Chapter 6. All Hail Al Funghi, King of the Mushroom People!
1783 Words
Faddy was annoyed.
Sure, following this army and watching this curiously strange new race form above had been fascinating.
But now he had become accidentally cut off from an easy route home.
He would not have to divert south through King Al Funghi’s Mushroom kingdom.
He was annoyed but not angry.
Sure he would be a few weeks late getting home but that was not unusual.
His family would not needlessly worry over just a few weeks and he still had some stuff to sell and the Moosh race were ok as customers.
Three days later…
They were but a small group of traders from above.
Representatives of the Bronze Flag trading conglomerate.
The King and his people had loved the free gifts the Bronze Flag had bestowed from the surface world.
The long thin pretty stuff called “Cloth” in its many bright colours.
The tasty rare delicacy that these surface dwellers called “Manure” which came in two delicious flavours “Cow Manure” and “Horse Manure”
This sentient fungal race of the Moosh always celebrated when the Bronze Flag came to town.
Although the bronze flag seemed to be taking longer and longer between trips lately.
Al Funghi the Mushroom King was a very large ‘walking’ talking mushroom.
Most Moosh were only human-sized but Al Funghi, one of the oldest of the Moosh, was the size of a carthorse and although like all Moosh, he had legs, he was now far too grossly fat to walk anywhere.
The King was carried on a large open sedan chair.
King Funghi and his travelling chair throne were in the town square.
All the buildings were giant stationary mushrooms, hollowed out into houses.
The ground beneath then was not paved, but like all the mushroom kingdom, cover with a think layer of some sort of spongy substance.
This spongy ground stuff was what fed the large mushroom buildings, some as high as our modern skyscrapers.
The Moosh race ate the flesh of these supergiant Mushrooms, it was a bland tasteless diet.
The Whole mushroom kingdom was lit from the slight glow all mushrooms buildings, the Moosh and even the spongy ground itself gave off.
It was a dull green to yellow glow that could be seen from the top of the huge underground cavern that housed this entire fungal world.
The Mosh had lived very dull lives, with just the colours yellow and green, on a tasteless diet for centuries,
Being quietly ignored by all the other cavern kingdoms.
Then the Bronze Flag envoys arrived.
The Moosh (who have no gender) once naked now loved clothes.
Seeing the colour blue for the first time was a revelation!
Tasting sweet, sweet manure instead of their normal bland diet seemed to give life meaning again.
The Bronze Flag, humans from the surface world, were happy to keep visiting and bestowing these gifts upon them.
The Moosh had grown to almost love their human benefactors.
From among the cheering crowd, Faddy looked on from his merchant stall.
He thought he had struck lucky when he had arrived to find that an unscheduled market day and holiday had been arranged to celebrate a big event.
When Faddy realised that the arrival of the Bronze Flag had been the big event, he had only shrugged.
Now he could see the fuss and honour the Moosh people were showing these human traders, all Faddy could now think was,
“What the Flushing Wipe!”
Al Funghi waved the crowd into silence.
“As always, welcome our dear friends of the Bronze Flag!”
“Welcome”
“What gift do you bring us this fine dampness!”
(“This Fine Dampness” was the same as saying “This Fine Day” for the Moosh race that had never seen the Sunlight!)
The three bronze Flag Traders stepped forward and prostrated deeply in front of his royal highness the mighty Mushroom King.
They were draped in fine golden robes and precious silks.
Each was holding a small ornate jewel-encrusted chest.
As if they were three wise men from a two-thousand-year-old faith story, they humbly submitted their precious miniature chest.
But instead of Gold Frankincense and Murr the chests contained Blue Cloth, Horse poo that stank, and Cow Manure.
“Behold most my beloved King, these just represent the three carts we have brought with us.”
The king stopped, among the stunned silence of his people.
“Three carts?” the King Asked
“Yes, my King” Replied the head human trader.
“Only three carts of each?” Asked the King, his people still stunned.
“Oh, my King, I am afraid there is only one cart of each…”
There was a horrified gasp from the entire square.
Some Moosh children burst out crying in tears.
So did a few adults!
“Don’t think our people ungrateful?” Said the King.
