Magic Banquet (16 page)

“Not water,” the empress said. “This music
is from leaf, tree, and bug.”

A shushing, a creaking, a croaking, a
humming and clicking, the night sounds made Aja itch. What little
starlight this sky had was obscured by branches. The air felt like
hot soup.

“Where are we?” Aja asked.

“Some jungle.” The swordsman held the
empress from leaning too far over the side. The carpet wove between
trunks and cut through vines.

The empress’s voice rang out. “A jungle, at
last! Let’s find new birds.”

The djinn turned back with a smile full of
firestorm. “This will be a bird hunt.”

Ferns exploded ahead of them. The forest
opened. The carpet glided through overgrown ruins. Stone blocks
shone white in moonlight. A statue’s face gazed out from a black
cage of roots.

The carpet stopped and settled on a road
paved with stones and moss. The djinn drifted away, lifting the
ornate key from her necklace. The guests stayed on the carpet,
except for Aja. She followed the djinn and her key. At last Aja
would see what it opened. She crept into a temple full of shadows.
A hooting screech made her jump, but the sound came from the
distance.
Nothing to worry about.

The djinn lit her way down a crumbling
stairway. At its greatest depths, a doorway was filled with rubble.
She fit the key between two boulders and turned.

Aja giggled. What could the djinn be
thinking? There was no lock for the key in the loose stones, not
even—

A door opened in a rush of oven heat. The
Chef strode out without glancing at the djinn.

Aja backed out of his way. “How did
you….”

“All ways down lead to my kitchen.” The Chef
handed her a bronze stake, a skewer.

On the walk back to the carpet, Aja saw the
key once again around the djinn’s neck. Outside the temple, each
guest received a skewer. The empress dropped hers. The swordsman
asked, “What’s going on these?”

“You should always be prepared to kill the
animals you eat,” the Chef said. “Doing so brings a greater respect
for the meat.”

The swordsman made a stabbing motion toward
the tree line. “So, we’re to bring back the first bird we find? A
bit dark for a hunt, isn’t it.”

“Finding the next course won’t be the
challenge.”

Something in the Chef’s tone made the jungle
seem to lean in on all sides. The blind blackness of it choked Aja.
She wasn’t the only one feeling the change. The empress backed
against the swordsman. He handed his skewer to Janny and drew his
bigger weapon.

“These birds,” the Chef said, “are hunting
you.”

Ninth Course:

TERROR BIRD, DEEP FRIED,

SERVED WITH SPICED CHOCOLATE

The jungle boomed.

The guests startled at the sound, hopping up
from the carpet. Aja backed away from them to press herself against
the damp coldness of the temple ruins, peering into the reaching
shadows of the surrounding trees. What had made that blast? It
sounded like a bull’s snort mixed with thunder. Again and again it
boomed.

“That’s no songbird,” the swordsman
said.

“It’s a soul of an evil man.” Solin pointed
with a bronze-shod crutch toward the leafy gloom. “Reincarnated as
punishment. Into a hulk of feathers and a skull-crushing beak. This
is my land.”

The empress huddled behind her guard. “I’ve
always wanted to ride a terror bird,” she said. “Until now.”

The swordsman turned to Solin. “Have you
hunted them before?”

“There are brave warriors and there are
fools. Neither hunt the terror bird.”

Aja twitched when she saw something in the
corner of her eye light up. The djinn floated closer. She held out
an anaconda—no—a dead vine.

“Take this,” the djinn said. “And try not to
let a bird pull out your innards. Humans are full of slimy lumps no
one wants to see.”

Aja gripped the end of the vine. She wasn’t
sure what the djinn wanted her to do with it. Then the top crackled
with fire, and Aja held a torch.

She turned to thank the djinn, but she
disappeared with the Chef into the temple. His voice echoed from
the ruins. “We’ll return once you’ve downed your bird.”

“Aja.” The swordsman beckoned her with a
blade emblazoned with gold hieroglyphs. “We’ll need your light in
front.”

She had to hope the shadows cast by the
torch hid the shaking of her legs. Aja shuffled between the
swordsman and Solin toward the dark place where they had heard the
booming. The other guests followed close, with Janny clutching two
skewers and muttering.

“First childbirth, and now this. How’ll my
heart take it?”

