The Prickly Battle

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The Prickly Battle Page 2

by Andrew Hansen


  Scaler took the box and traced her own pattern in the air.

  Bab paid careful attention as the silver box traced a second pattern in the air. This one was much clearer:

  “A fish!” Bab cried. “It is Scaler! Woohoo!”

  The box swished about again. This time it traced a simple bird:

  “And Prong!” shouted Bab. “Yes! The box must be ancient enough that we can all see and touch it. Same with the hairs. Oh man, now I have to tell those two mad mummies what to do.”

  He snatched his tatty copy of Egyptian Pharaohs and their Secrets and banged it against his head to help him think.

  Now, what’s special about hairs? Bab wondered, his mind whirling. They come loose, that’s one thing. Like the ones in the silver box – they separated from the main Beard long ago. Come on, Bab, what else do hairs do? They bend . . . they itch . . . they get greasy . . . whoa, I know – they GROW!

  An idea hit him like a stone mallet: Prong is a gardener.

  “Prong,” he said to no one. “I know you can’t hear me but . . . I’m telling you anyway, ’cos I’m excited. I’ve seen you use the magic sand of Mumphis as soil to grow all kinds of stuff – string, bandages, bricks. Maybe you can grow something else. Something really magical!”

  He tore down the hallway and barged into the dark storeroom where his mum kept the ancient relics she’d dug up. The room was nearly empty now, but a few cracked pots remained. Bab seized one in particular. “From Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty,” he muttered. “This should be old enough for the Animal Mummies to see.”

  He bolted back to his bedroom, slapped a hand on the hovering silver box, and popped it open.

  In the empty desert, an old cracked pot flew right up to Prong and Scaler. Prong started as the silver box in her talon popped open by itself. Three thick, black hairs rose from the box and dangled in the air. Her ancient eyes boggled. She tried to brush the hairs aside with a wing, but they floated right back in front of her again.

  “Those hairs like me,” Prong said.

  “Keep your sore eye on the friendly hairs then,” Scaler told her. “I think Bab’s showing us something.”

  The hairs floated away from the box and over the top of the cracked pot. They hung above it for a moment, then dropped inside.

  “He wants us to stuff the hairs in an old pot,” Scaler said flatly. “Great, that solves everything.”

  Prong gasped. “They look like sweet little hairy saplings, Scaler. Bab’s finally taken an interest in gardening! My nursery must have inspired him. Look at the pot, it even has a picture of me on it. Ooh, I’m so flattered!”

  Scaler frowned at the hovering pot with the hairs in it. “You know what, Prong? I think your potato brain got this one right for once. Bab’s showing us that pot because it has an ibis painted on it. He means we should put the spare hairs in one of your pots, Prong. The pots you grow stuff in!”

  Prong honked with glee. She tossed the silver box aside, grabbed the ibis pot, and flapped for joy across the dunes. “Spin your fins, Scaler,” she cried. “Let’s get planting!”

  Bab watched the ancient pot zip across his bedroom and smash against the wall. Only it didn’t smash at all – it melted right through.

  Someone from Mumphis is carrying it, he realised. So the Sharkey Shack’s walls no longer count for that pot.

  He dashed to his window and watched the pot continue its bumpy course over the desert dunes. When it reached the empty place where Mumphis had once stood, it vanished into nothingness.

  “Bab?” his mum said from behind him. “Did I just see my Fifth Dynasty ibis pot flying across the desert?”

  A nervous Elephant Mummy waddled towards the yellow outer wall of Mumphis.

  Even compared to a baby Elephant Mummy, it was tiny – about the size of a large dog. Its face was floppy and crooked, and its torn ears were so droopy they flapped in the wind. Silliest of all was its trunk, which was so amazingly long it trailed along the ground. It kept tripping the creature up.

  “My last remaining disguise,” moaned the tiny Elephant Mummy in a posh, silky voice. For of course, this was not an Elephant Mummy at all. “If only the moths hadn’t eaten my dancing ostrich outfit! That would have suited this master plan. Clean, elegant and snazzy.”

  Worse for Cainus, he had tried to pad out his elephant suit by packing it with hundreds of stones. The idea was to make it look big and round, like an actual elephant. But the stones made the outfit awfully heavy, and they ground against Cainus’s patchy skin, causing great pain.

  The sad jackal stared up at the looming city wall.

  “How will I get inside this blasted city this time?” he asked himself. He shivered inside his bulky elephant suit. “Now, Cainus, you’ve snuck into Mumphis before. You dug beneath the walls and nothing bad happened. Well, except for almost dying of suffocation. Three times. Oh dear, poor, gorgeous me, I cannot face the sand!”

