Magic Banquet (17 page)

Solin had spat out another sort of spell,
one with two heads.
A hex.
Aja found him sitting in front of
the wall of flames, his crutches crossed before him.

“Uncle.” She reached toward his silhouette
but did not touch him. “I’m so sorry about your legs.”

“This one’s whole.” He eased out one leg. It
looked sound, like a snake had never bitten it with fangs. “Death
in one pries loose the hex in both.”

Aja eyed the dead bird. One knee had been
busted, but its other leg appeared unharmed. A post of blue scales
led to a thigh wider than Aja’s chest. As far as she could see, the
hex had faded from the man and the bird.

She could imagine him spitting out another.
If Aja gave him the empress’s hair, would he really send an awful
snake after her? He had saved the empress from the first terror
bird.

A cheering made Aja look back. The magic
carpet fluttered down, carrying the Chef and golems holding trays
of cups. The djinn floated after them, balancing a vat on her
shoulders. It bubbled with an aroma of cooking oil that weakened
Aja’s knees.

She heard a growling. It was her belly. She
was hungry as famine.

“Solin,” she said, “is it safe to eat a
terror bird?”

“Now it’s just meat. The unsafe part was
catching it.”

Aja could believe that.

The vat of oil would’ve crushed the djinn
were she a woman. Holding it steady on her back, she gestured to
the dead bird. Its feathers flew off, then wove together to create
a brilliant trellis. Pillars of plumes ascended, and feathers
crosshatched overhead into a dome roof. Aja felt blessed to witness
such magic. The empress sang in appreciation. Her notes lengthened
into a hymn.

The Chef stalked toward the bare bird with a
cleaver in each hand. This, Aja wouldn’t watch.

She took a cup from a golem. A luxuriant
smell steamed from the drink, of pepper’s promise of fire, of
bitter sweetness, of forbidden delights. The liquid looked like
black velvet.

She gave the cup to Solin. His dry throat
had to be killing him. He clasped the cup. She asked what was in
it.

“A drink for nobles.” Solin croaked the
words out. “They call it chocolate.”

Ninth Course,
Part II:

Crispy and Smooth

The pepper in the chocolate drink felt like
sparks on her tongue. The stings of hotness were soothed by a dark
richness, the taste of shade at midday, a delicious cool. Aja
stirred the drink with a cinnamon stick. The smell of the spice
made her forget the jungle and imagine a home of comfort. The
chocolate loosened the clamped muscles in her back, and warmth
flowed outward from her belly, into her chest, and down her
legs.

“I love it,” Aja said.

Janny sat beside her with her own cup and a
chocolate mustache. “To think those nobles wanted to keep this
drink to themselves. It’s enough to start a revolt.”

A golem offered Janny a feather from the
terror bird. She used it to wipe her mouth.

The swordsman approached them, scooting over
the carpet on one bent knee. “You were all sorts of brave, Aja. And
you too, Janny. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Janny licked chocolate off her thumb. “I can
be brave when the cause is handsome enough, and delicious
enough.”

She handed him his skewer. He took it to the
fried bird. No longer terrifying, the bird glistened atop a hill of
baked potatoes. Purple potatoes, red potatoes, round ones, long
ones, Aja had to hold herself back from diving into them. They
would probably singe her. They steamed with a slathering of
oil.

The Chef had bathed the giant bird in the
boiling vat until it came out golden. The simmering oil had sounded
like applause. The guests were all grins. The Chef cut off cubes of
meat, flipping sections of bird in the air and slapping his
cleavers together with clangs. The square chunks alternated with
the rounded potatoes on a skewer and all were dipped into the
bubbling vat. They came out sizzling hot and mouthwatering.

The swordsman handed the first skewer to
Aja. “For helping me save the empress.”

The next skewer he gave to the blushing
Janny. After that, he surprised Aja by offering a kabob to
Solin.

“Saw what you did for the empress,” the
swordsman said. “That was quick thinking.”

Solin bowed his head and accepted the
skewer. His gaze snapped back up when the swordsman offered his
hand. Solin took it. The two men sat side by side to eat.

Yay!
Aja smiled so wide she had
trouble eating.

