The ladle should’ve touched the inside of the cauldron, but there seemed to be no bottom. The dipper was sliding out of sight. Aja caught the tip of its multi-tailed handle. “It is deep.”
“From the ocean’s abyss arose a soma of immortality,” the djinn said, “and a poison of death.”
Color welled up within the milk. Blue tendrils danced in the whiteness. An orange shimmer spread over the surface before descending. All shifted back to the purity of milk.
“Disgusting.” The lord covered his mouth with his five-pronged hand. “The only thing worse than death is immortality.”
Aja lifted out the ladle, smelled ginger and milk froth. “Being immortal is one way to survive the Banquet.”
The djinn fanned her flickering hands open in a gesture of warning. “Only a drop of soma might remain in the ocean, and it couldn’t make so pitiful a creature...it couldn’t make a man immortal. That power is for the gods.”
Aja asked, “Then what would happen if we drink it?”
“If you taste the soma,” the djinn said, “enlightenment.”
“How tedious,” the lord said.
“I’ve always wanted to glow!” The empress leaned so close to the ladle that she bumped it with her nose.
Aja lifted the dipper away. “And the poison would still kill us?”
“Before you could swallow.” The djinn didn’t meet Aja’s eyes. “But there’s as little death as enlightenment. Mere drops in the ocean.”
Aja would find the poison in the first sip. She didn’t doubt it. The Chef wouldn’t have it another way. She nodded to the speckled wedge on the plate. “But the cheese of life could bring me back?”
“It might.”
“Unless?” Aja asked.
“The other guests might leave you dead.” The djinn’s eyes were fire pits. “The next course would be safer for them if they do.”
That explained it. The danger in this course didn’t come from the food but from betrayal.
“No!” The empress twined her arms around Aja. “Friends don’t let friends stay dead.”
Aja lowered the ladle, and she took the knife. She tapped its blunt side on the speckled cheese. “I don’t want to die, but I’d like to see this cheese bring someone back to life.”
The swordsman had saved a life by choosing the Orange of Health. Aja bet hoarding a piece of the Cheese of Life would be even better. However the Chef tried to kill them in the last course, Aja would be ready with the Cheese of Life. She only had to be sure she had the right one first.
“If you want to try…” The swordsman nodded to the red cheese. “…I’ll make certain you come back.”
“How courageous of you,” the lord said. “Giving permission to a girl to die.”
The swordsman lifted the red slice. “Your piece is still here.”
The lord pushed it away. “I’m too in love with my obligations.”
Solin swiped the bit of red out of the swordsman’s hand. Solin lifted the Cheese of Death to his face, to eat, to die. Aja saw he wished to take all the risk. She grabbed his hand. Her fingers pressed into his six-sided tattoo.
“No,” she said. “You tried the dragon first. It’s someone else’s turn.”
The other guest kept quiet. That someone else would have to be Aja.
Solin started overpowering her, bringing his hand with the cheese to his mouth. She moved faster, snatching the red cheese from the plate and biting off the narrow end. Gold foil crinkled on her teeth.
The gorgon cheese tasted more pleasant than she had expected, more chewy and more nutty. Its flavor of nutmeg was the warmth of dying fires and the heat left on the arms and chest after a hug. Aja was wealthy for having eaten the cheese. This was it. Never again would she taste something so rich.
Aja lay down on the carpet and cupped her hands over her belly. It seemed the right thing to do. She closed her eyes. The night breeze rolled over her in waves of chill. The stares of the other guests itched her skin.
Her heart pounded. Her jaw throbbed from clenching. Would there be pain? Waiting was already an agony. Hurry up, death.
A woman’s voice. “Getting the shakes just looking at her. Put a knife below her nose, see if it fogs with her breath.”
“No need for that.” The lord’s words. He had an eerie calm to his drawl. “She’s not dead yet.”
Worries slashed through Aja. What if the other cheese doesn’t bring me back to life? What if they don’t give me any after I die? The swordsman had promised, but the lord might try to stop him. If that happened, Solin could join in a battle to save her, with guests falling off the carpet to litter the streets.
