Aja sprinted toward the flickering light beside the golem and the empress. A yellow flame danced from the lamp’s brass nozzle.
“Grab her,” the Chef shouted.
Aja felt heat rushing in from behind. She knew she was too late.
The djinn passed Aja and swept away the empress instead.
“No!” The Chef’s knife sliced the air. “The other one. Aja!”
Aja swung her hammer above the lamp. This close, she could admire the flame patterns etched into its brass. For a heartbeat, she hesitated. The lord had warned her not to free the djinn.
Her hammer crashed down anyway. They had little to lose, and Aja believed the djinn had kindness in her. She was a mother, after all.
The spiked head of the mallet crumpled the lamp. Oil spouted in a gout of fire. It landed burning on Aja’s arms and face. She squinted and kept beating the lamp to a lump of brass.
“Golem,” the Chef said, “crush the girl.”
The man of clay dropped the pliers and made a clapping motion with its arms. Aja knew she couldn’t step away in time. The golem moved too fast.
The djinn came faster, whooshing into Aja and carrying her to safety. Aja floated shoulder to shoulder with the swordsman and Old Janny. A warm breeze carried them not to the vault as the Chef had commanded but to the flat top of a crate. The djinn set them down. The swordsman laid out the empress, and Aja made her drink the last of the fox essence.
“Free at last,” the djinn said.
The djinn sifted out of sight, her gown and body blowing away like so much sand. Aja gulped, frightened that the djinn was dying somehow. Then Aja saw the shimmering heat mirage that remained and understood. The djinn had shed her human skin.
“We’re all free,” Aja said.
“Thanks to you, Aja.” The rippling air that was the djinn flowed around the guests smelling of desert flowers and morning sunlight. In a hissing blast, she left them and curdled her way toward the Chef. “Now I have a decade of servitude to repay.”
The Chef’s brows scaled up his bald pate in alarm. He gestured toward a dark corner, and shadows engulfed the room. The only light that remained was a ring around the vaporous djinn. Squalls of fire whirled outward from her. The darkness lapped them up and shriveled their light.
“No!” The djinn’s wind-song voice shrieked. “You must roast over a thousand burning coals.”
Blackness covered everything, constricting even her light. Aja didn’t want to believe the Chef’s magic could overpower the djinn’s fire. This was dreadful. Aja huddled in the soupy shadows. Soon there would be nothing left alight in the room, except a doorway where a candle floated. The one small flame was held by an embroidered glove.
“Trying to hide, my succulent suckling?” The lord lifted the candle, and the shadows sundered. Red light scathed across the room.
The guests could all see the Chef trundling away on his thick legs. Exposed, he bent forward to flee faster toward the spice room.
“You should know you can’t outrun your fears.” The lord reached with his free hand. His fingers stretched into black spears, into impossibly long fangs. His glove changed, became something living and huge.
His sleeve exploded in a dark river of scales. The serpentine colossus smashed through the room. At its end, a dragon’s head reared over the Chef. Its eyes fluoresced with a light that seared Aja’s vision with afterimages of green. The spikes of the dragon’s teeth curved outward and spurted with venom.
The Chef dove away into the shadows. Or he tried to. He was pushed back into view as if the darkness were a curtain or a wall he could no longer pass through.
The dragon snaked its way around the Chef, blocking his way out. He backed up, spit on his hands, regripped his knife, charged at the scaled flank, and roared.
“This is my kitchen.”
The knife shattered on the scales and broke into shards of light. They flashed green from the dragon’s eyes. The Chef crouched to pick up a few splinters. Aja didn’t know why he bothered. He should see it was hopeless. No metal splinters could stop djinn and dragon, and, yes, he let the bits of knife fall between his hands.
“Finish it, then.” The Chef spread his arms beneath the dragon’s toothy death. He glanced behind him at the nearing djinn.
She rushed closer in blaze of fury.
The Chef leaped aside. The hulking man scrambled with uncanny speed over a netted cage full of winged snakes, toward the doorway.
The dragon’s tail knocked him back to the center of the room.
“Finish it,” the Chef said again to the lord.
“You of all people,” the lord said, “should understand the joys of playing with your food.”
“She’ll burn me to nothing.” The Chef took one more dread-eyed look at the djinn, then jumped at the dragon. He gripped two fangs and pulled himself up into the toothy death. “My flesh cannot be wasted. Ahhhh!”