A cracking noise in front of them sounded
like a small tree breaking.

“Was that one?” Aja asked Solin. “One of the
birds.”

Solin hacked a path with a crutch into the
undergrowth.

Aja pulled a half-broken branch down from
eye level. “You didn’t grow up in the jungle, did you?”

“Not much chance of that.”

“You told us about some city.”

“A city of honey and Purity. Won’t be
welcomed back, unless....” He glanced to the empress.

The wall of ferns and twigs opened into a
cavern of trees. Long limbs like the legs of giant ostriches slid
out of the blackness. They turned into tree trunks and hanging
roots when illuminated. Insects crawled and itched their way up
Aja’s ankles. She reached to scratch them off but couldn’t find any
on her skin. There was nothing, only an awful feeling.

The guests found a mound of droppings. It
stank like vinegar. Whole bananas and apples were undigested in the
heap.

“That poop is as big as me,” Aja said. Then
she wished she had kept quiet.

“There!” Solin pointed with a crutch.

Aja swung the torch that way and saw
feathers. Blood red, vengeful yellow, and ice blue, a colorful
giant sprawled between the trees. Its neck twisted at an unnatural
angle. A beak hooked at the end in a cruel spike. The terror bird’s
mouth was open, a nose-stinging fluid leaking out. Its purple
tongue lay in the dirt. It did not move.

“Wha-what killed that?” the swordsman
asked.

“Huh,” Solin said. He squinted at the
corpse.

They crept forward. The terror bird was
larger than huge. Those stubby wings were like an ostrich’s, but
the dead bird’s neck was thicker, its beak broad as an axe. No, Aja
could see this was no ostrich. Standing, the terror bird must’ve
been closer to a giraffe.

Big enough to swallow her whole.

The swordsman said, “Guess the bird we heard
left this one for dead.”

“Doubt it.” Solin eyed the trees looming
around them.

“Well, we have our bird,” the swordsman
said. “No fights are the best fights.”

“I feel so sorry for him.” The empress
walked forward, hand reaching out toward the crimson fan of
wing.

Solin said, “Wait—”

“He’s a king of birds,” the empress said.
“He should’ve held court over flamingos and—”

“It’s a trick!” Solin hooked a crutch under
her shoulder and pulled her back.

The dead bird’s eye popped open. Its bent
neck straightened, beak swiping down to close with a
“Crack!”
The empress’s shawl was torn off, caught on the
spike.

Aja reeled back, lost hold of the torch, and
it dropped.
Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!
The flame sputtered but
stayed lit. Aja fell to her knees, scrounging to pick it up.

A thumping sound and a snap of feathers. The
swordsman was thrown down in front of her. He rolled to his feet in
a sweep of scimitar. Gazing past Aja, he bellowed.

“Behind!”

Trees ambushed them. One trunk snapped down
into the light and became the neck of a terror bird. The plumage of
this one was grey and brown, drab and invisible in the jungle. Its
black beak engulfed the lord and his glitter of embroidery.

Those crimson pants kicked as they were
dragged into the air. The terror bird tossed back its head. It made
a gagging sound as its throat bulged in a jagged puff of feathers.
The plumage flattened after the bird swallowed.

The lord was gone.

Aja didn’t understand what she had seen. She
didn’t want to. Someone killed, eaten alive at dinner. It was
awful, even if it had happened to the lord. No time to say goodbye.
Not even enough to be sick.

Scaly stilt legs swung closer. A three-toed
foot lifted with knife talons. Aja bared her torch, both arms
shaking.

The empress screamed in a shock wave of
discord. The force of it sounded like a troop of women pitching
their voices against each other, notes clashing and exploding.

The bird legs wobbled back. Beaks clacked in
the shadows

In the moment of reprieve, the swordsman
charged with his blade on high. He drove one bird off with sweeps
of bronze. The feathers of another ruffled overhead, and its leg
lifted.

“It’ll kick him,” someone shouted. Maybe Aja
had.

Everything was a swirl of sticky-hot
dimness. She couldn’t let that foot pummel the swordsman and rake
him apart with talons. She ran at the terror bird with her torch.
Her stomach tried to race the other direction, squirming against
her side.

