The Fiuri Realms (Shioni of Sheba Book 5)

by Marc Secchia

  Iridelle sawed at the silk with her belt knife. “Great caterpillars, this thread’s tough!”

  “What did I tell you about not getting out of your hammock flower on your own?” Viridelle folded her arms and waggled her antennae simultaneously. “You’re lucky it was only a cocoon spider, Shionelle. How many times do I need to tell you that Fiuriel’s a dangerous place for us Fiuri?”

  “Clearly, once more than you did,” said Iridelle, not helping matters.

  “I had to go water a bush,” said Shioni. “I was desperate, Viri.”

  “Right,” huffed Viri. “Repeat after me. Fiuriel is dangerous. I will do as I am told. I will listen to that nice Green Hunter who is only trying to keep me alive.”

  Shioni waggled her tongue at Viri.

  “Great caves, you rude–right!” Viridelle fluttered over to Shioni. “You need to learn your lesson, Fiuri, starting right now. I’m a mean Hunter. Are you ticklish?”

  “No …”

  “Not over here?”

  Shioni squirmed helplessly as Viri tickled her neck. “Hey! Stop it!” Cocooned as she was, she could do nothing to stop the attack. Between shouts of laughter, she cried, “Viri–oh, not the antennae, Viri, oh, that’s just weird. Stop, please.”

  “Repeat my lesson,” said the Hunter. “No? Tickle, tickle.”

  “You beast! I’m stuck in this stupid cocoon–Iri, please. I can’t stand it! Heeeelp!”

  She could not remember being ticklish before, but she certainly was, now. Viridelle was horrid. She would not let up, enjoying playing the torturer! No amount of wriggling, pleading or shouting on Shioni’s part made her relent. And the other two just hovered there, enjoying her predicament! Shioni was so maddened, a crimson mist descended over her eyes. A tingling began in her wings and antennae. Her stomach burned. Suddenly, a strange force burst out of her body, as if her skin had punched outwards. The cocoon disintegrated and Shioni fell almost to the ground before catching herself with her wings.

  Startled, she cried, “Viri! You beast, I’m going to get you!”

  She zoomed upward as though shot by a catapult. Shioni’s eyes flew wide in surprise. Flinging out her hands to stop herself from crashing into Viridelle, she only succeeded in punching her in the eye.

  “Oh, monkey poo–ouch!” Shioni drifted off, staring at Viri in surprise. “You hit me.”

  The Green Hunter shouted furiously, “You hit me first!”

  “I didn’t mean to …”

  “What’s monkey poo?” asked Char, whipping out his quill pen.

  Viridelle was about to yell at him too, when Iridelle snagged her sister by the left wing and Shioni by the seat of her shorts and pulled them apart. “Children!” she snapped. “It was an accident.”

  Shioni touched her newly bruised right cheekbone, surprised to discover she was not bleeding. Viri screwed up her left eye. “She does have magic, by my wings,” she griped. “Did you see that? She destroyed the cocoon and then attacked me like a maddened Beater-Wasp.”

  “I didn’t attack–”

  “Magic? What kind?” Char interrupted.

  “Whatever turns spider silk into a pile of ash,” said Viri, crossing her arms triumphantly. “Or launches her like a rocket flower.” But her smirk faded as Char’s puzzlement did not lessen. “What? It’s not magic, Char?”

  “No kind of magic I’ve ever heard of or read about,” he said.

  Shioni gulped. “Don’t you start looking at me like you want to dissect me, Char.”

  “By the first pupa, it’s a puzzle,” he said, stroking the tiny bit of fuzz on his chin he liked to call a beard. He muttered at a terrific pace, “A White Fiuri with no magic and no colour who evidently does have magic, just a different kind of magic that nobody has ever seen before which can disintegrate a physical substance at a touch and I can’t pin it to any particular kind of magic whether it be green or blue or red or even terrible black …”

  “I know!” cried Iridelle.

  “Oh, you can work it out when scholar Chardal over there has never heard of it?”

  Shioni gasped as Viri’s spiteful sneer made tears start in her sister’s eyes. “I’s never heard such a load of old caterpillar droppings!” Shioni cried, and then blinked in surprise. Who did she know who talked like that? “Iridelle, I want to hear your idea.”

  “Um …” sniffed Iridelle.

  Viri crossed her arms and looked the other way.