She held one end of her skewer in either
hand. The potatoes burned her mouth. Pepper sprinkles covered them,
each bite a challenge and a joy. A luxury of salt awaited her when
her teeth sank into the fried bird. Its skin crunched. She had to
chew the tough meat longer, but that meant all the more time to
enjoy its juices.

This food was worth a fight. Aja couldn’t
believe she had thought of leaving the Banquet early, of abandoning
all the guests, all her friends.

Beside her, Janny ate and moaned in delight.
She patted the oil from her lips with her feather napkin. “Did you
think we were going to die there? Birds the size of trees all
around, nothing but beaks and blackness.”

“I—”

Janny gave Aja no time to answer, chewing
and talking at the same time with equal vigor. “Knew coming to the
Banquet might be the end. But thought to myself, Janny, what better
way to go? Heroism in the face of food is the best sort. Now look
at me. Young as a plum and just as smooth. Feel my cheek. Not a
wrinkle. Go on, feel it.”

Aja held up her greasy fingers in protest.
They glittered with salt. Oil ran to her elbows and dribbled down
her chin. She glanced around. Would the other guests think her a
slob? Everyone else also glistened. Even the lord had taken off his
gloves. His hands looked normal, not frightening at all.

“You’re eating,” Aja said. “You must like
these courses more than the first ones.”

The lord dabbed his lips with a feather. “In
truth, my maple muffin, I believe I’ve forgotten the knack of
abstaining. I drank more than I should have from the underworld
waters. It was too harmful to be long resisted.”

Aja gazed down at her empty hands. “I think
I forgot something important, too.”

The lord set down his kabob with three
chunks of food left on it. He tugged his gloves back on.

Janny leaned over Aja to point at his kabob.
“You’re not finishing that?”

“I’m dedicated to leaving everything
unfinished,” he said.

Aja slid back to clear a path between Janny
and the lord. Aja’s mouth had numbed with saltiness. She refreshed
her tongue with a swig of the chocolate’s spicy sweetness.

“Don’t have the stomach?” Janny asked him.
“And here I was beginning to think you had more in you than
ash.”

“My plump olive,” the lord said, “eating
your fill is always too much.”

“Here’s the best food you could ever eat,
and you’re wasting it.”

“If I wanted to avoid waste,” the lord said,
“I wouldn’t have come to a feast.”

“Janny,” Aja said, “you could finish it for
the lord.”

“Not touching it after him. Probably poison
now.” She wagged her skewer at him. “Admit it. Eating all those
souls shriveled your stomach to the size of an oak gall.”

Aja laughed, then puckered her mouth closed.
Maybe it hadn’t been a joke. She eyed the wall of fire that the
lord had made. It still protected them. Flames like scales coiled
within it, a dragon half seen and half felt. Even in its heat, Aja
shivered.

The wall of fire shrank into nothing, not
even coals, by the end of the course. All the guests had stopped
eating. Aja sprawled back, patting her belly. Though it didn’t feel
so full.

The swordsman belched, and Janny said,
“That’s the trumpet call for the next course.”

He blinked up at the remains of the bird.
“Did an army march through and eat all that?”

Ribs curved toward the night sky. The leg
bones formed a rubble. The guests had excavated the mound of
potatoes and demolished half the bird. It seemed impossible.

Janny lifted her skewer in the pose of a
conqueror with a sword. “A feat of eating worthy of song.”

“It’s the magic of the nine-tailed fox,” Aja
said. “The food is shrinking inside of us.”

“Shhh!” Janny mashed a finger to her lips.
“‘Twas skill.”

The hem of Janny’s dress dangled off the
side of the carpet as it lifted. The carpet flew the guests back to
the stone ruins, the jumble of blocky hills and reaching roots.
Somewhere below, a door that could not have been a door opened on
the Chef’s kitchen. Aja wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t
seen.

Golems removed the plates and returned from
the temple with statues of ice. The sculptures were of three men
wearing only boldness. The beard of one flowed down like waves, and
he held a three-pronged spear. The middle figure had a face of
command, one arm forward and the other back in a pose to throw. He
gripped a strange spear, with no head and a zigzagging length.
Whatever that was supposed to be, it flashed in the moonlight. The
third statue crouched on a pile of gold, coins incased in ice.

“What are they?” Aja had seen them before,
somewhere.

