Magic Banquet

by A. E. Marling

  Old Janny held her turbaned head. The swordsman slumped beside the empress, trying to stay upright.

  The djinn said, “The frog toxin complemented the truffle and heightened the visions.”

  Aja said, Help me. No words came out. Her rolling eyes turned from the lord to the swordsman.

  He swayed and spoke with a croak. “The Chef—he told us the frogs were safe.”

  “You people always hear what you want.” The djinn started clearing platters. “The Chef promised only that the frogs could be made safe. Not that they were.”

  The Chef had tricked them. The betrayal frothed and fizzed in Aja. She had to vomit. She couldn’t do more than gag. The hanging lamps spun away from her.

  “Bring your master.” The lord’s sleeves stretched into chomping maws. “He’ll cure them or gain a new outlook on digestion.”

  The djinn beckoned a plate to levitate after her. “The next entrée will cure them. Ash from the Tree of Life is used as a thickening agent.”

  Side Dish:

  AJA’S TALE

  My life got better once I met Hyena.

  He was a street cat. Everyone called him Hyena because he was the fiercest tabby you’d ever seen. His ear was notched, and one of his fangs had fallen out from a fight with a dog. His yowl could scare a camel.

  Hyena caught anything that moved. Lizards, rats, even songbirds. Sorry to say it, but it’s true. He could catch as many cockroaches as he wanted. Just sat all quiet, waited until they scuttled near enough. Then one pounce, and gone! That’s how I learned to nab them.

  Maybe I shouldn’t talk about roaches in a place with a silver-stitched rug. They are horrible to eat. All greasy, and their legs stick in your teeth. But eat enough of them, and you won’t starve. You won’t feel tired all the time. You can do things like stay awake in city school. Work carrying bricks for the builders.

  That’s how I earned the coin for my jewelry. I didn’t steal them. I never steal.

  I could have lots of times. Hyena taught me to be quiet and quick. When I caught a pair of tasty crickets, I shared one with Hyena.

  Then I was never alone. I had Hyena. He wasn’t all scratch and spit. His tummy was white and fluffy. His coat wasn’t an ugly brown with black spots but a sleek smoothness. I could pet him for hours. He always found the best crannies to sleep during the hottest hours of day. His purr rumbled against my chest, and I didn’t have to worry about anything.

  He slowed down over the years. Lost more of his teeth. Got stinkier. When he stopped being able to move too well, I brought him a cup of camel’s milk every night.

  Hyena was a good cat. I miss him most often when I wake up, and he’s not there.

  Second Course:

  CHIMERA STEW

  SERVED WITH WORLD’S END MEAD

  Heat trickled down Aja’s throat. It burned away her numbness, spreading outward from her chest in a blissful wave of awakening.

  A bowl was pressed to her lips, and a hand tilted back her head. She swallowed, tasting a broth of spice and vigor. She spluttered and gasped.

  A man held her. Not the swordsman, not the lord. The cripple. An amber amulet dangled from his neck against her cheek. His eyes were a similar hue, like honey but darkened by sorrow or anger.

  He did not return her gaze. Setting her down, he tucked his amulet back under his white tunic. He lifted himself onto his crutches. His hands were tattooed with geometric figures, six-sided marks. Aja couldn’t say what they meant.

  A shadow fell over him and her. The Chef leaned in and gripped her arm. His touch was like hot grease dripping on her flesh. Those same hands had torn the wings off faeries.

  “You were right to come to the Banquet.” The Chef pinched her arm as if testing the meat. “Your skin is too dry. You’re starved of experience. You must eat more of life.”

  When he let her go, an oily handprint remained on her arm. She rubbed it off with her skirt. Then she glanced at the swordsman dabbing the empress’s mouth with an embroidered napkin. Maybe Aja should’ve used one of those.

  The guest with the crutches stood, his bad leg dangling and bent to the side. The cripple rasped while he spoke to the Chef. “How’d you get ash from the Tree of Life?”

  The answer burst from the djinn. “I burned it.”

  A flame licked from her smiling lips. She set spoons beside bowls.

