The golem stood still.
Aja glanced into the bottle. Some of the oil remained. She started to recheck her fingers, her arms, her ears, when she heard the thump of the Chef’s step on the stair. She threw on her robe. Her joints popped and creaked. Peering around the screen, she was in time to see the first peek of the course.
From the kitchen stair, a tray ascended laden with a doughy treasure. The dumplings were each sculpted into a demon’s face with horns curving upward and mouth downward.
“The Taotie was a beast of jaws and appetite.” The Chef lofted the tray. “He ate and ate and ate until no other creatures remained in the land. Then he ate himself and found he tasted best.”
The dumplings were lowered, and the lord and Janny snatched two each. He nibbled while she devoured. The Chef raised the tray before Aja could reach. The outflow of aroma knocked her legs from beneath her. She collapsed on the pillows, vision fading in and out.
The Chef tented the fingers of one hand over his chest. “The meat of the Taotie is wrapped in its intestine and cooked in its own juices. I fold the tripe in a dumpling sculpted in his likeness. A due credit to the Taotie’s peerless zeal for eating.”
The tray descended. This time Aja could reach the dumplings. Hot, they burned her fingers, but she held on and shoved half the demon face into her mouth. Her teeth sank through the fluffy-cloud top and crunched on the dumpling’s golden underside. She tasted the meat between, and life roared through her.
Her loose teeth wiggled with every bite, but she chewed faster and faster. She swallowed as soon as she could. The dumpling stuck in her dry throat. She started to choke. No, she wouldn’t cough out the dumpling, not so much as a crumb.
Flailing, she found a cup filled with milk. A nutty vanilla washed down the dumpling. She crammed the rest into her mouth and chomped.
“The milk of crushed cashew is a delicacy fit for kings,” the Chef said. “But what you’re drinking is rarer still, empowered as it is with the essence of a nine-tailed fox.”
Of all the guests, only the lord paused long enough between bites to speak. “Fox essence?”
The Chef said, “If you must know, the fox’s saliva.”
The lord chuckled. “Then something from a fox is edible after all.”
“The fox essence shrinks food in the gut,” the Chef said, “allowing a man to eat his own body weight in food in one sitting.”
The lord raised his glass. On it, a blue-stenciled fox fanned its nine tails. “At last man triumphs over his nemesis, his own digestion.”
Aja alternated bites with swigs of nutty white. Food flowed into her. She finished the dumplings and felt empty as a dry well. She ate spring rolls brought by the golems, rice skins stuffed with sliced carrots, braised tofu, and soy sauce.
She shared a grin with Janny. The woman was eating as if her life depended on it. Janny had also come to the Banquet searching for something, her youth, and she had been tricked, along with Aja. For now they both could stop thinking of their pain and enjoy the magical meal together.
Aja and Janny, they could be friends. If their ages ever settled down to something close.
Chomping, gnashing, Aja bit her lip. She kept biting it while gobbling down sweet red bean cakes. With every scrape of her teeth, her lip swelled, and she chewed it more. She had always hated doing that. Tonight, it didn’t bother her. Had her blood always tasted so good? Its tangy ginger flavor reminded her of the Taotie dumplings. She sucked at the wound.
The dumplings had run out, and the Chef had returned to the kitchen. Aja still caught whiffs of that mesmerizing smell. Her nose hunted down the goodness. The aroma seemed stronger closer to the carpet. She threw her platter to the side, searching for scraps. Something smelled delicious beneath her. She raked the carpet. Nothing!
Licking the inside of her lip, she stiffened. Were the guests stealing glances at her? The swordsman’s mismatched gaze ran down her legs, then flicked away. He wiped sweat from his brow. Even the lord’s eyes lingered on her. Aja had wanted to be accepted, but now her skin crawled.
She sucked her lip between her teeth and sawed it back and forth. The flesh was soft, and biting clear through would be so easy. Her blood slicked her tongue. She tasted the dumpling again as well as the acrid sting of the salamander unguent she had spread as a balm on her lips.