The dragon angled its head, and the Chef was eaten in one bite.
Thrills bubbled through Aja. She never would’ve guessed a towering figure like the Chef could be gone in a gulp, but dragons did have a knack for finality.
Darkness closed back over the room, and the tingling pleasure of Aja’s relief flattened and was ripped out. Aja couldn’t see the dragon anymore or hear its scales sliding or the crash of cages being shoved aside. She focused on the lord. He walked closer with the candle, dusting off the front of his coat. His nonchalance was reassuring.
His image distorted when the djinn flew in front of him. She spat sparks. “The Chef was mine to burn.”
“Cooking the Chef would’ve been poetic,” the lord said, “but consider this, my fiery delight. Why celebrate your freedom with vengeance? It has a bitter aftertaste.”
Having released the djinn, Aja felt responsible for her. Aja couldn’t let her start burning everyone. The djinn sounded like a furnace of anger.
“Starlight on Dunes,” Aja called out, “go find your son. He’ll be delighted to see you after so long.”
The djinn’s storm of heat turned calm. She made a crackling sound like a happy fire. She shimmered over to the phoenix’s cage, blasted through the stalagmites. The bird opened its prismatic wings, and flames licked behind each feather. It flew with the djinn toward a cavern wall. A secret word of magic opened a gateway, and they passed into a garden of galaxies.
Aja reached after her. “Goodbye.”
The gateway full of sparkling clouds closed.
The swordsman crouching beside Aja said, “Not one for long goodbyes, I guess, or any at all.”
The lord said, “Any farewell from a djinn that doesn’t end in flame is the height of politeness.”
Warmth spread through Aja’s chest. She fought against it. They still had to worry about...about what? The Banquet was over. The Chef and the djinn were gone. Sure, there were a few monsters in the cages below them, but the lion’s head of the chimera was making a sound like a rumbling purr.
It was over. Aja could let go.
Happiness swirled inside her as bright as anything glimpsed through the star gateway. How grand. How perfect. Aja was privileged to have met the djinn and everyone else at the Banquet.
The empress sat up against the swordsman’s supporting arm. She touched her tongue and shivered. It looked bruised. “This was stretched out,” she said, “so I should be able to sing longer now.”
The swordsman hoisted her down from the top of the cage. “Let’s get you back to the daylight.”
“I know the way.” Aja hopped down herself.
“It’s only right that you lead.” The lord flourished a bow to her. “Aja, the doughty dainty who saved the party.”
So it was that among a lord, a master of crutches, an old woman, a dashing swordsman, and the empress, barefoot Aja went first. Out of the kitchen’s swelter, free of the warehouse’s gloom, she smiled up at the sun.
Digestion, Final Part:
Cleansing the Palate
“It wounds me to do this.
” The lord twisted a button on his coat and popped it off. He handed it to Aja. “But you deserve it.”
The button had the weight of gold and bore a triangle design. Aja remembered spying the same shape tattooed across his brow, when he had been choking to death. It was his sigil. She feared she could guess now that he was the man they called the Lord of the Feast.
If that were true, then she had eaten beside the master of nightmares. He was why no one dared go outside at night. Thieves risked stealing in the daytime to avoid him and his servants. And he had given her a button.
She didn’t quite know what to say. “Ah, thank you?”
The lord looked older in the daylight. “If you ever have reason to be frightened at night, take out that button. Then shadows will know to leave you alone.”
Aja’s throat felt sticky and dry. She cupped the gift into her hand. “Do you always have a dragon up your sleeve?”
“If you can keep a secret, then, no.” He straightened his cuffs, and frayed silk dangled. “I couldn’t have summoned the nightmare until the Chef already imagined his own death. You scared him that much by smashing his lamp.”
“Oh.”
The lord looked past her, at a royal guard who escorted a baker’s cart. Wagon wheels clattered. Stacks of pita bread steamed with freshness.
“Perfect,” the lord said, “the Banquet is haunting my mouth. A good taste cannot be gotten rid of fast enough.”
More royal guards trod closer. Their height hid all of the empress but glimpses of her blue clothes. People passed by without throwing themselves onto the street to honor her. Some did stop to draw water from a well and watch her guards.