“But your visits are getting less far lass frequent!”
“We are all just a little disappointed”
“Three carts is so little to share among us all when normally there has been ten carts of each.”
The Head trader wiped away a visible tear from his eyes,
He seemed so upset that he had disappointed his dear friends.
“I am afraid my dear friends that we have let you down”
“We have tried our best to show our love for your people and we have failed you all”
“We can simply not afford the level of gifts that you so rightly deserve!”
“Why?” asked the King.
“How can we help you?”
The head trader seemed to still be struggling not to burst into sobbing tears.
“The Manure is getting so much harder to come by” The merchant exclaimed.
“There is hardly any Cow or Horse Manure left in our world.”
“It is horribly embarrassing for us to ask this…”
“But could you all perhaps spare some of this spongy ground beneath the feet of all, in your mighty kingdom?”
“Just a single cartful could help offset the cost of the people we have to hire to pull the carts down here.”
The King barely hesitated, he was drooling and longing for some of that sweet rare manure.
“We normally only allow a few handfuls to small merchants but for you our dear friends, we can change the laws to help you!”
“Of course we can find a way to cut into the ground parent for a cause as selfless and noble as our deep friendship!”
“For you, yes!”
The whole square cheered!
Faddy looked at some of the small moosh sponge flakes in his hand.
He had traded well today.
These few flakes would see his farm and that of his entire village have a bumper crop for the next few years.
Such flacks were gently mopped from the spongy ground with care.
The Moosh used it as their highest currency.
It would take an experienced Moosh team, hours to scour the ground for a handful of decent sponge flakes.
Now the King was openly talking of cutting into the sponge itself?!
Sure there was plenty of it all around.
Yet…
A whole cartload?
Not just mere flakes but the far more potent flesh.
All the more potent because it had been freshly cut from the flesh of the ground?
How much extra in bumper crops could such a vast amount yield?
How much would such a thing be worth on the surface world?
Faddy guessed far more than even ten times the amount the Bronze Flag had given in so-called “Gifts”.
(What Faddy did not know was that he had been wrong by a factor of a further one thousand! – the same properties that gave the natural glow also had horrendous military applications!)
Faddy was a trader but he was an honest trader.
Not a simple-minded nieve trader, but instead a trader that knew how to be dishonest and be good at it! But on moral grounds had chosen not to be that sort of trader.
As a trader with a conscience, he could smell the s**t the Bronze Flag had been feeding the innocent Moosh race!
Faddy looked at the little Mooshling Children and then at the fake tears of the lying Bronze Flag head trader.
For a traders mind, it was not a hard equation for Fady to work out.
All the free gifts and fake neediness had been to manipulate their way to getting vast mounts of moosh sponge.
Faddy guessed that there was a good seventy per cent chance that there was an army on standby on the surface world to take the sponge by brutal force if the manipulation did not work.
If there was not such an army on standby yet,
Then he was one hundred per cent sure that such an army would be the very first things the Bonze Flag would purchase with the vast fortune they would make on this first cartload of cut ground sponge.
He knew that one cart would never be enough for such people.
He could foresee a vast empty pit with not an ounce of life in it where this entire sponge world used to be.
He did not need magic or psychic powers to see the end road to all of this, just common sense.
The Moosh were not a stupid people, far from it.
How come they could not see it?
Faddy looked on at the drooling king as he hungrily and without any normal manners stuffed the gift chests of manure into his face.
Very unbecoming of any Moosh as a member of such a normally polite and reserved Moosh society let alone a monarch on display in public!
Yet no one in the square seemed to mind!
No one seemed to mind at all!
Why?
He heard the sighs of longing from all around him, including the child Mooshlings!
“Oh!” Faddy, thought as the pit of dread in his stomach deepened into a bottomless cavern of horror.
“They were addicted to the surface worlds manure!”
Under normal circumstances, all such a mere single individual could ever do is walk away and stare at the ceiling with regret for the rest of their life.
But this one time, this one individual, Faddy, happened to have another option other than simply ‘keeping their head down’.
Faddy happened to know an army nearby that needed a purpose and whose leader had a conscience!
- Writer