  Glaring at the Hunter, Shioni said, “Go on, Iridelle.”

  “Well, I thought–it’s silly nectar, really–but you know, white isn’t actually no colour. It’s all colours. And I was just wondering … I mean, I know it’s a right-out-of-the-tunnel idea … but I couldn’t help but wonder if you weren’t some kind of all-colour Fiuri. Maybe. Sort of. Possibly.”

  “Wow,” Shioni breathed.

  Viridelle’s shoulders shook. If she had laughed just then, Shioni decided crossly, she would have kicked her antennae all the way back to wherever Cave One might be. But a glance at Chardal made her snort with laughter, too. The boy-Fiuri was so amazed that his tongue had completely unfurled and hung down to his chest like a wilted flower. He could not even speak. Had he sat firmly on a Spiny-Spike flower, he could have looked no less thunderstruck.

  The silence deepened around them.

  “By the first pupa!” screamed Chardal, making them all jump. He zipped off at high speed, flying in crazy somersaults and double backward loops and endless spirals, laughing to himself, spilling books and ink pots and quill pens in every direction.

  Iridelle’s eyes had never been wider. “What did I say?”

  “He’s been in the wobbly nectar,” said Viridelle, still irritable. “Bounced off the cave wall a few too many times.”

  Chardal came zooming back through a tall stand of purple polka flowers, still burbling all sorts of nonsense. Iridelle, caught holding Shioni in one hand and Viri in the other, had no defence as he threw his arms around her neck and dropped a dozen slobbery kisses on her cheeks before whizzing off in yet another direction, yelling, “Brilliant! What a simply scintillating idea!”

  Iridelle dropped her captives to wipe her cheeks. “Ew.”

  Shioni clutched Viridelle’s arm. “Viri, you owe your sister an apology.”

  The Hunter tried to shake her off. “This is between us, Shionelle. Go find another flower.”

  “Right.” Gripping Viri by her left antenna, Shioni gritted out, “You will apologise right now or I am going to thrash your Green Hunter behind–”

  “Yeeow!” howled the Fiuri. “You little pest!”

  Dodging Viri’s swipe, Shioni flipped the other Fiuri onto her back and applied a stranglehold to her neck, using the crystal cast on her arm to good effect. In seconds, Viridelle was gasping for air. Again, Shioni was startled to discover what her body knew how to do. Viri tapped her hands three times.

  Iridelle’s large hand trapped Shioni’s wrists. “She submits, Shionelle.”

  Shioni released her hold. “Er–sorry, Viri.”

  To her surprise, Viri made an unfamiliar sign with her fingers. “This Hunter admits her error. Shionelle, you were right to correct me. Iridelle, I’m sorry for what I said. I was wrong to take it out on you.”

  Iridelle enveloped her twin in a huge hug and rubbed antennae with her. Over her sister’s back, she beckoned to Shioni, who gingerly joined them. What was this? All was forgiven because she had nearly strangled Viridelle? What a pile of old hyena droppings! Oh, she did not understand the first thing about Fiuriel. The sooner her memory returned, the better.

  Viridelle put her arm around Shioni’s shoulders and ruffled her hair, which she bristled at. “A bit of the Hunter’s courage in you, eh? I like you, little White Fiuri. You’ve earned my respect.”

  Mad. They were all quite mad.

  Chapter 7: Cave Seventeen, Spinward

  Despite a vile-smelling herbal remedy Chardal concocted and slathered over half of Viri’s face, her eye soon swelled shut.
They spent the day fluttering along the seemingly endless tunnel, which branched off in a few places–but all of the smaller tunnel entrances were heavily warded. Chardal checked each entrance meticulously, renewing the complex chains of wards where needed. The wards boasted very Fiuri-like names such as blockers and scares and traps, connectors, repellers and frazzlers, screamers and sleepers. He had an amazing memory for every tiny detail that made the different magical wards work.

  Viridelle declared that he was ‘as good as any Blue Fiuri’ in his skills.

  Chardal showed Shioni the signature work of Cave-Crawlers. She saw pulverised crystal, and the wide trails of crushed plants covered in poisonous slime where no living thing would grow until the slime had been completely cleaned away. The pile of what was left of a Cave-Crawler lying within one of the warded tunnels measured at least ten Fiuri tall and many more wide.

  Phew. She would not want to meet one of those monsters in the flesh.

