The Fiuri Realms (Shioni of Sheba Book 5)

by Marc Secchia

  “Iridelle,” warned Viri.

  “Don’t I recall you crashing headlong into a Prince’s lap during Hunter trials?”

  Viri shot back, “And who threw the same Prince into a pile of larva droppings?”

  “He wouldn’t surrender to my arm-lock.”

  “That’s how to win yourself a Prince,” snorted Viri. “Break his arm.”

  As the sisters bickered good-naturedly, Shioni let them take her hands and flutter up into the air. Flying was much easier with help. Once she relaxed, her body seemed to know what to do with her wings and Shioni was soon letting go for short periods of time.

  As they fluttered along, keeping to the centre of the tunnel, Chardal explained, “Moonward is the direction of home, up the tunnel. Shortly, we’ll come to the first wards which protect our realm. Cave Seventeen Spinward, Green Outer Cluster, is ours.” His voice swelled with pride. “Our job is to check the magical wards haven’t been broken and to scout for any danger which might threaten our home–you know, Cave-Crawlers, break-ins, an infestation of Black Maggots, or anything else.”

  Shioni did not understand at all. She said, “Can I ask a stupid question, Chardal?”

  “That’s usually my job,” Iridelle interrupted. “Fine, I’ll let you, just this once.”

  “How do you know which way’s up?”

  “Up?” asked Chardal.

  “Er, you said there was a Moon direction and a Spin direction. How do you know where the Moon is? You must have seen it from the surface.”

  Chardal lost most of the colour in his cheeks. “Don’t say that word!”

  “What? Oh, the surf–mmm!”

  Viridelle clapped her hand firmly over Shioni’s mouth. “Yes, that word,” she hissed. “The forbidden word, pollen-brain. It’s a terrible place, Shionelle, full of wild magic and other dangers. Any Fiuri who ever went to that place would die immediately. Wild magic would rip them apart!”

  Shioni scowled over Viri’s hand until she removed it. “But if you’ve never been to–er, there–how do you know what it’s like?”

  “We have stories and legends.”

  “Stories to scare little children on stormy nights?”

  “Well!” huffed Viridelle. “You’re a strange one. Fancy wanting to scare Fiuri children!”

  “I didn’t mean–”

  “What’s a storm?” asked Char, pulling out a tiny notebook. Somehow, he managed to juggle the notebook, a tiny pen made from a crimson feather and an open ink pot while he flew along. Shioni sighed at his flying skills. If only.

  She explained, “Char, a storm is when you have strong winds, rain, and light–”

  “What, by the first pupa, is rain?” demanded Viridelle. “You’re talking nonsense!”

  “Don’t listen to her antenna-shaking, little petal,” said Iridelle, yanking on her sister’s foot to stop her in the air before deftly swiping her place next to Shioni. “Char, she’s obviously not the brightest flower on the stem. I think you should start with a few simple things …”

  Iridelle’s voice trailed off under the force of Shioni’s glare.

  Shioni said, “I have a brain! Rain is water that falls from the sky.”

  “Hmm, sky,” said Chardal, making another note in his book. “Please, define this word ‘sky’ for me?”

  Oh, leaping hyenas! Whatever hyenas were. Shioni had a horrid feeling this place did not have those, either. No sky? No storms or rain? Well, obviously. Living inside a tunnel meant that there was neither sky, nor any clouds to bring rain. But where were these strange, un-Fiuri-like ideas coming from? She lapsed into a mutinous silence as her companions exchanged baffled glances. If only her stupid brain would start working properly!

  “Look,” said Chardal. “We live inside a world that is shaped like that sponge plant over there.” He pointed to a tall, grass-like plant, which had large spongy blue balls about the size of a Fiuri on the end of its blades. “The world is influenced by tidal forces we call gravity. But they are not very strong, except at certain times in the Moon-cycle. If you were to stop fluttering right now, you would fall gently toward where your feet are. You would drift a little Spinward at the same time. I thought all Fiuri could feel those forces. Must have been wrong.”

  He made another note in his book. “Check detection of gravitational fields,” he muttered. “We do call up, well, ‘up’, but it doesn’t really make much sense. Look, I can fly this way, too.”