Puffing out her cheeks, she shook her head. All the lamps in the ballroom seemed to flicker green. She had never felt this disgusted and hungry. Did I almost chew off my own lip? Perhaps only the oil from the jade bottle had stopped her.
“My candied rose,” the lord said, “you’re being more provocative than is fit for a girl of ninety.”
“I’m thirteen. Or I was.” Aja noticed Janny staring and licking her lips. “And what do you mean? What’s happening?”
“Your left foot.” The lord clenched his hands into fists, thumb jutting from between his other fingers like snaggle teeth. “You didn’t cover it with unguent.”
Aja glanced down and found the source of the dumpling smell. Her foot had aged from the dragonfruit’s magic to the appearance of camel jerky. Its aroma promised it would be more juicy, more tender. Its meat would melt on her tongue. Aja used to be able to stretch her foot into her mouth. Did she still have the flexibility?
Likely not. Too bad because she would like to lick her toes. Maybe just a nibble.
Her gaze wandered to a set of knives arranged on the table in a floral pattern. Each bronze blade curved like a scimitar. It would whisper through flesh. Bet it could hack through bone joints. It could free her foot.
Aja blinked. What was she thinking? She had to cover her foot with smelly grease before she did something awful, or someone else did.
She trembled under the constricting focus of the other guests. The swordsman had set down the empress to face Aja. The lord and Solin had risen to their feet, and Janny crawled closer on her hands and knees.
They surrounded her.
Seventh Course, Part II:
Savory
“Don’t worry, my delicacy. No one’s going to eat you.”
“It’s just that foot.” Solin ground the tips of his crutches into the carpet’s weave.
“It’s delicious,” the swordsman said. “I mean, distracting. I said ‘distracting,’ right?”
Aja reached for her jade bottle. “I’ll just—”
“Let me.” Janny swiped away the unguent. “Lie back and relax. They say that I have ‘singing’ hands.”
Aja dragged herself away, off the carpet and onto the chill of the tiles. “What’s that in your hand?”
“Why, only the oil rub.”
“Your other hand.”
Janny had one arm behind her back. A tic of pain contracted half her face and sharpened her brittle smile. She staggered to her feet and advanced on Aja.
Aja glanced to the table. One knife in the circle was missing. Someone had taken it. Her eyes whipped to Janny. “Get away from me!”
A bronze sickle flashed. Janny hacked the knife downward. Her face opened in toothy hunger much like the visage of the Taotie demon.
Solin’s crutch smacked the knife away before it could strike. It skidded off along the tiles, blade spinning.
Janny dropped the bottle to clutch her hand. “Ack! Why’d you do that to a poor, old young woman? Have to keep eating. It hurts so much, and she wouldn’t have felt anything, the blade was so sharp.”
Solin spider-walked on his crutches to Aja. “I’ll help you.”
He didn’t carry a jade bottle. He had spoken with a rope of saliva dangling from his teeth.
Aja stumbled behind the screen of koi fish. “Everyone, stay away!”
Her foot sweated a smell better than bacon fried in coconut oil, and Aja bowed over, her mouth yawning open as it neared her toes.
No! She pinched herself.
“Whap!” A dark palm smacked against the other side of the rice paper. The partition tipped over, and Janny bounded around in pursuit, chasing Aja bac
k onto the carpet.
“Janny, stop,” the swordsman said. He stood with his blade out, over the empress. She hadn’t been covered with unguent, but she didn’t smell like anything. The empress hadn’t eaten the dumplings.
Aja scuttled around the empty tray and reached for a jade bottle.
“Don’t worry, she’s old.” Janny pushed Aja off balance. “Won’t need that foot much longer anyway.”
Aja fell, flipping over a platter of red cakes and a cup of cashew milk. Both floated over her without spilling. Hot fingers clamped onto her foot. No, this couldn’t be happening. Aja and Janny could’ve almost been friends.
“Shame for it to go to waste.” Janny angled the foot toward her mouth.
“Stop!” Aja jerked her leg, trying to pull it from the younger woman’s grasp.
Beneath her plumpness, Janny had the strength of a farm girl. She wrenched the leg into position. “Toes fresh off the foot? Don’t mind if I—Oof!”
