The Enchanted Castle (Shioni of Sheba Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

a mad urge to poke him in the eye!
    If she had any mental muscles, Shioni decided to try to flex them. At once the headache mushroomed until it was a solid band compressing her skull and streaks of light were shooting in front of her eyes. She sensed the bull elephant was frustrated at her reticence, a touch angry, and the prickling contact at the edge of her mind suddenly changed into a fist thumping on a door. Every knock reverberated through her whole being.
    “Ouch, stop that!” She tried to push him away. “Look, I came here to find out what the problem is with one of you!”
    The trunk uncoiled.
    Shioni’s eyes popped wide open. “You understand…!”
    A smaller trunk drew her aside now. It was one of the females, the one Shioni always thought of as the cutest and youngest of the elephants–although she was fully grown, she was dwarfed by the bull. She was making a deep, rumbling sound in her chest. Unlike the cat she had imagined speaking earlier, Shioni could not distinguish anything that made sense, until her intuition kicked in and she realised:
    “You’re having a baby!” A trumpet squealed beside her ear. Shioni clapped her hands. “How exciting! No wonder you’re off your work.”
    Leaping lizards, Annakiya would be delighted by this news! The General too. She could hear the sounds of the elephant handlers approaching now. They had probably been down to the river to wash. But Shioni became distracted by a different, random thought–a picture of a mushroom. No, a fungus.
    She frowned. Her headache was roaring back, complete with teeth and claws this time. She could not continue like this. One more throb and her head would drop right off her shoulders.
    “ Trouble under your right front foot,” she realised slowly, and felt her knees crumple. Darkness rushed in from all sides.
    Next she knew, someone was shouting, “Miss! Miss!” And slapping her cheek–hard.
    “Ouch! I’m awake! Stop hitting me!”
    “God bless ye, miss, I thought the elephants had attacked you!” Shioni sat up gingerly, feeling nauseous. “Easy now, miss. You took a funny turn.”
    She muttered that the she-elephant was pregnant. The handler raised an eyebrow. “What? I didn’t know that.”
    “And check her right front foot. It’s infected.”
    He clucked at the elephant. “Come here, Beauty. Give us your foot. Hup, hup. On the stump.” The elephant responded to his tapping her knee by putting her foot up on a tree stump. He ducked under to take a look. “Nothing here. No, hold on.” He trimmed a bit with his belt-knife, dug around with the point for a minute, and then raised his head to cast Shioni a wary look. “How’d you know about that?”
    She had just accused him of neither knowing nor doing his job, she realised. Shioni opened her mouth to apologise, but her stomach chose that moment to heave like a bucking donkey, and her entire breakfast shot out instead.
    “Ugh, God!” The handler wiped his foot on the grass. “Aim somewhere else, miss, would you?”
    “Sorry!”
    Whirling on her heel, Shioni fled the elephant pen as though she had felt that lion breathing down her neck.
    She knew one thing for certain. Mama was dead wrong.

Chapter 4: Warriors at Play
    D espite her aches and pains, Shioni had to stifle a giggle as she paused in the doorway of the Princess’ bedchamber. Annakiya was sitting in front of her tall bronze-backed mirror, struggling to work a tortoiseshell comb through her long black curls. As her slim brown fingers fought with the tangle, she was grumbling: “Blasted knots,” or “rats’ nest” or “I swear I’ll chop off this bush, I will!” It was quite a battle.
    Yesterday it had been talking cats and fainting in the elephant pen. Today, the warriors had taught her a painful lesson. Shioni sighed as she watched her friend. She should help. But her heart hurt even more than her body.
    E ven the Princess’ white cotton nightshirt was finer than her own rough-cut tunic and