  Shioni’s stomach lurched as he flew upside-down alongside them. “Ooh. Don’t do that.”

  “But you’re compensating automatically for gravity,” Viri pointed out.

  Char nodded. “Very good. You obviously learned something in your basic flying theory class.”

  Viridelle buzzed off in an extravagant sulk.

  At Iridelle’s suggestion, Char began to teach Shioni about the different types of nectars as they passed clumps of flowers, or flowering trees. Some, which smelled delicious, were actually poisonous to Fiuri. He named at least fifty varieties of Glue-Slap plants, which were particularly abundant in this stretch of tunnel. He pointed out aphids milking plants for their sap, bright, hairy orange caterpillars which could stun a Fiuri with the slightest touch of their paralysing hair, catapult insects which shot themselves at their prey, and unripe hammock flowers which he said were not yet mature enough for sleeping inside. They paused to snack on a rare type of anemone flower he called a shoya, a purple giant six times Shioni’s size, with nectar so sweet and delectable it made her toes curl.

  Later, they came to a place where, Chardal told her, the outer magical wards had been spoken. If she looked carefully, Shioni could see a slight change in the quality of the light as it encountered the Fiuri magic. Char spoke several words rather solemnly. The air rippled and the Fiuri passed through the warded place. He then spoke several more words, taking care that his companions did not hear them clearly.

  “He’s strengthening the wards,” Iri whispered to Shioni.

  “What do they do?”

  “Wards? I suppose they keep the nasty creatures out and the good creatures in,” said Iri. “Oh, look, Viridelle’s found some water. Water here on Fiuriel’s not at all like what you described, Shionelle. See? It bubbles.”

  Ahead of them, floating in the centre of the tunnel, Shioni saw a clump of multi-coloured balloons–violet, pink and green. Those were water? As they flew closer, Viridelle darted forward and dove right into the middle of a green bubble. She swam about inside and waved at them.

  Trying not to think about how beyond weird all of this felt, Shioni prodded a large green bubble with her finger. It rippled as though the brightly coloured liquid were held in place by a strong skin. “This is water? Why isn’t it flowing somewhere?” She made a rippling motion with her fingers.

  “She says water flows,” said Char, jotting a swift note.

  Rolling her eyes at Chardal, Shioni peered at the other bubbles. They all behaved similarly. Some were about as large as her head, but others could fit several Fiuri inside with ease. She asked Chardal, “Is it safe to swim inside?”

  “If you hold your breath,” said Iri, very seriously.

  “It’s safe,” he said. “We prefer the green ones, but you could choose a pink bubble if you like. I find the violet ones a bit too perfumed for my taste. And whatever you do, don’t ever swim inside a black bubble. Oily. Yuck.”

  “But the water stays together in the air, because …”

  “Ah. Very good question, Shionelle.” Clearing his throat, Char began to hold forth, “Scholars generally agree that the forces holding water bubbles in place must resemble magic. However, despite countless seasons of examination and experiments, the best Fiuri scholars have been unable to isolate the precise effect which leads to–”

  “Come on, Shionelle!” cried Viri, grabbing her arm.

  “Blub,” said Shioni.

  Iridelle yanked her straight back out of the bubble again with a stern word for her sister. “Give her a chance to
breathe!”

  Taking a deep breath, Shioni dived into the bubble–well, not quite. She bounced right off and tumbled through the air until she remembered how to make all four wings work together. Viri started laughing inside the bubble. She burst out, coughing and spitting pink water everywhere. Served her right.

  “Mmm,” said Shioni, forgetting about being cross with Viri as she licked a few drops off her nose. “That’s sugary.”

  “Every drop is different.” Char handed her a gourd. “This is cleansing sap from the So-Clean plant. You rub it on–”

  The White Fiuri laughed. “You have the silliest names for plants.”

  “It’s called that because it makes you so clean,” he protested, looking rather more miffed than Shioni thought her teasing deserved. “The name’s perfect. Come on. You rub the So-Clean sap on your skin until it foams, and then you dive inside the bubble to wash off.”

  He was right. The sap was very effective, removing the last traces of the dried glue from her tangle with the Glue-Slap plant. But Shioni twisted and grunted in an effort to clean her wings until Iridelle took pity on her and helped out.

