He left for the kitchen. The swordsman called after him, “Hold on, what about phoenix etiquette? Do we eat the feathers?”
The Chef disappeared down the stair without answering. In the silence, the lord spoke.
“You never eat the feathers. He would’ve told us if we should.”
The lord pulled out a sheath of feathers, and in his hand they all turned black. Janny scrabbled the feathers from her dish, tossing them overhead like a festival of color.
Aja tugged out the fuzz of neck feathers. Could it be this simple? The Chef had warned that a mistake from now on would end in death. He must’ve told how to avoid the peril while misleading them straight into the quicksand. Aja had to figure out the trick before anyone ate.
“Wait,” she said.
The swordsman lifted a phoenix drumstick to his face. “I’ll try it first. If it sits in me smooth, the empress will get her taste of life.”
“Would you stop already?” Aja dropped her gaze to the platter of ice, a pile of snow on a plate of metal. The dish was made of chrome serpents joined together. The ornamental snakes tangled about each other, belly up in poses of death.
The swordsman plucked out one last feather and bit into the drumstick. The red juice that trickled down his chin shone like sparks.
“No!” Aja leaned up to her feat. They had to stop ignoring her. She had to be more than a nameless street person to them. Braver, smarter. She reached into the platter and threw snow at his face.
He wiped slush from his chin and spoke from one side of his mouth. “I’m all for snowball fights, but I need to taste test this.”
“We have to figure out the trick first,” Aja said.
“Took off the feathers, didn’t I? And look.” He pointed to the plate beside him covered in orange peel, seeds, and no fruit. “Not much time left for the empress.”
“I don’t think the feathers matter.” Aja tossed some ice at Janny.
The woman in paisley had opened her mouth to take a bite, and now she spluttered ice chips.
Aja continued, “The Chef must’ve said—No!”
The swordsman swallowed.
Defeat slimed its way down Aja’s throat. She would see him die, perhaps burst into flames, and she’d fail at another promise to herself.
Flames. She glanced at the snow she gripped, stinging her fingers. And ice. That’s it!
“Balance, he told us to balance our meals.” Aja hustled to the swordsman as fast as her creaking legs could. She batted his cheek in the way old ladies can always get away with. When he opened his mouth to protest, Aja jammed it full of snow. “Ice balances the fire bird.”
The swordsman’s cheeks bulged. His throat swelled when he gulped down the ice. “Probably for the best,” he said. “Starting to feel a little warm in here.”
He tapped the gauze robes over his stomach. The phoenix’s light leaked through his pleated belly muscles. Brightness silhouetted his ribs as curved shadows. A fire was beginning to blaze within him.
“More ice.” She waved him to the platter. “You need a dousing.”
He blinked away sweat. Every inch of his brow now beaded with perspiration. Nodding, he dove into the pile of snow and shoveled it into his mouth. Janny followed him, chewing ice alongside her phoenix.
The swirling orange light behind the swordsman’s belly button shrank, then winked out. He threw himself flat onto the rug, gasping, steaming. Gripping his neck, he said, “Now I’ve the worst ice headache.”
The lord said, “If I’m not much mistaken, her icy intervention saved your life. Your body heat was kindling the phoenix. It would’ve resurrected itself in a pyre of your bones. I cannot help but be disappointed.”
“Felt like a fire all right.” The swordsman poked at his stomach. He gazed up at Aja with his brown and black pupils. “Sorry. I’m always misplacing names. Won’t you hand me yours again?”
“Aja.” She smiled. Someone had asked for her name. She hadn’t had to throw it and watch it bounce off.
“Won’t forget you now, Aja.” He extended his hand and clasped her arm in the way guards of the empire greeted each other.
Aja tried to return the gesture but could not reach his elbow. Grasping his forearm was the best she could do. It felt good enough, even great. For the first time at the Banquet, she was certain someone would remember her.
The swordsman turned away to feed the empress. At last Aja could try the phoenix herself. She scooped as much ice as she could hold between her hands.