  Toward sleep time, they came to a place the Fiuri called the Crystal Forest. Moist heat sucked the breath out of her lungs. Enormous trees of branching crystal in many hues of green grew out into a huge open space, which was so large that Shioni could barely make out the roof or edges of the tunnel. It was a forest of crystal, she thought, a maze so dazzling it required the Fiuri to tie a strip of cloth over their eyes to protect against the blinding glare.

  Viridelle led them between the great crystal branches without hesitation. Sweat trickled down Shioni’s stomach. Oh for a cool breeze! But the air in the Crystal Forest hardly seemed to stir.

  After they left the forest behind, the tunnel seemed to change character, becoming even denser with plants and flowers than before. They found a small patch of water bubbles and paused to bathe and create some mist. Rain, Shioni teased Chardal.

  “Ah, wait until the scholars get a whiff of your perfume,” he said.

  Shioni screwed up her nose. “A whiff of me?”

  “You stink.” Viri elbowed her snidely. “Teach you to bathe in blue water. What are you doing to Iridelle’s hair?”

  “Shuruba braids,” said Shioni. “Want to help?”

  “I’d rather you taught me how to strangle my enemies,” Viridelle said brightly.

  “I can teach you that next–if you stay up after sleepy time.”

  “Pah, losing a few winks of sleep is nothing to a mighty Hunter,” she boasted, but sat next to Shioni on a Puff-Ball plant to learn how to braid hair Shioni’s way. After a while, she said, “Hmm. Very practical. Keeps the hair out of the way of your weapons, I see.”

  “Who needs weapons when you can punch a mighty Hunter in the eye?” asked Iridelle.

  “Why don’t I braid your hair to your wings?” Viri suggested.

  Iri retorted, “Why don’t I braid your tongue to your nose?”

  “Sisterly love; it’s so sweet,” Char muttered over his writing. Shioni burst into a fit of giggles. He said, “Now, tell me all about rain and rainbows. Are rainbows like light refracting through a bubble of water?”

  After a perfect night’s sleep tucked up in a hammock flower, Shioni and her friends flew Moonward, up-tunnel, toward the Fiuri town Viri had called ‘home base’. According to Char, its proper name was Sherfiuri Ball.

  Shioni stared about her until her neck ached. The sheer number and variety of flowers and blossoms was uncountable. Pollen hung so thickly in the air that it shimmered in golden veils, dusting the petals and branches of the towering blossom-trees and the perfectly tended flower gardens. There were so many glowing colours above and around her that Shioni became quite dizzy. Her eyes itched uncontrollably until Char noticed and touched her with his magic. The itching stopped at once.

  “You’re allergic to flowers?” He sounded so shocked, Shioni thought he might cry.

  She squeezed his hand. “Char, you’re a star.” Viri sniggered at this, which made poor Chardal blush so furiously he turned more purple than red.

  They began to pass other Fiuri tending the gardens, harvesting nectar or travelling to unknown destinations. Most were Greens, like Viri, Iri and Char, but Viri pointed out a Red Fiuri–a Burgundy, to be exact, a deep, warm red colour–and a whole troop of Browns labouring to repair a cave-in.

  “Fiuriel is rather unstable at times,” said Char. “We theorise that the moon creates gravitational distortions which amplify the movements of the inner volcanic core.”

  “Cave-ins can be dangerous,” Iri explained to Shioni. “Mostly, it’s because they let in Cave-Crawlers or vent poisonous gases into our caves. A small leak’s no problem, but a big one could be very dangerous.”

  “The other Colours are hired to work for us,” said Viri. “Of course, we Greens also hire out our skills with plants and growing things to the other colours. Brown Fiuri specialise in building and maintenance works. That Burgundy Fiuri will probably be a nectar specialist. Very capable scientists, the Reds. Oranges and Yellows tend to enjoy military work, like training, strategy and offence. Blues make the best magicians. Of course, those are just general rules. Chardal’s a very fine ward-worker.”

  “What about Black, or Grey?” asked Shioni.

  Viri made a nasty gargling noise in her throat. “Bad flowers, all of them.”

  “Oh. Um–is that a house?”

  Iri chuckled, “I’m glad you’re around, Shionelle. I definitely don’t feel like the stupid one now.”

