Read Wren the Fox Witch (Europa #3: A Dark Fantasy) for Free Online

stood beside her. “I have a theory.”
    “They barely even care,” Wren said, still staring at the sea. “They fought a band of dead people in the street, bashed in people’s faces with bricks, and they just went back to their drinks like nothing happened.”
    Omar grinned. “Some people adjust to awful things better than others.”
    “What sort of people?”
    “People who are used to awful things happening to them.”
    Wren nodded slowly.
    “This is Vlachia,” Omar said. “It’s a cold, hard place. In times of war, the princes fight with Raska and Rus and Hellas for scraps of gold, a handful of women, or a herd of cattle. Nothing more. In times of peace, the governors fight with each other for even less. But the farmers do fairly well, and the fishers do fairly well. The wine here is excellent. And when the wine isn’t enough to warm their bones, there is always the Church of Constantia to soothe their souls.”
    “Church? You mean the gods?”
    “Not gods. God . Singular.”
    “Oh.” Wren pouted. “What’s his name?”
    “God. Just, God.”
    “If you only have one god, does that mean he doesn’t have a family?”
    Omar sighed. “According to the Constantian and Roman Churches, he does. But they’re wrong about that, of course. The Mazdan Temple has the truth of it.”
    “Oh.”
    So many things to learn still.
    Wren wrapped her sling around her wrist. “What’s your theory?”
    “Hm?”
    “About the walking dead,” she prodded. “You said you had a theory.”
    “Oh, that.” Omar nodded. “Well, you know that when most people die, their souls just rest there in their bodies or their ashes, just sort of sleeping. And even if they do wake up, it takes some effort and some aether for them to move about as ghosts.”
    “Right.”
    “And your aether-craft allows you to use the aether to move anything with a soul.”
    “Right.”
    “So it works both ways,” Omar said. “You can use the aether to move a ghost, and a ghost can move the aether too.”
    “But aether is just a mist. It can’t move anything at all. It just makes images of dead people.”
    “Ah.” Omar smiled mysteriously. “But what if the aether wasn’t a mist? It evaporates in the sunlight, in the heat, but it also thickens in the dark and the cold. What if the aether froze solid? What if the aether in a corpse’s dead blood froze solid?”
    Wren’s eyes widened. “Then the ghost could move the frozen aether crystals, they could move their own dead body like a puppet!” She recoiled. “Ew!”
    “Ew indeed, little one, ew indeed.” Omar nodded sagely. “These corpses are buried in the permafrost, their bodies well-preserved in the cold, their blood frozen solid within hours of dying. And then, when their souls wake up, instead of just carrying their faces and voices out into the aether mist, they take their own dead bodies with them out into the world.”
    Wren shuddered. “So they might not even realize they’re dead?”
    “Oh, I think they do. After all, they all have to dig and crawl their way out of their own graves. Imagine falling asleep in your own bed, and then waking up in your own grave, digging up through the frozen earth, and staggering up into a graveyard on frozen, dead legs, looking down at your own frostbitten and desiccated fingers, unable to speak with your shriveled up tongue. It’s enough to drive you mad, don’t you think? And the fresh ones, like Leif, might even think they’re still alive, just wounded or sick.”
    “But they’re dead! Why aren’t they just floating away like normal ghosts? Why are they clinging to their bodies at all?”
    Omar shrugged. “Force of habit? Human nature? The will to live? Why ask me, I’m not a deranged corpse.”
    “So, then we only need to worry about them at night, when it’s coldest, right? If they get too warm, the aether in their bodies will melt away and their souls will come free, right?”
    “Maybe. Then again, this land is awash with