  “Not to worry,” the Chef said. “Only one branch of the Tree of Life was harvested. I wasted none of its ash.”

  The guest with crutches shook his head and muttered. “‘Then a man came to the garden, and his name was Strife.’”

  Aja’s brow wrinkled at that.

  The Chef brandished a spoon. It looked as small as a rat bone in his hand. “Always eat mindfully. Some call it dining etiquette. I call it ritual.”

  Aja found her spoon. She picked it up by the wide end. She had never had the chance to use one, but spoons seemed close enough to a well’s water ladle.

  The Chef swept his spoon over the bowls and the carpet. “Each entrée must be eaten with care and respect. You’ll find no dishes greater in all the lands.”

  The silver embroidery in the carpet shifted and snaked into new patterns. Now a string of mountains wove beneath Aja. She pulled in her feet to see a newly grown glittering pine forest.

  “They’re beautiful,” Aja said. “So beautiful.”

  She slid her pillow over the carpet’s mountain range. Moving just herself and her bowl was exhausting. Her arms and legs shook. When she spilled a few drops of stew, they floated back up to dive into her bowl.

  “Did you see that?” Aja asked the empress. “The carpet transformed.”

  “Mmhmmhmm.” The empress made an agreeing noise between sips and swallows of stew.

  The Chef was still speaking. “…in every land you’ll find a chimera. A combination of all manner of beasts, from dog to dragon. They have but one thing in common, balance.”

  The empress hadn’t glanced up. Maybe she hadn’t heard Aja, or seen her. The empress might’ve just made a yummy noise for the stew. Aja was afraid she had to do something or she would never really be friends with the empress.

  “Look,” Aja jangled her glazed bracelets. “I think the orange is the prettiest. What do you think?”

  “So good,” the empress said, trying another spoonful of stew. She hadn’t noticed Aja or her clay bracelets. And why would the empress? She would have gold ones.

  Her face hot, Aja moved to the guest with the crutches. He had saved her with the stew broth. Maybe he would talk with her. If only the Chef would shut his trap.

  “I seek balance in my cooking,” the Chef said, “and you must find it in your eating. This is a stew of one animal. Do not eat too much of any variety of its meat, especially if you have an affinity for it.”

  The swordsman frowned at his bowl. “What does that mean?”

  “Your pardon, I must prepare the next course.” The Chef thumped down the stairs toward the fires of the kitchen. “Rapturous dining to everyone.”

  Aja glanced at the guest with the crutches beside her. She tapped her fingers over two of her bracelets, pink and orange. “I wanted to thank you for the stew. For your help, I mean.”

  He nodded, laying his crutches between them. He hadn’t glanced up from his bowl.

  No one seemed interested. People never wanted to talk to Aja on the streets. But she was as much a guest here as any. She would eat the same stew. Then they’d have something to speak about.

  The stew smelled exciting. She dipped her spoon, and a morsel of meat seemed to swim into it. Tasting carried her far from the Banquet. Another place, another being. She was a snake sidewinding over the desert. The sands kissed her with heat. Her flexible body skimmed over the hot surface.

  Aja swallowed away the vision. Her shoulders shivered. Had that been an aftershock of the oracle truffle? For a moment, she had been a snake. Chills slithered over her.

  She hated snakes. An asp bit her once, and her leg had swollen to
the size of a gourd. Strangers had carried her in a wheelbarrow to a free hospital.

  In her spoon glistened two pieces of pale meat. More snake. She fished in the stew for something darker but always came up with serpent.

  “Does the snake want me to eat it?” Aja asked.

  None of the guests replied. They closed their eyes to savor the stew. A few spoke amongst themselves. Aja supposed she would have to eat more before they’d accept her.

  Her spoon caught meat with a golden hue, along with only a sliver of snake. She ate them both. The taste pulled her into another vision. A warmth of the sun spread over her back. The green and dry scent of the savannah filled her nostrils as she loped after a zebra. She was a lioness. Dust plumed from her powerful footfalls. She leaped, claws extended, but the zebra pivoted in a flash of black and white. It would get away.

