Magic Banquet

by A. E. Marling

  The kitchen doorway flickered, but the hissing roar of cooking pots was gone. Only a murmur of bubbling. Aja could smell nothing but warehouse dust.

  “For the first time,” the Chef said, “all my guests have eaten with due diligence. Aja especially has the makings of a gourmand.”

  She glimpsed the glint of the Chef’s eyes before his low-lidded expression covered them again. He had accepted her. She’d helped achieve something remarkable, and he had singled her out for it.

  His breadboard of a hand gestured to the other guests. “Never have I served so many powerful men and women. My lord, the empress, a spellsword, a hexer, and an ambitious eater and drinker….” He pointed last to Janny. “All six guests have earned their dessert. I prepared a special treat.”

  A grin pinched open his eyes and mouth. His teeth looked small in so large a body.

  Aja tensed, and her fingernails dug into her palms. She didn’t trust his look. Maybe being singled out by the Chef wasn’t a good thing.

  “But everything’s been special.” The empress chewed on her pinkie and hid half her face with her hair. “What happens if you go further than extraordinary? Past amazing? Your ‘special treat’ must be another cook’s normal. Will it be a honey cake for each of us?”

  The Chef tilted onto his heels. “So you’re wise as well as musical. Yes, there’s no magic in this final course, except that of baking and sugar.”

  The guests traded looks of disbelief. Aja’s stomach still clenched, and by the way the empress nestled against the swordsman, she was also nervous.

  Aja asked, “Is there anything dangerous in the dessert?”

  The Chef’s face firmed. “Nothing that would harm a hungry child. I used only common recipes and ingredients that could be found in the better bakeries across the Lands of Loam. You may relax during this last course and eat whatever you please.”

  “That’s a relief,” the swordsman said. “Had my fill of not eating things.”

  The empress rolled up a corner of the rug. “Where have you hidden the dessert?”

  “Why, outside.” The Chef swept his hands toward the warehouse door. It was shut.

  The djinn illuminated the exit. She braced her fingers against the brass-shod planks, and a shimmer ran over the door. Light leaked from the chinks.

  Aja shuffled to her feet, ready for the door to be opened. The Chef must have hidden the dessert somewhere in the city, a grand pastry hunt.

  The swordsman set his feet in a runner’s stance. Janny clutched her hands together and chortled. Solin drummed his fingers against his crutches. The empress linked arms with Aja.

  “We’re afraid,” the empress said. “You and I. Me and my tummy. But we’re hungry, too, for dessert. Will you make certain none of us eats anything we shouldn’t?”

  “I will,” Aja said.

  The Chef had told them this course would be safe to eat. The danger might come from something besides the dessert, maybe some guardian monster, but what did Aja have to fear? She had come back from death. Her veins still flickered under her skin from the dragon she had eaten.

  The djinn flung the door open. Daylight streamed in.

  Aja shielded her eyes. Before she could see anything, she smelled it.

  Sugar breezed into the warehouse and filled it with warmth. The sweetness stole Aja’s tension. She breathed deeper than she ever had in her life. The scent was as heady as if she had stuck her nose into a basket of candy. The aroma carried a hundred flavors, each of them delicious. A whiff of chocolate, a tickling of peppermint, a welcome of cinnamon, fruity, flowery, and many others Aja could only guess.

  She did not want to guess. She needed to see and to gobble. Aja ran arm and arm with the empress outside.

  “Do you see it?” The empress gazed down the street, then up. “Is it on the roof? It smells huge!”

  On the city’s skyline, the minaret towers and palace domes were the same Aja had known her whole life. Clay-block buildings stacked atop each other, the walls reinforced with arches. Everything was familiar, yet something had changed. None of the morning colors seemed quite right.

  The air felt thick with sugar, almost crystalline. An eagerness crackled in Aja for the dessert she could not see. Where was it? She hopped to her tiptoes.

  The streets were empty. The sun crested the rooftops, and people should have been thumping, bumping, and shouting by then. She didn’t hear as much as a sea gull.

  “Where are all the people?” Aja asked.

  “They must be eating our dessert.” The empress pulled Aja forward.