A hand with a six-sided tattoo gripped Janny below her breasts. Solin yanked her overhead, flipping her onto the carpet and into a chokehold with his crutch.
Janny started shivering and wailing. “Help! He’s hexing me. Oh, god farts! Even my earlobes hurt.”
Aja scooted backward into the table. She scrounged for a knife, found it, and shook it at the first guest to approach her.
It was the lord. He didn’t cringe at the blade or even seem to notice. His gloved hand with the sea-monster embroidery held out a bottle of jade. “My tenacious taffy, it would be a shame if you died so early in the evening. Of all of us, you have the least, but you fear losing it the most.”
Aja looked at the unguent in his grasp. She looked at him. Back at the bottle. She extended her hand, fingers shaking. Taking something from him was like reaching between the spring-loaded blades of a dog trap.
She swiped away the bottle. The lord lounged on the tabletop beside her. The other guests stayed away.
“Guess it’s my own fault,” she said. “For not covering this foot.”
“Not in the least, my dumpling. It’s the fault of Janny’s appetites and the Chef’s recipe. Never accept responsibility. To do so is to lose the boundlessness of youth.”
Aja pulled her leg onto the table’s interweaving pattern of flowers and moths. Over her foot she lifted the jade bottle—no, that was the bronze knife. What if I eat just one toe?
Gritting her teeth, she set down the blade. She shoved it out of reach.
Aja wouldn’t blame Janny and the others for trying to eat her. Not much anyway. The Chef was the one who had cooked such terrifyingly delicious dumplings. He served dishes without preparing his guests for the full dangers. The Chef must want someone to die.
The lord brushed off his pant leg as though there was a crumb on it. “We want people to crave us but not to carve us. Usually, the distinction is clearer.”
“Yes, I don’t want to be adopted into a stomach.”
The jade lid was fashioned to look as if a salamander’s tale plugged the bottle. She pulled and watched the greasy globs ooze out. That ick would ruin her foot’s scent. How wrong, like pouring mud over a wedding cake.
“Yuck!”
“If not as a meal,” the lord asked, “how would you prefer people see you?”
“Not old.” Aja spread the unguent between her toes. She had to hold in a whimper. “I’m hoping the phoenix will give me my body back. I want to be known as the woman who ate a phoenix.”
“It’s a sorry thing to be known by what you eat,” the lord said.
“Everyone knows the empress dines on three banquets a day.” Aja nodded to the prone girl.
“But that’s not what Ryn is renowned for.”
“That’s right, she has her jewelry.” Aja gazed at the turquoise sweep of bird amulet that lay unclasped beside the empress.
“I overindulge in dining and dress everyday, so you can believe me when I say it’s no way to live.”
He had to be teasing her. Aja worked the unguent over her heel.
“The empress isn’t in her best form,” the lord said. He watched the swordsman pushing on her chest, to help her breathe. “But she doesn’t inspire that sort of slavishness through what she eats or wears. It’s her flare.”
Aja greased her last toe, then unfolded a napkin, wiping her hands. Would the lord ever tell her something of use? “What does the empress do?”
“When her favorite bird died, she sang to it for three days. Not in mourning, but to resurrect with sound, to siren the soul back from the afterlife. Her voice made the court weep. And at the sunset of the third day, the bird came back to life.”
“Really?”
“Well,” the lord said, “a heartbroken servant may have snuck the dead bird from its cage and replaced it with a live one. It’s no less a triumph.”
“She had a servant to help her.”
“Servant, friend, stranger, they all would’ve done it after she astounded them with days of soliloquies.”
“But I don’t sing,” Aja said.
“Of course you will, except perhaps not with sound.”
The redness of the lord’s coat left with him. She sat alone on the black-and-white table.
Aja returned to her pillow seat to munch on a half-dozen bean cakes. They seemed plain and safe, anything to dull her hunger until the next course. Crumbs rained down. They floated over the carpet, and magic returned them to a corner of her plate. Aja emptied the crumbs onto her palm, then ate them, too. That fox-spit essence must’ve done something to her. Her stomach was a quivering emptiness as if she hadn’t eaten in a week.
