Magic Banquet (15 page)

“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.”