  “Wait.” Aja peered at a whitewashed wall. The texture seemed too snowy, the color too consistent. She reached to touch the building.

  The painted clay flaked apart. Her fingers sank in. She pulled out a crumbly chunk. It didn’t feel like clay, more gooey. Didn’t smell like brick, more tasty. She licked it, and it was sweet.

  The Chef’s deep voice sounded behind them. “I made the homes of coconut-date bars. The palaces and temples are marzipan.”

  He waved to the skyline and its towers. Then he scooped a finger downward.

  “I paved the streets with white chocolate.”

  The swordsman stomped, and a flagstone shattered into milky fragments. He lifted one, bit it. “It’s good!”

  Aja could almost float on the sugar scent. “The entire city is dessert?”

  “You should’ve expected nothing less of me,” the Chef said.

  Aja walked to a planter and picked off bark from a palm tree. It was sweetmeat. She ate a syrupy crust of almonds with pistachio nuts at its center. “You—you must’ve used magic to make all this.”

  “A tasty alchemy,” the empress said.

  “A masterpiece.” The lord strode past them. His coat had darkened in the daylight to a dusky red. He stopped in front of a water well. Steam rose from within. “Is that coffee I smell?”

  “The prized Gargantuan Bean,” the Chef said, “granted extra verve by passing through the digestion of a terror bird.”

  “Just overly decadent enough.” The lord lifted a jar from the well and drank the hot coffee. He closed his eyes and sighed. “This is divinity fallen into the hands of man, and I thank you for it. Come, a round of praise for our host.”

  While the others cheered, Aja touched a glass pane. She licked her finger. So sweet! She shouldn’t break a window, but she had to know. And, yes, the pane burst into pieces of sugar crystal.

  “This is amazing.” Aja crunched the clear candy between her teeth. “Just amazing.”

  “I’m proud of your work,” the lord said to the Chef.

  “I savor your praise most of all, My Lord.” The Chef waved to the city. “Explore, eat. Each building contains a different dessert.”

  Aja hung back. It all seemed too inviting. Maybe she shouldn’t eat. She could keep her mouth closed and eyes open for danger, but no one could walk through a candy city without tasting anything.

  The door of the first home they came to was too soft to knock. The empress sang a greeting. No one answered.

  “I don’t think anyone actually lives here,” Aja said.

  They found the door locked, but that only gave them the excuse to eat through spongy boards of what tasted like carrot cheesecake. Inside they found furniture sculpted out of twisty cookies. Elephant-ear pastries hung on the wall where there might have been ornamental plates. Each treat tasted of the cool smokiness of cardamom spice and crunched with walnuts.

  The swordsman brushed crumbs from his chest. “Still feels a bit wrong. We’re eating someone’s house. Even if they aren’t here.”

  “Do you think they ever were?” Aja asked.

  “No.” The empress dashed outside toward the next building. “This city was made for us. I’d lick it all if I could!”

  They discovered a sleeping cot of woven licorice. On it sprawled a pile of gingered bananas slathered in syrup. The candied fruits chilled Aja’s mouth, and their spice lit up her tongue.

  Outside, Jan
ny and Solin were strolling down different streets. The lord had already left. Aja thought she had better keep the guests together, and she would as soon as she found out what had made the empress yip in delight. It was a vat filled with bread pudding. The empress dipped her toes in.

  “Ew!” Aja twirled a finger into the creamy whiteness and raisins. “I wanted to eat that.”

  “Me first.” The empress splatted her face into the vat.

  Aja searched courtyards and discovered garden pools full of coconut-cream custard and caraway pudding. A fountain pumped lemon syrup over a dome of almond cake. The swordsman held Aja as she leaned over the rim to grab a bite. They walked and ate a piece of every street. They had chocolate grins.

  The swordsman kicked open the honeycomb-reinforced doors of the city treasury. He, the empress, and Aja ate through chests of sesame squares. They uncovered a golden wealth of mango ices. Aja swallowed cold handfuls until her head hurt.

  “I’m eating myself rich.” She spoke with her mouth dripping. “Soon I’ll be a lord, too.”