She had time to think, and, yes, she had no urge to sing her way to greatness. Spending three days to bring a bird back to life was just silly.
Aja would be accepted for something that mattered. Whatever that was, she first had to live long enough for people to hear of it. She needed to survive the Banquet.
That’s it! Aja would live through the night, and she would make certain every other guest did, too. This would be the first Banquet where no one died. Not herself, not Solin, not even Janny—as tempting as that was after being chased by her knife. Aja would protect them, just like she would if they were related. Maybe by the last course they would see her in the same way.
Aja didn’t need to be adopted. She would make her own family of survivors.
A Midnight Banquet where everyone lives. Now that would be amazing, with courses like these.
The Chef had outsmarted her so far. He had overpowered her with rich flavors. His meals were dangerous, but they could be resisted. The lord had proven that with his self control. And they could be eaten safely. Solin had finished most of his chimera stew while staying human.
Aja thought back to when Old Janny had eaten the Apple of Youth. The Chef had not warned her against the seeds, but he had told her to eat its flesh with care. He had hinted at how dining on kraken would enliven them without saying that they would lose control, that the meat would make them drunk.
“The Chef’s not lying to us,” she said. “He’s just trying to trick us.”
No one paid attention. She was but a crone who no longer reeked of dumpling. But she could hope they would mind her. They would have to and soon. Two golems marched from the kitchen carrying a regal bird on a platter. Its every feather was a different color.
The Chef strode after the dish to introduce it, and Aja met his eye. He seemed to nod to her with his oily dome of a head as if in challenge.
I accept, she said to herself, our lives against your food.
Eighth Course:
PHOENIX ON ICE
SERVED WITH STARLIGHT YOGURT
“A breach in dining etiquette will kill you,” the Chef said. Peering downward as he always did from his height, his eyes appeared to shut. He turned his nearly closed eyes on Janny. “Some of you have approached the prior courses with irreverence.”
The Chef gestured to Aja, then the empress. Ryn lay so still that she looked less alive than the
bird entrée.
“Others have eaten heedlessly. I must warn you to dine on these later courses more seriously. As meals, they’re more astounding. As dangers, less forgiving.”
The swordsman asked, “The kraken was forgiving?”
“The magic in the phoenix is far more potent.” The Chef swept a hand before a rainbow bird resting on a mound of ice.
Feathers of mauve and cerulean fanned out in its tail. The ruffles of its breast were indigo and raspberry. Its head was tucked beneath wings the hues of burgundy and lime.
The bird looked whole, but Aja thought it had to be dead. That poor, beautiful animal. It shouldn’t have had to die. A barb of feeling stuck in Aja’s throat even as her gut and every other part of her tingled. Eating the bird would restore her to youth. Aja would regain her life, her future.
She would, if she was cautious. Aja leaned forward to listen to every word the Chef spoke.
“The phoenix must first be chilled with a banshee’s scream. Then I stew it for seven days. The cooking must be done at low temperature. Otherwise the phoenix will burst back to life and fly from the oven.”
The feathers glossed with lamp flames, but the bird also shimmered from within. Its hues rippled in patterns of dancing fire. Flickers ran along its swan neck and peacock-length tail. Great heat and life throbbed in that bird, caged by a thin layer of ice and death.
“I balance the phoenix’s immortal fire with century-old ice from a peak so high and cold its snow never melts.” The Chef cut into the phoenix with a crescent-shaped knife. “Salt from crocodile tears removes the taste of guilt. After stewing, the plucked bird has its feathers replaced.”
The blade severed the bird in half without so much as a sound. From the hollow of the phoenix’s breast, flames fluttered out. Flashes of orange and red beat over Solin and the other guests. One landed on Aja’s arm. She pulled back, then saw it was only a butterfly, trapped inside the bird and now free. Its wings swayed in an out with the gleam of silk. The butterfly tickled her. What a bright delight.
“From death comes life.” The Chef served the phoenix. On Aja’s plate he placed the bird’s curving neck, each feather a different grain of color. The Chef’s closed eyes held hers locked. “And from life comes death.”
Magic Banquet Page 10