Waiting was like lying on coals. Aja surged upright. The empress screamed a pure note. Janny yelped. Even the swordsman winced.
“Sorry,” Aja said.
The swordsman asked, “Do you feel at all dead?”
“I must’ve eaten the wrong cheese.” Aja dug the knife into the speckled wedge and excavated a square of yellow with black chunks.
A crutch pinned her hand against the platter. Solin said, “Don’t.”
“Life and death mixed together?” The lord licked his lips. “Sounds delicious.”
“Except not.” The swordsman frowned at the gorgon cheeses. “Die after having both, and I wouldn’t know which to give you.”
“If I eat both, I won’t die at all. Maybe.” Aja reached again for the plate.
The swordsman lifted it high above her head.
The lord sighed. “The young can’t wait for anything, not even death.”
Aja clenched her throat. “Changed my mind. I don’t want to—”
The pain started lower than her belly. It cut upward along her abdomen and sliced through her rib cage. Two giants might’ve well caught hold of her legs and pulled her apart. The sensation tore up her spine, into her skull.
Aja was wrenched out of her body.
Twelfth Course, Part II:
Death’s Caress
Aja gazed down at herself. The master of crutches was straightening her body. It looked so small. How had it ever held her? It had contorted for some reason. Pain, perhaps. The empress held Aja’s hand against her own breast, and a song flashed across Aja’s vision in waves of silver light, like moonlight reflecting off an invisible ocean.
The swordsman argued with the lord. They stabbed fingers toward her, then the cheeses. The outcome would decide the body’s fate, but Aja could not bring herself to care.
A velvety peace swathed her. It covered her with a comforting darkness.
The blackness absorbed her. The total absence was a freedom greater than wings. She hadn’t a body to worry about. What had she been afraid of? Never having a family? Of dying alone and hungry? It all seemed as petty as ants fighting over crumbs.
Miles and miles of nothingness rushed past. Years of travel raced by in a blink. She couldn’t say where she was headed, not that it mattered. Everything was right.
A star exploded ahead of her, and the blackness crumbled away into a pit of light. No, a cavern of light. Aja must have reached the cave west of the sunset, the entrance to the afterlife. A priest had told her seven trials awaited her in the caverns. Or had it been nine? Aja had not paid much attention. She hadn’t planned on dying.
The radiance within the cave melted her concern into carelessness. She sunbathed in bliss. The warmth of lying atop rooftops in midmorning. The light flowed into her. It hummed with a sound like countless voices calling her name in welcome.
She reached without arms. She opened herself to the light, ready to submerge herself. Her new adventure would begin in brilliance.
Then something pierced her belly. She was yanked backward, towed from the cave, dragged from eternity, reeled into the blackness. Stop! No, don’t, no! Her scream made no sound. Struggling did not slow her plunge.
Bitterness grew in her. She tasted it everywhere, in every part of her. The awfulness of it was a mold spreading from her tongue down her throat and throughout her body
.
The flavor contracted into one spot, one corner of her being. That taste, ew! She had a feeling it was the speckled cheese. The film of it coated her mouth, and if she had a mouth, she must have a body again. She had been locked back into life.
Squishy, smelly, noisy life.
“Yuck,” she said.
The voices of the other guests clanged and grated. Only the empress’s could be listened to.
“Aja, did you get to bathe in the light of creation?”
“No.” Aja covered her eyes. The squalor of the stars made her gag. Tears heated her face. “You bullies pulled me back before I could reach it.”
“Did I give her too much life cheese?” That sounded like the swordsman, surprisingly high-pitched for his size.
“We did only as you asked.” The rasping voice belonged to Solin.
“I know. I know,” Aja said.
She squinted out at the world. Her arm flopped around until she grasped the speckled cheese.
“So, I was right then.” While lifting it to show the guests, she broke off a morsel. “This is the Cheese of Life.”
“Then that’s the only one for me.” The lord accepted the cheese and sawed off a piece dotted with olives.