Janny was nearby, stabbing with her skewers.
Tears streamed down her face as she babbled. “He’s too handsome to
die. Too handsome to—”

Aja beat at the bird. Her flaming stick
thudded against feathers. “Die! Die forever!”

A roaring screech came from above. The
terror bird set its foot back. A wing lashed out at Aja, hurling
her into a whirl of vines and blackness. She knew she had to keep
hold of the torch.
Hold on!
She must’ve hit the ground.
That’s where she was lying. By some miracle or magic, the flame
stayed alight.

She stood in the stench of burnt feathers.
Solin loped past her on his crutches. She turned to see the terror
bird that had played dead. A frill of hatred-orange feathers jutted
out the back of its head as it opened its beak to eat her.

She could not unlock her jaw to scream.

A crutch smacked the bird’s head. It reared,
angling the spike of its beak to impale Solin. He opened his mouth,
but not to cry out. A steam of red power wafted from between his
teeth. Magic, he was spitting magic.

“Leg for a leg.”

A two-headed snake erupted from Solin’s
throat. The translucent fangs of half the serpent embedded into his
good leg. The other side of the snake struck the terror bird. The
serpent squeezed its two throats to pump red venom. The magical
snake shrank as it shot its power into the man and the bird.

The blue scales of the bird’s leg sloughed
off. Smoke seethed from the limb, smelling of death. The bird
teetered, fought with its wings for balance. Aja thought it had
been hexed, by Solin.

That must be why they feared a hexer’s
magic.

Solin clopped forward on his crutches. Both
his withered legs dangled. Digging one crutch into the ground, he
spun and stabbed the other into the bird’s knee.

The terror bird toppled. It made a warbling
roar.

Before the bird could rise, the swordsman
leaped on it with an arcing razor. He landed blade first on the
bird’s neck. The roar cut off.

Booms of outrage sounded from behind. More
birds shook the ground. Leaves and bugs rained on the guests, and
the empress fell on her bottom.

Aja braced herself to rush in to save her.
Aja’s legs protested, muscles seizing. The birds would kill her.
She didn’t even know how many there were.

Shadows parted beside her, and a man in a
red coat stepped out. His gloves glimmered with dragons and sea
monsters. Hold up, she had seen the lord been eaten. A person who
looked just like him grabbed her torch. He touched the flame to his
lips with the panache of a fire breather. Except this was no street
performance. The lord spat an inferno.

A wall of fire surged between the empress
and the terror birds. Flames the hue of scarlet satin romped
through the jungle. Fangs and claws of fire scraped at the trees,
and an outline of a dragon coiled in the blaze. It enclosed her and
the other guests along with the decapitated bird. The feathered
monster lay still and truly dead this time. The booming of the
other birds echoed, but Aja never caught another glimpse of
them.

She squinted up at the man who had summoned
the fire, the lord. Aja wavered amid the ring of red flames and
shadow smoke. “I thought you—Weren’t you eaten?”

“Don’t believe everything you see, my sweet
cake.” The lord dropped the torch and brushed ash from his
sleeve.

He didn’t sound hurt. She tended to think
that meant he hadn’t been eaten. Well, good. The lord had helped
her, talked to her, when everyone else had been trying to eat her.
Aja could be happy he had survived. The Chef hadn’t killed any of
them with this dangerous course. But, then, if the lord hadn’t
slipped down the terror bird’s throat, what had Aja seen?

The lord stood above the feathery carcass.
“The intelligence of these birds lives up to legend.”

“Yeah.” The swordsman wiped his sword on a
tree’s bark. “Lured us in pretty good by playing dead.”

“I meant,” the lord said, “how they ate the
most appealing of us first.”

His gold thread seared Aja’s eyes with
reflected firelight. No, she had seen a bird eat him. She
remembered the red of his clothes slipping down a beaked throat.
But now his coat didn’t have a stain or tear. Something about him
wasn’t right, wasn’t true. Maybe nothing of him was.

Aja glanced up at the fire. “I hope the
djinn comes, before the trees start burning.”

“Please,” the lord said, “nothing will burn
without my leave. I’m not an amateur.”

Sparks whirled upward around the branches.
They drifted out of sight. She didn’t know how the lord could be
telling the truth. Aja had seen so much of the incredible in these
last minutes that perhaps the fire really wouldn’t burn down the
jungle.