First she ate a mouthful of snow. It tasted of air, stale years, and pristine winter. Next she nibbled meat from the phoenix’s neck. The flesh was cold but the flavors warm, like burning frankincense, loyalty between friends, and autumn leaves dry and crackling yellow-orange-red.
Aja swallowed one bite of firebird and followed it with two of ice. Even so, heat blossomed inside her. It was like drinking piping hot tea, bathing in it. Aja had felt cold and dry, a mummy in a tomb. She needed only a few mouthfuls of phoenix until she was full of life.
Not that she stopped eating. She sucked the last of the meat from the neck bones, then started on the bird’s breast. The guests finished the entire phoenix and its bed of ice.
Aja’s vision sharpened. She looked at her palm, traced the branching lines. Her fingers danced together, flexible again. Her wrinkles had receded into smoothness. The aching of old age faded into a humming pleasure of a future yet unlived. She was herself again.
Aja leaped and cried out her happiness. “Haahaayaiiiya!”
“I was thinking exactly the same thing,” Janny said. She had finished her plate. The lifeforce of the phoenix hadn’t made her look different, but its magic must’ve helped her deep down. Dimples lit her face. Janny turned to the swordsman. “Don’t think I hurt anywhere. Hit me.”
“How about, ‘No.’” He pressed a strip of meat into the empress’s mouth.
“Fine, you big petunia.” Janny swung herself up and grabbed Aja. “Dance with me. Oh, and sorry for trying to eat you.”
“Eeep!” Aja was crushed against the woman’s curves.
“Thanks to you, Aja, I feel as good as a cold drink on a hot day. Speaking of which….” Janny strutted her way to her chalice.
A bellowing of glee made the guests look to the swordsman. In his arms, the empress lazed her eyes open and closed. One delicate arm lifted to fall on his hand.
“She’s waking up,” the swordsman said. “Empress, you won’t be ruling over the afterlife just yet.”
The lord led them in a toast. Crystal cups clinked. “To the empress’s savior, Aja.”
“To Aja.”
“Aja!”
A transparent slush swirled in Aja’s cup. The glass sweated with cold. Aja chilled her lips then hesitated. The Chef had not mentioned their drinks.
Janny gave a gurgling scream and sprayed a fountain. Wiping her mouth, she glared at her glass. “What is this?”
“Ice water,” the djinn said, drifting from overhead to stand at one end of the carpet, “for now.”
“Terrible!” Janny stuck out her tongue. “Would rather drink piss.”
To Aja, the water tasted of refreshing safety.
The djinn swept a bright arm to the carpet. “Sit down, and try to resist rolling off. I may not catch you.”
“Not much of a drop.” The swordsman edged a finger off the carpet and touched the tile.
“Not yet.” The djinn seized the end tassels of the rug. She braced herself as if to leap.
The guests sat down. The carpet had changed pattern to show desert dunes with stray boulders balancing on stone needles. Oh, yes, this was like the desert outside the city. Aja had seen murals of it in colored tiles, but the silver threads gave it a stark grace that tingled the back of her throat.
The fabric rippled, rising off the floor. Aja wondered what might happen, and whatever it was, she hoped it would.
The djinn jumped with the sound of a gust. Ahead of her, the dining room windows crashed open. The
carpet sailed into a sky of strange stars.
Eighth Course, Part II:
Drinking Stars
These stars were brighter. They were closer and all around her. Not shining points but halos of brilliance that beamed outward in spokes. The nearest light came from the moon. The knife-edge crescent swerved around them as the carpet passed by. They left all sight of land behind to fly deeper into the night.
The stars had no blackness between them, only fainter lights of different colors. And Aja believed she was seeing clouds beyond the stars. Misty drifts of mahogany and pink pinched together in an hourglass shape. To her left, a teal spiral surrounded a sparkling center of crimson.
The empress sat up, gazing. “Look! A whirlpool of stars.”
“And there!” Aja pointed. “Like orange dye spilled on veils. What are they?”
“This,” the lord said, “I have never seen.”