  The lord wasn’t nearby. The three of them had wandered off. Aja didn’t know where the rest could be. Anything could happen to them. Not even the djinn was in sight.

  “We need to find the others,” Aja said. “It’s not safe to eat alone.”

  Thirteenth Course, Part II:

  Sweets, Assorted and Palatial

  The empress sang a note. Someone hooted in answer from a few streets away. The three traveled in and out of shadows cast by towers. They found Janny on the Boulevard of Scholars. Statues of wise men lined the thoroughfare, each a different hue, from orange to pink.

  “They’re all gelatos,” Janny said. She climbed to her tiptoes to kiss a mint-green statue on the lips. Her face came away the same color. “Help me eat them. They’re melting.”

  The robes of the statues had a sheen. Their pointing fingers dripped. Aja ran to one of the women scholars, The Mistress of the Opal Mind. The statue usually held a globe of glass with concentric spheres inside it, but today it was full of melon rounds. Rather than limestone, she was made of papaya ice treat. Instead of offerings of clay left by devotees, gingerbread men littered the base of the statue along with candied flowers. Aja only ate the hem of the scholar’s robes out of respect.

  “Enough of this dessert,” Aja said. “We need to find the others.”

  The empress sucked the blueberry-colored beads off an abacus. She scampered away from the statue and followed Aja.

  “Hoi!” A man called from a rooftop, waving a crutch.

  Their dragon blood gave the guests the power to jump up the wall. The second level of city stretched in a landscape of blocky buildings. Solin leaned out from an upper story.

  He tossed something. “Catch.”

  The swordsman closed his hands around it, and cinnamon sticks splayed. He was holding a kind of nest, with a seagull perched atop it and sculpted of rosewater cake, with sugary sour feathers. Aja and the empress investigated it with their fingers and tongues. The imitation bird even sat on a speckled egg of chocolate.

  “The rooftops are full of them.” Solin’s lips were crusted with honey. His chin sparkled with sugar crystals. “Strange, isn’t it? Why have birds?”

  “The Chef thought of everything.” Aja gazed over the expanse of rooftops. The distance rippled in the day’s rising heat. She might never find the lord. Maybe that was for the best.

  Just then a red butterfly flitted out from an arched stairway. Black eyespots blinked on its crimson wings.

  Aja took a step back. “That’s not made of candy.”

  “The lord sent it,” the empress said. “Time for a chasing game.”

  They followed the butterfly down the stair and through the glassblower district. Beads of melted syrup trickled down the windows. Aja and the rest entered the shadow of a palace. It was the nearby one with the dome. Aja wondered if the girl still read her book somewhere above. No, that was a silly thought. The palaces only looked alike. They weren’t the same.

  Passing beneath an arch of cantaloupe squares, the guests entered a vaulted hall. The butterfly landed on the lord’s shoulder, its hue matching his coat. He picked fruit from a fresco and broke off pieces of the wall’s marzipan. His appetite had already opened a window-sized hole in the palace.

  The swordsman asked, “Shouldn’t you start eating a building from the top?”

  “The danger makes nibbling the foundations all the more alluring,” the lord said. “Taste this.”

  The palace marzipan overcame Aja with almond sweetness. Only after swallowing could she appreciate the aftertaste of orange blossom.

  She had never been allowed in a palace. Now there was no one to tell her to get out. Mosaics of fruit ascended the walls in interlocking squares and waves. All six guests explored between the columns, gobbling everything that didn’t look like it would bring down the roof. Aja saw no sign of the Chef or the djinn.

  “You must see this.” The lord led them upstairs and through a doorway veiled in honey beads. “Have you ever witnessed such attention to detail?”

  He waved a hand toward a bed. A long cake lay atop it covered with pinkish sauce. The empress dipped a finger.

  “Oh! Oh! It’s peach.”

  “Peach caramel on chocolate soufflé,” the lord said, “but what is it shaped like?”

  Aja squinted at the soufflé, and a needle of pain pierced outward from her stomach. The dessert took up most of the length of the bed. It was broader about the midsection and higher on one end, especially above a pillow of powdered sugar.

  Aja covered her mouth. “It’s a person.”

