The Enchanted Castle (Shioni of Sheba Book 1) by Marc Secchia Page B

to flee, but her feet remained rooted.
    He said, “You should return to your den to rest. You have lost much blood. As for me, I will heed your warning. You will not find me here again.”
    Abruptly, Anbessa turned away.
    “Wait! Please… I have so many questions.”
    His yellow eyes blinked over his shoulder . “We will meet again.”
    “Anbessa, if you ever need any help –I mean, you’re awfully mighty and a king too, but–”
    The eyes were positively gleaming now. “I will roar your name in the night, human cub.” Again, he made to move off.
    “But –your name just means ‘lion’ in the old tongue.”
    “I am the Lion, Shioni. Think upon that. Now remember, the power of a witch–”
    “ –is in the eyes. But, Anbessa!”
    “Yes?” In the shadows, only his great canines caught a gleam of moonlight.
    “What does my name mean? You didn’t say.”
    “It means a human who asks questions like a persistent itch I can’t reach!” He chuckled at her expression. “In Lion, ‘Shioni’ means… let’s see… it means ‘Graceful Strength of the Dawn’. A fine name for a human cub.”
    And in two huge bounds, he was lost in the night.

Chapter 15: What Kind of a Friend are You?
    M ama Nomuula brandished her arms like battering rams and roared, “I’s a-having the truth from you or I’s locking you in the pantry for a month, you stubborn, willful… you infuriating… oh! You’s gonna be the death of me, Shioni!”
    Mama could have made ten of her with plenty to spare. When she became enraged, which was not often, she reminded Shioni of a rogue elephant she had once seen break loose from the King’s menagerie and thunder down the main avenue of Takazze, scattering the crowd like a flock of panicked sparrows. As the story went, once when riled by a warrior, Mama had picked him up by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his trousers and tossed him out of a window. She could believe that–easily!
    Shioni hung her head, not daring to look at either of her friends. She peeked out of Annakiya’s window. Dawn out there, and the fiery furnace of friendship in here. To tell the truth, she was a little afraid of Mama in this kind of mood.
    “You are so selfish! ” stormed Annakiya. “I can’t believe you! Honestly! Fancy coming back looking like you’ve been trampled by a hippopotamus! Fancy sneaking off in the first place. Ginab Village? You rotten little liar! What kind of a friend are you?”
    “It was the lion.”
    “Only a lion? Pah!” Mama Nomuula threw up her hands in disgust. “Next time it’ll rip your head right off your stupid shoulders! The horrors I’s been put through this night, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Didn’t your mama teach you nothing?”
    Suddenly she covered her face and began to sob loudly! Shioni could only stare, appalled by the storm she had started.
    She wailed, “But you ain’t got no mama… but me… and I can’t take no proper care of no girl that’s given me… oh, God! Not again!”
    Between sobs and pauses for profuse nose-blowing, Annakiya and Shioni learned that Mama Nomuula’s family had all been captured by slavers many years earlier.
    “We was taken in a ship along the coast, far, far from home,” she told them. “We was many days, stopping here, stopping there. We wasn’t fed much, so many slaves got sick. I’s not needing much extra feeding so I was fine–not good, just surviving. Then one night a storm blows up from nowhere and before you knows it, the waves came crashing all over the deck and the slaves are screaming and a-crying for their chains to be unlocked. The men was chained to the decks, the women to each other or to their children. We was driven to the rocks. My husband, his chains took him down with the ship. My girls and I got hold of a piece of wood. But the waves was too strong. We was beat against those rocks over and over… and I couldn’t keep them from being smashed! Not even with these arms God’s a-given