Magic Banquet
Authors: A.E. Marling
Tags: #dragons, #food, #disability, #diversity, #people of color
MAGIC BANQUET
by
A.E. Marling
Copyright © 2016 A.E. Marling
Smashwords Edition
Cover illustration by Julie Dillon
Interior illustration by Eva Soulu
Graphic design by Joshua Putz &
jeshart
Cartographer: Bartosz Milewski
Editor: Marty Halpern
First electronic publication: January 2016
ISBN:
9781311715593
First eBook Edition
~
Meet the humble scribe:
On Twitter:
@
AEMarling
Facebook:
AEMarling
and
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Statement
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Menu
:
JEWEL FROG AND OTHER APPETIZERS
SERVED WITH ELIXIR OF UNDERWORLD
POMEGRANATE
SERVED WITH FOX-BLESSED CASHEW MILK
A toast to my
taste testers:
Nannette, Lupe, Beth,
Carolyn, & Christie
And another to my
assistant chefs:
@VickieGames, @mikeycampling,
Jeff Fox, & Griffin Barber
First Course:
JEWEL FROG AND OTHER APPETIZERS
SERVED WITH ELIXIR OF UNDERWORLD
POMEGRANATE
The dark warehouse smelled of cinnamon and
magic. A warm scent. A welcoming scent. A sticky sweetness like
sesame candy fresh from the oven. The aroma tingled the back of the
tongue and stood hair on end. A dangerous scent. A forbidden scent.
It had the aftertaste of storm clouds.
Aja and her schoolmate followed their noses.
Passing through the twisty lanes and alleys of the sun-baked city,
she and he discovered a block of a building. The paint on its clay
bricks had faded to a near white. Aja saw she could climb its arch
designs onto the flat roof and look for a way in. She had snuck
into places like this before to spend the night. It would be
uncomfortable, but anything was better than sleeping on the
street.
She wouldn’t need to steal her way into this
warehouse. The brass door was open in invitation. Aja stopped
short. She hadn’t survived to the age of thirteen by being
reckless.
Her schoolmate also slowed up. Garid Grease
Breath clutched the doorway and peered inside. “Can’t see
anything.”
Aja asked, “Do you think it’s the
Banquet?”
“Someone’s just cooking dinner,” he
said.
“That’s not just any dinner.” The food smell
lifted Aja to her tiptoes and coaxed her inside. She had to lean
back against the pull.
“The Midnight Banquet isn’t real.” Garid
licked his lips and trembled.
“What else could smell like that?”
“Can’t go in. Mother would kill me, if she
got a chance.”
He didn’t say it, but they both knew it.
People whispered it. One guest of the Midnight Banquet never lived
to see the dawn. The Banquet always crept to a new secret place and
left behind a corpse. Killed by joy, or so Aja had heard.
She said, “Better go, if you want to outrun
the sunset.”
“You’re not going home?”
She didn’t have any home but the schoolhouse
cellar, or a mother to worry about her staying out late. Garid wore
leather sandals with bright buckles. Aja rubbed one bare foot over
the other. Her broken toenails scratched her. No one had given her
a pair of sandals. How great it would be if anyone cared for her
that much.
Aja might be poor, but rich foods would be
hers for the eating at the Midnight Banquet. She knew she could
fill herself with fabled delicacies. Then the other students
wouldn’t ignore her just because of old clothes or messy hair.
Someone would accept her.
She puffed out her chest. One guest died a
night. That meant all the others lived. Sometimes it paid to be
reckless. She took her first step into the warehouse.
Garid Grease Breath backed away from her and
the door and the darkness within. “I hope you eat yourself dead,
Roach Legs.”
He left. Aja was relieved. Garid wouldn’t
annoy her tonight, and she would make better friends.
She went in. The dimness flowed around
her.
Aja whirled at the sound of a woman’s voice.
“You’re here for the Banquet.”
“The Midnight Banquet?” Aja’s answer sounded
more like a question.
“It will start before then.” The woman
glowed, but she carried no candle or lamp. Her skin lit from within
like the wax paper of a festival lantern. Silk flowed around her in
a blue breeze. Her features were sharp, her brows the angle of two
pyramids. She beckoned Aja to follow.
Aja pattered after. “Who are you?”
The woman didn’t answer.
Aja guessed she hadn’t asked loud enough.
The cold stone thrilled her feet. Her heart skittered in her chest.
Over her shoulder, the outline of the warehouse door shrank in the
distance. She needed to remember its direction. Always had to know
the way out.
The woman’s legs stayed still as she moved.
She floated through the gloom.
Aja worked moisture into her throat. “What
are you?”
“Don’t be rude. Now take off your
clothes.”
“Huh?”
The woman waved her arm, and its light
revealed a copper tub full of water. “You must bathe. The Chef will
want his guests to smell the food, not your reek.”
Aja squinted at the blackness around them.
Men could be watching, but the shining woman hadn’t spoken in a
tone that could be refused. Aja undressed.
She bathed with her clay jewelry on. Taking
the amulets and bracelets off would give anyone the chance to steal
them. Some pieces glistened with green glaze, others blue. One was
a brass glint. They were the only brightness Aja owned.
She had no gemstones or gold like she had
seen earlier that day in the procession of the desert empress. The
plump-cheeked girl had floated down the street in a barge carried
by crowds. Men riding ostriches had guarded her with axes encrusted
with turquoise. She hadn’t looked any older than Aja.
Now Aja knew she would have something even
the empress didn’t. They said that guests at the Midnight Banquet
ate like gods.
The woman in the warehouse didn’t shine with
golden jewelry. She seemed to burn on the inside. Her candlelight
fingers pinched together to pick up the discarded clothes, holding
them at the corners. She crackled when she moved. The woman left
Aja in darkness.
Aja finished scrubbing herself. Clambering
out of the tub, she shivered. Her fingers rested in the depressions
between her ribs.
A noise startled her. Something thumped in
the distance, perhaps from a knife on a cutting board. “
Thunk!
Thunk!
”
Aja caught a lock of her damp hair, then
chewed the strands.
What if I’m the one? The corpse left behind
tonight.
She shouldn’t be here. She should go.
Before she could, the woman and her light
returned. She held out a gossamer robe of white, like the ones worn
by scribes from Oasis City.
“Where are my clothes?” Aja asked.
“I didn’t think you’d want them back.” The
woman parted her lips and blew out a long breath. It felt like a
desert gust.
Aja’s skin prickled with heat. She touched
her hair, found it dry.
The glowing woman dressed Aja without
looking at her. The linen soothed Aja’s skin. Her insides still
trembled.
“Could I leave before midnight?” Aja would
have to eat something first, even if only a few mouthfuls. “I mean,
would you let me go?”
“The Chef wouldn’t like it,” the woman said.
Then she smiled like a monster mimicking a human, all stretched
lips and teeth. “Don’t drink the elixir. The pomegranate in it will
bind you to stay through the night.”
“Thank you, Auntie.” Aja said it to be
polite. The woman was not related to her, or maybe to any
person.
Aja might know what the woman was. The
scholars had lectured about spirits of fire that lived in the
desert winds. These beings had no love for man, except for tricking
and tormenting. Capture a djinn, the wise told, and he might grant
a wish for his freedom. Or
she
might grant one.
Aja said, “You’re a djinn.”
“And you’re a walking bladder of water.” The
djinn’s voice sounded distant and aloof like a breeze over
rooftops. “I’ll lead you to the Chef’s first course.”
This Chef had to be very foolish to enslave
a djinn, or very powerful. Aja strained to see him or the nearby
meal. The air was rich with the flavor of apricots and legends.