  “We Fiuri are very clean creatures,” said Viridelle, poking her head out of the bubble again. “Usually, cleansing sap will be scented as well. But Chardal likes to think he isn’t vain.”

  It popped into her mind that she knew a Fiuri who was incredibly vain, but the name would not come to Shioni just then. Viri showed her how to break the bubble’s membrane with her fingernails and shortly, they were all ‘bubbling’ inside, as her friends called it. Once they had finished washing, each Fiuri separated a smaller bubble from the large one and used his or her wings to break it into tiny droplets, which drifted away like a mist with the spin and gravity. They called this ‘misting’.

  “Misting is our service to the plants around us,” said Char, suddenly formal.

  “You make rain,” said Shioni.

  “If you say so,” Viri smirked. Iridelle reached over to flick her sister’s wing-tips in irritation.

  Shioni tried misting a few times more, until she learned the knack of breaking up water droplets with her wings. The trick was to break the membrane’s natural tension first, before quickly vibrating the water into a mist. For a while, the Fiuri misted the plants. But work quickly changed to play. A water fight developed between Iri and Shioni on the one side and Viri and Char on the other. The Fiuri spun around the bubbles or ambushed each other through them, giggling and laughing at each soaking.

  After a while, Shioni noticed the quality of the light changing. “What’s happening?” she asked Char.

  “Sleep time. Even the plants need to rest.”

  “We should find some hammock flowers right away,” said Viri. “Shionelle’s had a long playtime and now she needs to rest.”

  “I resent–I am not a baby.”

  “Baby,” said Char, reaching for his notebook at once. “Is that something like a caterpillar or a pupa? I’ve heard some creatures of the deepest caves don’t pupate. Is that what you’re talking about, Shionelle?”

  Shioni’s sigh made it clear to everyone that she was done with mysteries for one day. Iri took her under her wing as Viridelle led them to a patch of ripe hammock flowers. While Char described the uses of hammock flowers and Shioni listened with half an ear, Iri and Viri showed her how to tickle the large, Fiuri-sized pod to encourage it to unfurl. Inside, there was a stamen that looked much like a tongue, only it was softly furry and very inviting. Iri showed her how the stamen moulded itself to the Fiuri who lay on it, providing, she enthused, the most comfortable rest ever. One tickled from the inside to make the plant release its occupant.

  “So, this is night time?” asked Shioni. “Does it get completely dark? It must be amazing when the stars shine–” she stumbled in surprise as Char gazed eagerly at her, quill pen in hand, “–um, you do know about stars, don’t you?”

  “Only from stories,” Viri and Char chorused.

  “It never gets dark inside Fiuriel,” Chardal clarified. He shivered theatrically. “I s-s-suppose that p-place might, though.”

  “I imagine stars are like crystals,” said Viri, dreamily. “Huge, faceted crystals gleaming in a rock face, like that crimson cluster over there. Don’t they look exactly like a fire flower?”

  “No they don’t,” Char said, rudely.

  Viri stormed, “Oh, and I suppose you’ve seen stars? You ignorant caterpillar, talking out of your proboscis–”

  “I’ve seen stars,” said Shioni.

  Her words stopped the fight as though the other Fiuri had flown headlong into a Glue-Slap plant. Three jaws dropped. Three tubular tongues unrolled down past their respective chins.

  Into that silence, Shioni whispered, “Imagine standing inside an enormous cave, like this one, but there’s no light. Everything is dark. The silence is so deep and still, all you can hear is your own breathing. But the darkness isn’t scary. It’s as velvety as the inside of a hammock flower. You realise the darkness isn’t truly dark, because up there, so far above you that you can’t even imagine the distance, there are tiny lights, as if crystal dust were scattered in the darkness. Each light twinkles at you. Each one has a name.”

  Chapter 6: Hammocks and Cocoons

  SHioni, Cosily Cocooned in a hammock flower, lay awake for a long time. Her friends had never seen stars. She had. All three Fiuri had cried after she described stars to them, even though she had explained that stars could only be seen from that forbidden place, the surface of Fiuriel. The place of wild magic. How could she have imagined that the idea of stars would so upset them?