  Her tail lashed out and bit the zebra. Not a proud lion’s tail but the speckled brown length of an asp. I’m a monster. She bore down on the zebra with her two sets of fangs. Thrills of conquest raced through her. And I’m strong.

  She shuddered back to reality. Her human leg throbbed, the left one, the one the asp had bitten long ago. She massaged below the knee. Her fingers touched a coldness. Two diamond-shaped scales appeared on her ankle, where the fangs had once pierced her. She looked away. The oracle truffle had to be still making her see things.

  Her eyes fell on the crippled leg of the guest next to her. The skin of that limb had withered to leather, and it clung to the bone. The shrunken foot was contorted backward in a pose of agony. Aja winced, then tried to hide it by eating another spoonful of stew.

  For an instant, she was again a snake. Her skin tingled with coolness. She gulped, and the vision passed.

  The cripple hid his bad leg with a pillow. He held his palms up, tattoos downward. The pose looked awkward to Aja, but he maintained it even when picking bits of stew with his spoon. He held it in a fist, like he was about to stab someone. Aja had to try twice before she could speak to him.

  “What do they mean?” Aja kept her voice low. “Your tattoos.”

  He pressed his knuckles into the flesh of his good leg. “Can’t be proud of them. I cover them most days, but she wanted my hands clear for the Banquet.”

  He nodded at the djinn. She was slipping a weird helmet over her red hair. The metal cap had silvery wings. Would it fly off her head?

  Aja had a secret to tell him. “She’s a djinn, you know.”

  His own grey-flecked hair reached long enough to curtain his face. He ate out of sight. She liked how he did not slurp. Her father would have been about his age.

  “I’m Aja,” she said to fight back the silence.

  How she wished he would speak with her. Then it would be like Aja belonged. Families talked while they ate. Anyone peeping into the warehouse might guess that the cripple was the father. Old Janny would be the mother. Aja and the empress were sisters, of course, and the swordsman, their older brother. The lord, he could be the uncle no one liked.

  Too bad the warehouse’s windows were all shuttered. No one would see Aja with her maybe-family, like she had watched so many others through grates and glass. Spying wasn’t like stealing. It didn’t hurt anyone.

  The cripple who wasn’t her father said, “I was named Solin.”

  Aja took another spoonful, tasted snake. She spat it out. Then all the guests turned on her with You-Don’t-Belong faces. Fine. No more spitting.

  Her conversation with Solin would die if she didn’t keep at it. “Can I see your tattoos? I promise to like them.”

  “Tattoos!” The empress hopped over her stew bowl. She spun on one foot, tipped, and straightened her balance. “Who has tattoos?”

  Her voice rang with such eager spirit that Aja had to answer. “Solin does, on the backs of his hands.”

  “I love tattoos. They’re shade that never goes away.” The empress grabbed his hand and tried to turn it over to see.

  Solin snapped his arm away. The empress teetered backward, hands swinging over her head in the beginning of a fall.

  He bounded up on one leg and a crutch, catching the empress before she landed in stew. He was no cripple. Aja didn’t think she ever moved so fast, even with two legs. With Solin’s hand on the empress’s shoulder, his six-sided tattoo stood out for all to see. It looked like a honeycomb filled with black.

  Six sides. Six pillows. Six guests. By tomorrow, there would only be five.

  Stew spluttered from the swordsman’s mouth. The liquid arced back into the rim of the saucer below his bowl. A spoon flipped from his hand into darkness.

  The swordsman shouldn’t have spit. He had just given Aja a funny look for doing the same thing. She could only guess the sight of the tattoo had shocked him that much.

  He yanked his sword over his shoulder. “That’s the mark of—Stop, let go of her.”

  Solin released the empress and kicked his second crutch into his hand. Brass-shod wood poles scraped on the floor as he turned to face the drawn scimitar.

  The swordsman stepped in front of the empress. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Did he take anything from you?”

  “He wouldn’t.” The empress skirted around the swordsman and said, “He’s kind, and he’d make a great dancer. Solin, won’t you dance with me?”

  It might not be polite to ask a man on crutches to dance. Or to point at him with the curving razor of a scimitar. Aja lifted her hand to try to get them to stop, but she drew it back, touching her lips.