  The ground was unsteady beneath her. She swayed in a gut-twisting mess. The palace wasn’t falling down. It only felt like it.

  “Er.” The swordsman’s chin protruded as he chewed his upper lip. “You mean, this was baked to look like a person or…um….”

  “Did the Chef transform people into dessert?” Aja remembered eating syrupy bananas on a cot. Had that been a human once?

  The lord dug his fingers into the head of the soufflé. Aja grabbed his elbow, trying to stop him, but the lord’s arm slithered through her grasp. He plucked out an eye-shaped chunk of chocolate and mashed it between his teeth. Caramel dribbled down his chin. He sucked the darkness off his finger.

  “No,” the lord said, smacking his lips. “This was never a person. The men and women of Jaraah were not transmogrified in their sleep into pound cakes and fondue. This city was not lost in a sugar apocalypse. The Chef only wanted you to fear so. He’s a genius at his craft.”

  Hardly reassured, Aja stumbled from the bedroom. She sprinted, despite her side stitch, up into the palace. Peeking into room after room, she searched for the girl glimpsed last night reading. How awful if she had been turned into a treat. Aja couldn’t stop looking.

  The scent of sugar cloyed her. She gagged on it. Each step on the chocolate floor now seemed to tremble with danger. A palace of dessert couldn’t be as stable as one of stone.

  She froze in front of a room full of toy-shaped pastries. On a pile of pillow cakes, a book of sugar lay open. Its pages were fused together. In front of the book, near blue ribbons of toffee—in the exact spot the girl had sat—lay a mound of honey wafers. They didn’t look like a person, but Aja could imagine a young woman’s body turning into the round sweets and then collapsing into a pile.

  Aja could believe it too well. A magical murder. A dessert corpse.

  “You should’ve expected nothing less of me.” The Chef’s words echoed in her head.

  Scraping her sticky nails down her face, Aja swung her head side to side. No, this couldn’t be real. The Chef mustn’t have cursed the entire city.

  The worst part was that even with her heart and stomach aching, Aja wanted to taste the girl’s remains. Just a single wafer. It would pop into Aja’s mouth and crunch into delicious crumbs.

  “Ah-jaaa!” The empress’s voice pierced the walls.

  Aja flinched, then ran afte
r the call. She spiraled downstairs to find the guests waiting for her. Striding straight to the lord, Aja gripped the lapels of his coat.

  “How do you know it’s not real?” Aja asked.

  Instead of answering he stepped past her. His clothing slipped through her grasp. She had no power to hold him.

  “Tell me.” Aja stood in front of him again. “This city was my home. You have to tell me.”

  “My little cupcake, no I do not.”

  The empress hugged Aja’s arm and pointed to the lord. She spoke in fluting tones. “They’re the same. Him and the Chef.”

  “The same person?” Aja blinked in bewilderment.

  “No,” the empress said, “their magic is the same. The Chef is angry jealous of Lord Tethiel’s strength. The lord came to the Banquet butterfly-dance happy, but now he’s afraid.”

  The embroidery on the lord’s coat changed. Designs of flowers bent and withered in the clawing flames of red stitching.

  “Think of the Chef as a wayward apprentice,” the lord said. “I wished to examine his work. He has exceeded my expectations to an inexcusable degree.”

  “Oh!” The empress tottered forward to squeeze his arm. “You’re afraid the Chef’s stronger than you.”

  “Why, aren’t you a presumptive little sugar drop.”

  Aja asked, “If this isn’t really my city, then how did the Chef make all this?”

  The lord’s expression didn’t change, but he grew fierce. The black of his pupils filled his eyes like spilled ink. “The Chef built this delicious city out of terror and the dying screams of guests from Banquets past.”

  The swordsman tugged the empress behind him. He squared his shoulders with the lord. No one stood between Aja and the lord’s gaze, and each of his words pinched her.

  “You’ve tasted the fruits of his power, and one of you will have to pay. Your death will give the Chef the magic to prepare another Banquet.”

  “But the Banquet’s over,” Aja said.

  “Is it?” The lord beckoned for her to walk out the palace archway. “Then try to leave.”