Aja crawled to the front of the carpet. It was broad enough that she didn’t have to squeeze by anyone or lean too close to the shining plunge. She asked the djinn politely, “Auntie, will you tell us what those are? The star clouds.”
The djinn squinted at Aja as if considering whether or not to answer. Lifting the edge of the carpet, the djinn turned them in a new direction. Aja flailed her arms. Magic seeped out of the carpet to restore her balance. Not even a chalice fell.
“In your language,” the djinn said, “they’re called galaxies and nebulae.”
“And in yours?” Aja asked.
“We think of them as Celestial Sands and Star Beds.”
“Those are lovely names.”
The djinn banked the carpet left. “You asked for my name, before.”
“Oh,” Aja said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Your mouth flaps couldn’t pronounce it,” the djinn said and nodded to the night lights, “but in spirit it’s Starlight on Dunes.”
“That’s your name?” Aja imagined a hill of sand grains glittering like diamond dust. “It’s beautiful.”
The djinn made a sound like a fire popping from a wet log. Maybe it wasn’t scorn. She raised her voice to speak to all the guests.
“I crafted your glasses to catch starlight. Hold them up to the flavor of light you most desire.”
Aja raised her glass in front of a nebula that looked like fog flowing around towers in the sunrise. The ice water now appeared to be milk. Specks of light chased each other along the rim of the glass. As Aja turned it, her drink seemed to thicken. Only when she lowered it below her chin could she be certain the liquid had changed.
The chunks of ice twinkled. The cloudy drink flowed around them with the consistency of pudding.
“Starlight on Dunes,” Aja said, “this must be your favorite drink.”
“I only drink the wind,” the djinn said, “and my favorite is breeze flavored with burning cedar forests.”
“The Chef didn’t mention this drink,” Aja said. He seemed to like to hint at danger. “Does that mean it can’t hurt us?”
The djinn didn’t answer. Flame patterns pulsed over her face.
“Can you tell me if this drink has ever hurt a guest before?”
“Sometimes the glasses catch the essence of a dark star. That you should not drink.”
“How would we know?”
“You would implode.”
“What?”
“It is like exploding but the other way around, and less comfortable.”
“And the dark star would make our drink turn black?”
“No, the glass would appear to be empty. The drink would crush itself down to a solid speck.”
“This one looks fine, then.” Aja sipped stars from her glass. The soft firmness of the drink was like frozen yogurt, a treat her tongue had touched just once before.
She had helped a merchant carry ice chips all morning, and he had rewarded her with a cup of yogurt sweetness. Swinging her legs from the side of a city rooftop, she had savored the yogurt’s coldness while gazing at daylight sparkling off the seashell spiral of a glassmaker’s tower. What she drank now tasted even better, of vanilla, tanginess, and the infinite.
Across the carpet, Janny spun her drink in front of a galaxy. Light poured into the water, leaking between ice. Her glass filled with moonbeams. Next to her, the empress clutched a glass swirling with red, blue, and purple.
Those same colors soon decorated her tongue and lips. “Aja, taste this!”
Aja traded glasses with the empress. Flavors whirled in Aja’s mouth, from blueberry, to blackberry, to boysenberry, to cherry. All a delicious tartness.
“What color is my mouth?” Aja asked the empress.
“All of them!”
The swordsman tapped the empress’s shoulder. “Aja saved our lives, you know.”
“I knew she was my best friend for a reason.” The empress embraced Aja, with a touch so light it felt like wings.
Aja hugged back. The links of her brass bracelet dug into her wrist.
The empress let go to spread her arms toward the stars. “It’s like flying through a jewel chest.”
Aja pulled her bracelet around to sneak a look at its latch. From the metal clasp stuck a long strand of black. The empress’s hair. Aja ran her finger down its length. She glanced at Solin, saw him drinking a glowing greenness.
Aja did not want to harm the child-hearted empress. The only thing to do was pull out the hair, toss it into the stars. Then she would be safe.
“Are you kidnapping us?” the empress asked the djinn. “Please say you are. All my favorite ancestors were kidnapped at least once.”