  “Don’t feel sorry for him,” the swordsman said. “He probably ruined his own leg. He’s a hexer.”

  Solin said nothing to deny it.

  Aja’s eyes widened. She had heard of hexers, evil men from a distant land. To think that she might’ve eaten a meal beside one and never known.

  Old Janny cursed under her breath. The lord didn’t look surprised.

  Solin crouched on one leg, crutches splayed ahead of him like the pose of an insect ready to spring.

  “Ryn,” the swordsman said, “this is going to get messy. Leave with Janny.”

  The empress tugged on the swordsman’s arm. She said, “Don’t.”

  Aja had to stop the fight. It was like seeing her father arguing with her brother. She only had a spoon, and the men had weapons. She couldn’t help. Maybe she shouldn’t. Solin had saved her, but he was a hexer. An itchiness zigzagged up from her ankle, over her belly, down arms, to blister her fingers. The spoon fell from her hand.

  The swordsman lunged.

  Three notes of song exploded from beneath the empress’s veil. The first stole all the room’s air. Aja could not breathe. The second sound leapt out of the first, ascending with the brilliance of droplets thrown into the sunshine. The singing made the scimitar seem a flimsy, pointless thing. What good could a weapon ever do? The third sound jolted the guests back to life.

  The swordsman blinked at the empress then lowered his blade. “You make a strong argument.”

  The empress had stopped them with a song. Aja had to be her friend.

  “If you hurt Solin,” the empress said, “I’ll be too upset to eat. The Banquet would be dead!”

  The swordsman clenched his weapon with both hands, one on the dull edge of the scimitar. “The hexer came here to kill you. He followed us, I think.”

  Aja glanced at Solin. Could it be true? Her itching arms drove her to scratch. Her fingers felt numb and slippery.

  Someone had pulled gloves over her hands without her noticing. How had that happened? The fabric was strange. Its pleats almost looked like scales. A dotted brown pattern stretched from her nails to her knuckles. Aja had never seen gloves that only covered the fingers before. Each fingertip bulged to the sides, too much like an asp’s head.

  Someone shrieked.

  The empress pranced toward Aja. “No fair, why do you get beautiful snake fingers?”

  Aja lifted her arms. The tips of her serpentine fingers split. They opened into f
anged mouths. She had ten snakes attached to her hands. They coiled to gaze back at her with golden eyes. Her thumb flicked out a forked tongue.

  Second Course, Part II:

  Transformations

  Aja’s fingers had never moved from side to side before. They bent in all the wrong ways, like Solin’s leg. Her scaly, twisty fingers—How awful! She had to be rid of them. She shook her hands, but that only made her snake fingers hiss.

  “You did this to her, Hexer?” The swordsman’s eyes whipped forward and back. One of his pupils was black, the other brown. The stew hadn’t changed them. He had walked in with a mismatched pair. He looked on Aja with a scrunched and sour expression.

  I am hideous. She thrust her hands to the side, not wanting to bite herself. Her fingers twined about each other with the scraping sound of scale on scale.

  “I’ve done worse,” Solin said, leaning on a crutch, “but not this time. Not to her. Not to you.”

  “What?” The swordsman touched his face. A golden stubble erupted from his chin. His jaw retracted, and his ears cupped into furry cones. His nose flattened and turned pink. Only his eyes stayed the same, black and brown, catlike and striking.

  The empress swung around his arm and reached to touch his whiskers. “You’re the handsomest lion ever.”

  He juggled his sword between his two paws, then let it drop. He stared at his finger pads. From the waist down, he still looked human. After swatting himself around his neck, the lionman said, “No mane? I don’t even rate a mane?”

  “Oh no!” The empress lifted her hands to her veil. Feathers spread from her fingers in fans of blue. “Are you a lioness?”

  Old Janny muttered something about him being a fit young lion. Her tone sharpened to alarm when her feet changed to hooves. Her sandals fell off. The back of her skirt bulged—Aja jerked her gaze away but had to return for a look. Nothing scarier lifted from the paisley skirt than a goat’s tail. Old Janny reeled about on four shaggy legs with cloven feet.