The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [118]
"Do we have a large net?" asked the Chancellor of Waste.
"Why, do you want to be the one to wrestle with it?" asked Pester, holding up his hand for all to see.
"It must be destroyed," said Ringlat, "it's far too dangerous."
"But it is beautiful," said the Illustrious Seventh.
"The garden was beautiful," countered the Bishop. "This thing is evil."
Ingess stepped into the middle of the crowd and turned to look at each of us. "The moth is not to be harmed," he said.
"But it is not righteous," said Ringlat.
"The moth is not to be harmed on pain of death," said Ingess without anger and then turned and strode away toward the palace.
The members of the court said nothing, but each looked at his or her shoes like scolded children. A death threat from Ingess was like an arrow through the heart of Reparata. In that moment, we felt its spirit dissolve.
"Death?" said Chin Mokes when His Royal was out of earshot. He shook his head sadly. The others did the same as they wandered aimlessly away from the missing garden.
I called to Frouch to wait up for me, but to my surprise she turned and continued on toward the palace.
As we soon learned, the garden was only the beginning. On the next evening the ethereal glutton invaded the closets of the southern wing and, moving from room to room, devoured all of the linens and finery of those who resided there. All that remained by way of clothing was the outfits those court members had arrived at Reparata in, which had long ago been stored away in trunks. The next day I met the Chancellor of Waste at breakfast, and he was wearing the clown outfit that, in his previous life, had been his uniform. The shoes were enormous, the tie too short, the jacket striped and the pants checkered. In a loud voice, he desperately tried to explain and his embarrassment was contagious. It was a disarming sight to see half the royalty of court traipsing about in threadbare attire.
Ingess assigned the royal accountant to bring gold so that new fashions could be sent for immediately, but when the doors of the counting house were opened, allowing the sunlight access, the moth was startled into flight and brushed past the accountant. When he was finally able to clear his eyes of the insect's powder and his mind of its resultant depression, he discovered that the creature had a taste for more than just leaves and clothing. A good half of that immense trove of gold was gone.
All were skeptical of the story the accountant told, suspecting him of theft, since he had actually been a pickpocket earlier in his life. A few nights later, though, when the moth returned, more than one witnessed its consumption of jewelry, and Saint-Geedon vouched that it had, in minutes, done away with every place setting of the royal silverware. Ingess had even lost his crown to it, but still, in the face of strident requests that it be exterminated, he refused to relent on his command that it not be harmed.
I went to visit Frouch in her rooms the morning after it dined in our quadrant of the palace. My own wardrobe had vanished through the night along with just about everything else I owned. When I knocked on the countess's door I was wearing my old jacket missing an arm and the trousers I had wandered a thousand miles in, whose gaping knee holes made the bottom half of each leg almost superfluous. Putting these things on again was very difficult, and for a moment I considered simply going about in my bathrobe as the healer had.
There was no answer from the countess, and I was about to leave when I heard something from beyond the door that I at first mistook for the sound of Sirimon. I listened more closely and it came to me that it was Frouch, weeping. In a moment of madness, I opened the door and entered anyway.
"Countess," I called.
"Go away, Flam," she said.
"What's wrong?" I asked, though I already had a good idea.
"Don't come in here," she said, but I had to make sure she was all right.
She stood in the middle of her room, wearing the short,