.

Bors, the Widow’s grandson, shows his integrity in his willingness to work hard despite his worsening illness. As he experiences increasing difficulty in carrying out his duties, Easton’s compassionate reaction to the boy’s struggles reveal a new side of the protagonist’s personality, for Bors’s illness and vulnerability deepen Easton’s sense of responsibility and catalyze the core theme of Caretaking and Camaraderie as Countermeasures to Dread. The boy’s struggle to breathe also forms a symbolic parallel to Easton’s trauma-induced breathlessness, for both characters are being suffocated by forces they cannot fully understand.

Bors therefore functions as an emotional catalyst, but he also exhibits growth of his own. His recovery and eventual declaration to Easton—“Something bad happened to both of us […] We don’t deserve to fall apart either” (146)—exhibit his emotional intelligence and growing maturity. In that moment, he becomes a mirror to Easton, articulating a philosophy of survival that Easton cannot yet voice. When Bors decides to become the lodge’s new caretaker, this choice bridges past and future and cements his status as a dynamic character; in the end, he acquires agency, stability, and a sense of belonging that were previously impossible in his unstable home life. His presence therefore softens the novella’s ending, offering a hopeful counterpoint to the darkness that precedes it.

Father Sebastian, the village priest who uses va/var pronouns, embodies a blend of practicality and cultural knowledge, and his views on the situation do not fully align with either rationalism or superstition. While Father Sebastian does not believe in the literal truth of the moroi, va understands the psychological power of communal belief. The priest’s presence therefore lends an air of social legitimacy to scenes involving folklore, and his explanations shed light on Gallacia’s supernatural ecosystem without reducing it to mere superstition. As an interlocutor between Easton and the village, Father Sebastian contextualizes the fear surrounding Codrin’s death and offers logical explanations that balance empathy with gentle skepticism.

In the final chapters, Father Sebastian’s role becomes symbolic. Va is the one who oversees the burial of the exhumed skeleton, restoring ritual order and closing the cycle of haunting. Through this action, va reasserts the community’s relationship to the dead and affirms the cultural importance of conducting proper rites. Father Sebastian thus serves as a rational figure who nonetheless understands the spiritual and psychological necessity of honoring folkloric traditions.

The moroi, the novella’s central supernatural antagonist, functions simultaneously as a folkloric creature, a psychological mirror, and an embodiment of Easton’s trauma. Unlike traditional Gothic monsters that remain distanced or symbolic, the moroi has a graphic, visceral physical presence in the narrative. When she finally appears in human form, her torn face, exposed skull, and the “wet, rigid meat” pulsing in her head (133) all reflect the grotesque realism of the battlefield injuries that Easton witnessed during the war. From this interpretive angle, the moroi’s violence literalizes the internal wounds that Easton carries, tying the horror of kan current surroundings to kan vivid memories of war-themed trauma. In another show of ambiguity, the moroi’s breath-stealing attacks parallel Easton’s trauma-related breathlessness, reinforcing her function as both a literal threat and a manifestation of kan psychological suffocation. As such, the moroi can be interpreted as both a revenant from Gallacian folklore and an extension of Easton’s unresolved war experiences.

Structurally, the presence of the moroi collapses the boundaries between dream, memory, and waking reality, for although she enters through dreams, she also inflicts wounds and terror that transcend dream logic. When Easton “loses consciousness inside a dream” (114) or slips suddenly into the mountains near Slivnitsa, it is the moroi who enables this inexplicable blending of time and place. In the novella’s surreal climax, she serves as the narrative pivot where folklore and trauma collide, and her presence makes visible the very trauma that Easton often masks through humor and rationalization.

Importantly, the moroi is not evil by nature; she is incomplete: a restless entity in need of acknowledgement and a proper burial. Her defeat is thus achieved only when her body is found and buried according to established Gallacian ritual, and this development reinforces the novella’s emphasis on caretaking, community responsibility, and moral closure. In essence, the moroi embodies the weight of a haunted past, and her threatening presence emphasizes the necessity of honoring what has been lost.