door was a tall, thick oval mat of purple-flowered clematis lianas hinged on living tendrils; it swung open with a swish of leaves and a creak of green wood, and we filed into the tavern, everyone looking relieved to be free of Golden-Hair.
I quickly realized that the entire tavern was built from still-living plants enchanted or artfully cultivated to form a functional architecture, although certainly not one that had much use for straight lines and ninety-degree angles. The interior walls and floor were formed by smooth, densely woven strangler figs. Ivory-barked trees rose like support columns for the leafy ceiling high above us, and luminous bracket fungi growing on the trunks cast a soft golden light throughout the rooms and passageways. Redwood-size tree stumps served as tables, and the woody figs rose from the floor to form trestle benches and stools.
The patrons seated at the nearby tables were dressed in antique finery from various eras; they scarcely gave us a second glance. Viewed straight on, they appeared perfectly human; glimpsed from the corner of my flesh eye, some became large insects, creatures of twisted bone, or strange fungal conglomerations. It was just a little unnerving.
A tall, beautiful woman in a diaphanous Aegean-blue chiton stepped toward us. Maybe she floated; I couldn’t really see her feet. She was like a nymph straight out of Greek mythology: her glossy black hair was piled in ringlets atop her head, and her skin was sun-bronzed. Her eyes were the color of storm clouds rolling over the ocean. She glanced briefly at my backpack, but didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it.
“Please follow me,” she said, her voice a rush of sea breeze through a mountain olive grove. “Your party awaits.”
She led us through a winding passage to a room with an enormous tree-table. Riviera Jordan, dressed in a silver gown and shawl, sat on the opposite side of the table, flanked by six Governing Circle agents in crisp black tuxedos.
“Y’all have a seat,” Riviera said, rising from her strangler fig bench. “We have a lot to talk about.”
We took our places at the table. At each setting was a single white, highly polished plate; there were no glasses, no cutlery, no napkins. I at first assumed the plate in front of me was porcelain before I saw the fine concentric grain beneath the shine.
“Wood?” I asked Cooper.
“Probably,” he replied. “Or maybe some kind of gourd or tuber.”
Riviera was busy looking over some papers in her lap, so as quickly and surreptitiously as I could, I lifted my plate and licked the edge.
Instantly, I was standing on a windblown hill, rearing back to shake off the horrible jabbering prairie apes clinging to my shaggy fur, trumpeting my anger and frustration to the sky as one of them scurried between my front legs and jabbed a sharpened stick up between my ribs—
—I managed to stifle a gasp as I came out of the death-memory.
“It’s wooly mammoth tusk,” I told Cooper. “Very old.”
“Oh. Wow.” He gazed down at his plate, looking impressed. “I’ll be careful with it.”
And then I nearly dropped my plate when it spoke to me: “Now really, it doesn’t seem very useful to lick me before the food’s been served, does it?”
An amused elfin face was staring at me from the surface of the plate. I quickly set it back down on the table.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I was just trying to see what you were made of—”
“Rather nosy of you, don’t you think?”
“I’m very sorry. I wasn’t expecting sentient tableware.”
Plateface sighed dramatically and rolled its ivory eyes. “Apology accepted, I suppose. Beverage?”
“What?”
“A drink? You know, something liquid that helps the food go down and prevents unsightly choking?”
“Oh. Uh. Water will be fine.”
Another eye roll. “Boring, yet vague. Do you want it hot? Iced? Room temperature? Sparkling? Paris bottled? Detroit municipal? Dipped from a Mongolian horse trough and filtered through a wool sock?”
I frowned. “I’ll take Evian natural spring water, no ice, forty degrees Fahrenheit.”
There came a faint cracking noise from the table. A straight green tendril sprouted from the polished surface. It quickly formed a large bud that elongated and split open to unfurl a spiral of waxy lavender leaves that fused and rose up into a vaselike hollow flower. The remains of the bud shell thickened into a sturdy green calyx base supporting the flower, which quickly filled with a clear liquid.
“Your water, mademoiselle,” said Plateface. “And for your meal you’d like …?”