Aja took the cheese she had palmed and folded it into her robes. She knotted the fabric around the tidbit just like she had often done with a skirt to hide away food. If anyone died in the next course, the Cheese of Life would save them. “That cheese tastes—Ehhh!” Aja scraped her grimy tongue with her top teeth. “I need to rinse my mouth.”
Solin lifted the ladle of milk to her lips. “Fear no poison. It couldn’t kill you for long.”
Aja tasted a white coldness, a relief, a quiet moment of refreshing waves flowing over the tongue. She swallowed, and muscles in her throat squeezed, then relaxed. A whiff of ginger rose up into Aja’s nose. In her mouth remained only a cool peace.
“Aja.” Solin tipped his crutch toward the lord. “He wanted us to stuff more death in your mouth. He told us to kill you.”
“Not at all.” The lord did not whirl, but he suddenly was facing them. A bit of the Cheese of Life was poised halfway to his mouth. “I was only trying to make good your heroic sacrifice. These jealous peasants denied you that honor.”
“I forgive you,” Aja said. The milk was a calm coolness at her center. “You only thought someone else would die, if not me.”
“Only heroes deserve to die, and none more than you, Aja. Pass the ladle, we must have one last toast together.” The lord tossed a piece of cheese into his mouth. “May we all escape the doom of enlight….”
The lord dropped the ladle. He gripped his throat. The pristine calm of his face shattered in an eye-bulging, tongue-curling fright.
“The cheese,” Solin said, “he must’ve eaten death.”
Aja pointed to the gorgon cheese remaining on his plate. “He’s choking on the Cheese of Life.”
The lord hunched forward, silent but with tongue flailing. Stars behind him blacked out. Shadows flooded the city, and tendrils crawled up the towers. The buildings warped, curving toward the flying carpet like stone horns. Or fangs. A tearing, screeching doom fell toward Aja. The night sky twined around itself into spears of darkness. They would pierce her and everyone on the carpet. The spears couldn’t be seen in the bristling gloom, but they were coming.
His magic was terrible, and she sensed he was losing control. She couldn’t let the lord die, or they would all die with him.
“We have to save him.” She slapped him on the back.
“Don’t.” Solin pulled her away with a crutch. “One person has to die, that’s what he said. Better him than you.”
“But....” Aja glanced up at the nearing doom. The spears hissed closer. The towers reached with their pointed domes.
“It’s illusion.” Solin spoke into her ear. “That’s his magic.”
“Real enough.” Janny huddled, knees and elbows knocking together on the carpet.
“No one is dying tonight.” Aja tugged at Solin’s grip. She called to the other guests. “Save him.”
The swordsman made fists, then sat on them. The empress hugged herself. Janny trembled upright to stand before rocking onto her heels. She shook her head. Aja saw they wouldn’t do anything, and she was trapped in Solin’s arms.
Wrinkles spread from the lord’s eyes and down his cheeks. He aged in seconds. His skin sagged and discolored. A tattoo appeared on his brow in a black triangle. It looked like a death mark.
Aja shouted again. “He saved us with fire. We have to help him.”
Someone bounced past Aja, Janny of all people. She swung herself behind the lord. All the while she muttered, “You ought not, Janny. You ought to. Ought not. Ought to….”
Janny wrapped her arms around the lord. Her hands she kneaded together and pumped into his stomach. A bit of white flew by Aja.
The lord wheezed in a breath.
The night cleared and brightened. Stars winked into view. The towers straightened, and the city spread below them like an intricate carving.
The lord had fallen to his hands and knees. He pushed himself upright. A mask of beauty had returned to his face. He spoke to Janny.
“You despised me at first sight. I should’ve known one day you’d save my life.”
“Probably wrong to save a scorpion.” Janny straightened her dress. “But you did pass me my Apple of Youth.”
“You saved me from death.” The lord offered Janny the dropped ladle. He shook his head at the Cheese of Life. “And what’s worse, from irony.”
Solin moved between them and Aja to face her. He had a slice of cheese balanced in his hand. It was red.