The swordsman marched among them. Instead of a weapon, he had the magic carpet slung over his shoulder. He had carried it out of the kitchen rolled up. It was still longer than the wagon. Aja loved how they had saved the Chef’s greatest treasure. Maybe the empress would even let Aja ride it again someday.
One royal guard leaned his pole axe in the crook of his arm to taste bread from the wagon. Then he offered another flatbread to the empress.
She waved the food away. “No, you must serve Aja first.”
The royal guard’s eyebrows twisted. He had to think Aja was at best a thief.
The swordsman set down the rug and took the bread from his fellow guard. He bowed before Aja, lifting the flatbread to her. “We all owe you a lifetime of thanks.”
Aja accepted the bread. White on the sides and golden at the center, it warmed her hands. She eased open her jaw for a bite.
Her teeth clicked closed when a pudgy arm was slung around her shoulders. Old Janny enfolded her in an embrace of plump warmth. “If you need any advice about boys, you just ask Ol’ Janny. They’re like pigs, you know. Delicious.”
Aja thanked her, glancing at the woman’s grey tangle of hair. Aja was sorry that Old Janny had lost her youth again.
Old Janny flicked a lock of her hair. “Don’t you worry none. Being old doesn’t seem so bad after being mostly dead.”
Aja broke off part of her bread and gave it to Old Janny. The flour dust felt like a blessing on Aja’s fingers.
Before Aja could taste any herself, the empress swung around Aja’s arm to hug her. The voice of the empress tickled the air with its melody. “You must tell me, Aja.”
“Tell you what?”
“What you want. A golden waterfall? A menagerie? The rainy season’s first rainbow? Ask, and I’ll get it for you.”
The wonder of it was that the empress could. Aja believed she could have most anything she wished. Flush with giddiness, Aja stared down and tried to think. Past her bread, she saw her dusty toes.
“A good pair of sandals,” Aja said, “and something important to do, walking in them.”
The empress pranced around her. “You’ll have them, but why walk when you can fly? You must have the magic carpet.”
The swordsman hefted the silver-embroidered rug. “Let me carry it for you.”
“I know all the enchantresses,” the empress said. “They’ll teach you how to fly it.”
Aja grinned and raised the bread toward her lips. Her stomach felt tender, but she would like to nibble something that smelled of such honest goodness.
Solin swung a ladle between her and the bread. The dipper brimmed with shining well water.
“I wish I could give you the plum,” he said. “Lost hold of it.”
Aja remembered the Plum of Beauty with a pang. She still thanked him for the water. It had a cold pureness, with a gritty aftertaste of home.
“Not that you need its magic.” Solin had wrapped linen strips around his hands, covering the six-sided tattoos. He swung around on his crutches.
“Are you leaving?” Aja asked.
“To find an old friend and ask him for forgiveness.” Solin looked back over his shoulder. “You see, he has one bad leg. Just like mine.”
“Did you, um, make them bad?”
“And only forgiveness can reverse the hex.”
Aja thought that would be amazing, if Solin could wash away a curse with an apology. Next time she saw him, he might even have two legs. Could he become more graceful?
Aja waved goodbye.
“One last toast.” The lord lifted a clay cup. “To the final Midnight Banquet, the best one. And to Aja.”
“To Aja!” Earthenware vessels clattered together, splashing the clearness of water. Even Solin stopped and raised a crutch.
The lord drank. Licking his lips, he threw his empty cup. It smashed against a building. “You all may come to my next party, if you dare.”
Aja’s eyes felt too big for her face. “Would it be anything like last night?”
“Far more exciting than that dull affair. And more perilous. You see, I’m getting married.”
Aja wouldn’t go. She would rather die, because that’s what would likely happen to her there anyway. Old Janny and the empress screamed, in terror or excitement or both at once. Too loud and too much. Aja ducked out of the crowd. Sitting against a wagon wheel, she tucked her knees against her chest and broke off a puffy piece of bread.
The owner of the cart kneeled beside her. “Would you like spicy hummus with that?”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’ve had all the seasoning I can hold.”
The bread was warm and soft in her mouth. It flaked and crumbled with each bite. The yeasty simplicity of it calmed her stomach. It tasted of stone ovens, fresh flour, and something more. A hint of cinnamon.
THE END
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Magic Banquet,
a tale told of the Lands of Loam.
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Magic Banquet Page 20