“Gods.” The Chef stepped from the abandoned
temple. He carried an amphora and bowl. Something inside glowed
through the clay. “And this is their fare.”

Tenth Course:

AMBROSIA

SERVED WITH NECTAR

Bands of golden light pulsed upward from the
base of the slender jar. Aja would’ve thought the amphora was made
of dusky glass, but, no, it was clay and glazed. The liquid within
still glimmered through.

Food also shone within a bowl. Spheres of
blue blinked inside with a hypnotic cadence. By their shape, they
could be fruit. To think of holding them, tasting something so
bright. Aja cupped her hands together. A lid concealed the bowl’s
treasure.

“I am not a humble man.” The Chef held out
the pottery vessels, and the carpet levitated to their level. He
let go of them. “It would be wrong if I were, I who have traveled
to each land and eaten its greatest animals. I’ve stolen from the
gods. These are the victuals of immortals, and this, their
drink.”

The bowl and amphora rested on the rising
carpet. The guests lifted with them, leaving behind the Chef. Aja
and the rest coasted above over the steep steps of a pyramid
temple.

The Chef called after the carpet. “Nothing
gives me more pride than serving them to you. May you take all the
bliss you can from them as a mortal.”

He grew smaller among the receding
buildings. Aja shouted back, “How do we eat them? What’s the
etiquette?”

The carpet soared out of earshot, above the
swaying heave of jungle treetops, high as the distant range of
frosted mountains. Clouds trundled by. Aja saw them as sliding
ships of puffy moonlight, half-melted palaces of mist.

Between them passed the magic carpet with
its glowing food. The bowl was covered by a lid. A clay stopper
sealed the amphora. They waited to be opened. All the guests
stared.

Janny was the first to reach. “Who’s hungry
for divinity?”

“Wait, Janny,” Aja said.

Janny did not wait. She grasped the lid.
Inside the bowl, light flashed like blueberries exploding. The lid
scraped free.

The empress covered her eyes, peeking
between two fingers. She hummed to herself and matched the pitch of
the winds.

“Don’t touch it.” Aja scrambled toward
Janny. The flying carpet rippled and pushed at Aja’s knees. These
statues, these clouds, Aja had seen them before. But where? “Maybe
we aren’t supposed to handle….”

Janny picked up ambrosia. Her fingers
cradled a bulb of radiant azure. It tapered at one end in a root
tail.

“It’s a turnip!” The empress clasped her
hands together.

“So the food of the gods is a vegetable,”
the swordsman said. “Mother would be happy.”

“Doesn’t smell like a turnip.” Janny
sniffed, and her head swayed back. Her rolling eyes shone white in
the moonlight.

Aja smelled it too. She had to sit down. The
aroma was like water from a cool spring bathing her mind and
trickling down her spine to shimmer through her arms and legs. She
fluttered her fingers and wiggled her toes with the joy of it.

“It’s like…It smells like….” Aja couldn’t
think of a comparison. She would have to eat it to know. A slice of
the glowing root on her tongue would let her understand. She
reached for a knife.

No! Not yet. She had to be the careful
one.

“Smells like nothing I’ve ever tasted.”
Janny’s teeth opened to bite the ambrosia.

Aja yanked Janny’s hand from her mouth. “You
can’t. Not until we know the safe way.”

“I eat what I please.” Janny pulled back.
The blue of the ambrosia glared through her fingers. Her bones
looked like broken black sticks.

“It might kill you.”

“Might make me immortal.”

“Remember the Apple of Youth,” Aja said.
“You ate a seed, and what happened?”

Janny stopped tugging. Her stomach gurgled
and mumbled complaints, but she nodded. “Have to peel it first or
something? Like a carrot?”

“I’m not sure.”

Aja glanced over the rug. Each guest had a
plate, but the golems had left only one knife and one ladle for
utensils. The bowl was decorated with mosaics. Aja gripped its
handle and turned it. Maybe she would find a clue how to eat
ambrosia. The paintings showed a woman with leafy-twig fingers and
flowers in her hair. She served the tubers of ambrosia to gods and
goddesses sitting at a table. Aja tapped three men in the mosaic.
The same three were sculpted above her in ice.

“I can’t see how they’re eating it.” Aja
angled the bowl into the moonlight. “There’s not enough
detail.”