“Oh no! You’re going to taste death, too?” Aja asked.
“Seems fair. Sent enough people that way.” Solin chewed on the cheese. After swallowing, he said, “I must’ve been wrong to stop you from helping the lord.”
He sounded more sure than she felt. “I know you only wanted to protect me.”
“But can Purity ever come from Strife?”
Aja didn’t know how to answer that. She cut off some of the speckled Cheese of Life. “I’ll bring you back.”
“If you think it right.” He lay down, holding the neck of a crutch in each hand.
The carpet below him banked around a palace dome where tiles of different colors overlaid each other in a pattern of flower petals. Windows whisked by. Aja glanced in a lighted room to see a girl by an oil lamp reading. Blue ribbons wove through her sleek hair. She looked up from her book, and their eyes met.
Aja and the carpet sped away. The girl in the window would’ve seen six people sitting among platters all flying through the night. What she would tell her friends tomorrow, Aja couldn’t guess.
Aja was holding some of the Cheese of Life. She slid on her knees to Solin, and she tucked the speckled piece into his mouth. The man was sick with some kind of sorrow, but he was good and deserved to live. They had to be close to the end of the Banquet. When everyone survived, it would be the Chef’s turn to choke on surprise.
Solin gasped back to life in a rattle of crutches. Sweat sheeted down his face. Some of the droplets may have even been tears.
Aja dabbed his cheeks with her sleeve. “It’s hard coming back, isn’t it?”
His wide pupils focused on her. “Did you journey through darkness?”
“And toward light.”
He clutched her hand, and his fingers blazed with the blood of dragons. “It cleansed me of Strife. For a moment, I was free. And I saw we were one. Deep down, everyone is Pure.”
Well, Aja supposed that must mean something to him. The journey to death and back had moved him. The cheeses had given him that experience. The Chef had made a meal that could end lives but also change them. Aja would do something so grand someday. Hopefully with fewer deceptions and servings of deadly pâté.
Aja crumbled off another piece of Cheese of Life for herself. She still had some hidden in her robes, but she wanted to see
how it tasted when she wasn’t being wrenched back to life.
It was like olive oil ladled over bread, moist and springy between her teeth. Her mouth stung from the saltiness. After she swallowed, an aftertaste of regret squeezed her stomach. Still, the Cheese of Life wasn’t so bad after all.
The carpet under her rippled when Solin heaved himself back to lie down, his arms outstretched with a crutch in each. He gazed at the night sky. “Now I see. Even if we don’t deserve forgiveness, we must seek it.”
Aja wasn’t certain if he still spoke to her. In a quiet voice, she asked, “Forgiveness for what?”
He started, coughed, and then focused on her for a moment before looking away. “I killed someone I shouldn’t have, a woman.”
“Why?” Aja wrung one of the carpet’s tassels between her hands.
“I was foolish. My friend was angry. We’re each to blame.”
Aja wanted to hear more, but Solin might need time to himself. It sounded like he could begin healing the wounds he kept inside. He had turned back to the stars. Their light faded to the east of the city. The nearing dawn tinted the night with a drowsy grey.
The carpet swung lower, whooshing beneath a bridge that crossed between two roof walkways. Once Aja had thought walking the streets at night was scary. She now skimmed over alleys and under arches and couldn’t help but grin.
She counted the guests, making certain they were all still there....four, five, and me too makes six. The djinn was a seventh, and she guided the carpet into a familiar warehouse. The sliding door was open, the same Aja had gone through at sunset to grab a few bites of the Midnight Banquet.
The carpet flattened itself on the floor. Its tassels stretched out, then rested still.
The lord stood. “All things must end with their beginning.”
“It is time,” the djinn said, “for the last course.”
Thirteenth Course:
DESSERT
The Chef came empty handed. “Tonight’s will be a Banquet like no other.”
The djinn had unlocked the door to the kitchen with her ornate key. She had returned with the Chef, neither carrying any food. Not so much as a muffin. Aja looked past them, waiting for golems lugging trays piled high with sweets. None came.
Magic Banquet Page 16