  Once, the Fiuri had lived in peace on the surface, but a terrible enemy had driven them down into the tunnels. Char had explained that those histories had been destroyed and forgotten. “No-one knows why the wild magic came,” he had explained. “The only hints I’ve found in my research speak of sky-fires and the deaths of many Fiuri. Can fires come from the sky, Shionelle?”

  They spoke about lightning–but Shioni did not know what could have driven an entire magical Fiuri civilisation underground.

  She stared at the leaf rolled about her, feeling warm and safe in body, and yet so lost she might as well have come from the stars herself. Why was she so different? How could she know these things? She couldn’t have lived on the surface, could she? No Fiuri could live up there. They trembled at the thought.

  Even Fiuriel’s night was light. The hammock flower’s petals transmitted a small amount of light, so that the effect was similar to lying in a softly glowing cave. Despite her whirling thoughts, Shioni felt very sleepy. Was it just her imagination, or was the flower humming to her, a sound so deep she could sense a vibration more than hear it? She would welcome the forgetfulness of sleep. Maybe, in the morning, she’d remember everything and nothing would seem strange any more.

  She awoke bursting to go to the toilet. Too much sweet water and nectar.

  “Um, tickle, tickle,” she said, reaching up. To her surprise, the hammock flower unfurled immediately.

  Rising, Shioni fluttered to the ground. She looked around for a good spot. Right. This would do nicely, and it was not far from the patch of hammock flowers. Viridelle had warned her about all the sleep time predators. Far too many creatures loved to slink around in the semi-darkness searching for morsels–little Fiuri being a prime dish, apparently. Shioni looked around nervously as she pulled her ridiculously oversized shorts up again and bunched them around her tiny waist. Ha. She wasn’t afraid. She would show her friends!

  No sooner had this thought crossed her mind, than a loop of sticky thread dropped around her shoulders. Shioni yelped, took one look at her attacker, and screamed for real. The crystal spider was three times her height. With great cunning and speed, it wrapped its silken thread about her upper body, pinning her arms and wings. Its long, spindly legs worked furiously, spinning her around and around. She had no chance. The legs were too fast. Everywhere she turned, there was another leg and another loop of th
e super-sticky thread. When she was well and truly trussed, the spider reeled her up to its sickeningly soft underbelly. It darted away.

  Cocoon spider! Shioni tried to remember what Viridelle had said about cocoon spiders. Weren’t they supposed to be shy? This one seemed anything but shy. It meant to eat her.

  Suddenly, she remembered that she ought to be shouting for help.

  “Help!” she wailed. “Someone help me, please!”

  The spider whisked her up a tree to a macabre nest. Cocoons hung from the branches and leaves all around her. The dry, shrivelled remains had been left inside the cocoons. One or two looked quite fresh. They were not moving. Insects, perhaps? Viri had said that the cocoon spider sucked its victims dry.

  Working at the same frenzied pace, the spider hung her from a branch by a thick thread spun from its spinnerets and proceeded to wrap her up even further, layer upon layer of thread all the way down to her toes, until she resembled a pupa dangling from the tree.

  Shioni drew a deep breath. “Get lost, you blood-sucking fiend!” she shouted. The spider vanished into the leaves above her. “Viri! Chardal! Someone, anyone!”

  Wriggling was useless. Her hands were stuck so tightly that she could barely budge a finger. Even her toes had been trussed. Only magic would help her now. A shame she had none. Shioni tried to imagine the silken thread melting, or burning, or becoming non-sticky and falling off, but nothing happened. Just her luck, she thought. Two sticky traps in two days. She was becoming quite the expert.

  “Iridelle!”

  Shioni kept calling and calling, until her voice grew hoarse. The spider stayed away–for now, at least. She dreaded to think what might happen if she fell asleep or if the others could not find her. She tried not to imagine what might have been inside those other cocoons.

  “Shionelle? Little petal, where are you?” came a faraway call.

  “Iri! Over here!” To her embarrassment, Shioni began to sob with relief. “I’m stuck up a tree!”

  Shortly, she caught sight of the familiar green wings of her friends through the leaves. When they realised her predicament, Viri started laughing, Iri came straight to help her, and Chardal just shook his head in bemusement.