  “You’re anything but stupid,” Shioni said, stoutly. “And I’ll wrestle you like I wrestled your sister if you say that even one more time.”

  “Ooh, my wings quiver,” said Iridelle, flexing her biceps. “Whenever you’re ready.” Her smile told Shioni that while her friend would be gentle with her, she didn’t stand a chance.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Viri teased, poking Shioni in the ribs. “Word of warning. Iri’s the champion no-weapons fighter of ten caverns. Boys and girls. And don’t ever play handshakes with her. She crushes your fingers. Nasty, nasty habit.”

  Shioni smiled at Iridelle. She would rather have wrestled a boulder, come to think of it, than her hulking friend.

  “You’re too cute to crush, anyway,” said Viri. “Isn’t that so, Char?”

  Chardal immediately found something fascinating inside his notebook.

  The Fiuri had temporary work-houses outside the main city. The nicer ones were wood-frame balls dangling from trees, tied on with thick, plaited vines. Two or three round holes served as doors or windows–did it make any difference to flying creatures? Other ‘houses’ were simply a few broad-leafed plants sewn together to create a crude shelter. Shioni wondered why those Fiuri did not use hammock flowers. Perhaps there were too few to go around? Perhaps they were poor? Some of the adults’ wings lacked lustre, while the children seemed thin and hungry, despite the abundance of flowers around them.

  Following Shioni’s gaze, Char said, “They starve because of the taxes. There’s the war with the Blues and five new caves being opened up.”

  “Not out here, Chardal,” Viridelle warned.

  Biting back her questions, Shioni followed her friends across the far-reaching fields and gardens, toward a bulge in the tunnel greater than anything she had seen before. She saw a great dome ahead of them. Squinting because of the distance and the hazing effect of the pollen in the air, she began to grasp that the dome had an unnatural regularity about it. In a few places, she saw massive struts projecting from the foliage that covered the ball. Great hawsers anchored the ball to the cavern walls in every direction, more than she could count. Tiny specks winged about the dome, making it resemble a busy wasp’s nest.

  “Sherfiuri Ball,” Iri said, answering her unspoken question.

  As they approached Sherfiuri Ball, more tunnels carved away in different directions. Shioni realised that Sherfiuri stood at the conjunction of six major tunnels similar to the one they were emerging from. It was not a dome, but a huge ball-shaped city which had to house thousands upon thousands of Fiuri. Shioni had imagined clusters of huts or homes. Snakes ali
ve, the Fiuri city even had a floral arrangement growing on the outside which spelled ‘Sherfiuri’ in huge, striped letters. The main entrances had to be wide enough to accommodate a hundred Fiuri flying side by side. Everywhere, she saw signs of bustling trade–gourds of nectar, sacks of pollen which Char had identified for her, even a Fiuri somehow herding a gaggle of green water bubbles into the city.

  It was so magnificent, it made her wings tingle.

  Shioni turned to her friends. “Not bad.”

  “Not bad?” yelled Viridelle. “Not bad? You–”

  Iri’s bubbling laughter made her sister pull up short. “Shionelle’s just tugging your wings,” said the placid-faced Fiuri. “Aren’t you, little petal?”

  “Pulling her leg,” said Shioni. Three frowns greeted this idea. “Er, tugging her wings, yes. Of course. Because baiting Hunters is such a safe sport.”

  “Ha ha ha!” roared Iridelle, punching Viri on the arm. Her twin promptly punched her back, making Shioni’s eyebrows crawl. This was normal behaviour for Fiuri girls?

  “When we get to Iri and Viri’s home, Shionelle, we should check your arm,” Chardal put in.

  They winged across the vast open space between the tunnel walls and Sherfiuri Ball. Shioni saw farmlands curving overhead, clearly visible because of the patchwork effect of the different types of flowers grown in interlocking, leaf-shaped fields. But as they approached the city, Viri and Char fell to muttering together and pointing at a contingent of Yellow Fiuri checking every Fiuri in the busy traffic at the entrance. Apparently, this was a new and unpopular procedure.

  “He’s reaching even here,” whispered Viri.

  “Bad sign,” Chardal grunted.

  “Who?” Shioni asked. “Who’s reaching here?”

  “Shush, child.” Viri’s tone was deadly serious. “Shionelle, you are our poor cousin visiting from Cave Thirteen, Spinward, Core Tunnel. Understand? Repeat it.”