“You’re going to the next course,” the djinn said. She flew the carpet past a greyish-yellow globe with a ring around it.
The empress folded her arms back around herself, her puffs of brows rising as her smile wobbled. She touched one finger to her lips. “I almost died, didn’t I?”
Aja told her the swordsman had kept her alive with the Orange of Health.
“The Chef wouldn’t care if I lived or died, sang or sung,” the empress said. “Never have I met a person who could feel so little.”
The swordsman nodded toward Solin and spoke in a low voice. “What about him?”
“He cares.” The empress glanced at Solin, then gazed down at her lap. “I didn’t want to believe the bad I’d heard about the Midnight Banquet. I came to see, but it turned out the wrongest.” She reached up to hug the swordsman’s neck. “The Chef’s hurting my people.”
“I could try to take him down,” the swordsman said, “but I’ve a feeling it won’t be easy.”
His eyes narrowed at Solin knuckle-walking his way over the rug to them. Solin said, “I’ll take away the Chef’s senses, if you vow to kill him before me.”
Aja glanced at the djinn, nervous that she would overhear and feel obligated to warn her master. The djinn showed no interest. It was the lord who interrupted.
“Fine dining is nothing without conspiracy,” the lord said, “but I couldn’t abide you killing our host. You’ve eaten of his bread. And it has a price. A mortal one.”
Aja asked, “Would you pay it?”
“Certainly not.” The lord drank from a glass of red starlight. “A true gentleman never pays his debts.”
No one else spoke after the lord.
Aja had nothing to do but tip the last of her yogurt drink into her mouth. The moment she set down her glass, the djinn made a slashing motion with her hand.
The stars ahead of them folded back to either side. Curtains of light parted to reveal darkness. The carpet plummeted in.
They entered a blacker night, the kind best kept locked behind shutters. Aja looked over her shoulder and saw the carpet had flown out of a familiar constellation.
“The Gateway,” she said.
“The Door to the Underworld,” Solin said. “That’s what we call it.”
“The Portal of Paradise.” Janny lifted her empty glass in salute, then tried to drink out of it.
The carpet dove into a swaying gloom. They crashed into something that wasn’t solid ground. Aja felt as if her belly were thrown slantwise and then smashed up into her heart. Were they diving into the sea?
Aja gripped the empress’s hand, and Solin’s. “Hold your breath.”
“Not water,” the empress said. “This music is from leaf, tree, and bug.”
A shushing, a creaking, a croaking, a humming and clicking, the night sounds made Aja itch. What little starlight this sky had was obscured by branches. The air felt like hot soup.
“Where are we?” Aja asked.
“Some jungle.” The swordsman held the empress from leaning too far over the side. The carpet wove between trunks and cut through vines.
The empress’s voice rang out. “A jungle, at last! Let’s find new birds.”
The djinn turned back with a smile full of firestorm. “This will be a bird hunt.”
Ferns exploded ahead of them. The forest opened. The carpet glided through overgrown ruins. Stone blocks shone white in moonlight. A statue’s face gazed out from a black cage of roots.
The carpet stopped and settled on a road paved with stones and moss. The djinn drifted away, lifting the ornate key from her necklace. The guests stayed on the carpet, except for Aja. She followed the djinn and her key. At last Aja would see what it opened. She crept into a temple full of shadows. A hooting screech made her jump, but the sound came from the distance. Nothing to worry about.
The djinn lit her way down a crumbling stairway. At its greatest depths, a doorway was filled with rubble. She fit the key between two boulders and turned.
Aja giggled. What could the djinn be thinking? There was no lock for the key in the loose stones, not even—
A door opened in a rush of oven heat. The Chef strode out without glancing at the djinn.
Aja backed out of his way. “How did you….”
“All ways down lead to my kitchen.” The Chef handed her a bronze stake, a skewer.
On the walk back to the carpet, Aja saw the key once again around the djinn’s neck. Outside the temple, each guest received a skewer. The empress dropped hers. The swordsman asked, “What’s going on these?”
Magic Banquet Page 11