  He turned clumsily about in his floppy suit and slumped against the wall in despair.

  SHKLUMP!

  A huge section of the wall crumbled away under Cainus’s weight. He fell backwards into the ragged hole left behind.

  Just inside the wall, a sandy street ran along the outskirts of the town. Cainus shivered as he saw a group of Animal Mummies staring down at him in surprise. Hopelessly weighed down by stones, he flapped his baggy elephant legs and moaned, “Help me, you gaping nitwits! Er, I mean, you dear Animal Mummy friends!”

  “Who are you?” asked a peering Falcon Mummy.

  “It is I,” Cainus declared, “a regular Elephant Mummy.” A river of stones poured out the face hole of his suit.

  “Nice to meet you, regular Elephant Mummy,” the Animal Mummies replied in unison, helping him up.

  Turning his back on the easily fooled Animal Mummies, Cainus plodded off alone through the winding Mumphis streets.

  Not a single Animal Mummy thought to question him. They were too busy arguing.

  “I thought I’d cause a sensation,” Cainus mumbled, dejected. “Perhaps they’re all jealous of how handsome I am. Ow! These blasted pinching stones!”

  Soon he reached the wonky Pyramid. He was getting used to his elephant disguise now, so he only tripped over his trunk seventeen times on the way.

  He tried to glance about to make sure no one was watching, but his heavy elephant head sagged to one side, causing him to pull a neck muscle. Wincing, he limped through the black entrance beneath the Pyramid and down into the icy darkness below.

  To the tomb of the Unpharaoh.

  “You’re safe down here, Cainus,” he told himself as he wandered in. “Quite safe. It’s only a vast, shadowy chamber of death, after all, and – Ow!”

  He tripped on a broken chunk of sandstone. Rubble was strewn all over the room – the place had partly collapsed during Bab’s first battle against the Unpharaoh.

  And there she lay.

  Cainus’s breath caught in his patchy throat.

  “My glorious queen,” he whispered, approaching the sandstone slab. Her mummy was sprawled on top, utterly lifeless. Its twisted arms and legs were splayed at bizarre angles. A papery grey tongue lolled out of its fanged mouth.

  Cainus tore off his floppy disguise as quickly as he could (which wasn’t very quickly, given his pulled neck muscle) and pounced onto the slab. Drooling, he covered the mummy’s rough, bandaged face with adoring licks.

  “I wish I could kiss you back to life, my darling!” he told the dead thing. “Instead, I shall attempt the method you suggested. Hmm. Forgive me, Your Majesty.”

  Cainus snipped his long, sharp ears like scissors . . .

  KRRRRIPP. KRRRRIPP.

  . . . and sliced deep into the mummy’s belly.

  He peeled the ancient bandages away, revealing the inside of the dead sorceress. A dreadful smell oozed from her body, a sour reek of rage and meanness.

  “No, no,” Cainus moaned as he peered into the cavity. “Don’t tell me she’s empty!”

  He stuck his po
inty nose all the way in and sniffed about. His sensitive snout wrinkled as it explored the dry ridges of the Unpharaoh’s lower spine.

  With a sudden jerk, Cainus snapped his head back out again.

  “Baaaaa-ga-CHOOO!” he sneezed. “Yow, I pulled another neck muscle!”

  Coming to his senses, he grabbed frantically at the air. “I felt it,” he yabbered. “It went straight up my nose as I sniffed about in there. Where is it? I sneezed it out! Where did it go?!”

  Then he stopped and went cross-eyed. With wondrous slowness, something drifted slowly down between his eyes and came to rest on his pointy snout.

  It was a single black hair.

  “Got you,” Cainus whispered.

  Clutching the silver box in an ostrich talon, Scaler weaved her way through the sandy streets of Mumphis. Prong flapped close at her heels.

  “What’s that floppy-looking Elephant Mummy up to?” Prong asked, pointing down a side street.

  Scaler peered at the odd creature. “The embalmer did a great job on him,” she said. “Must have ordered size twenty-eight bandages for a size three elephant.”

  Had Scaler and Prong stopped to investigate, the disasters ahead might have been averted. But as fate would have it — or perhaps because a hieroglyph of Seth, the god of chaos, was painted on a wall nearby – they ignored Cainus and continued on their way.

  At every twist in the stony laneways, Scaler and Prong had to dodge bellowing Animal Mummies.

  None of them could remember how to run their lives now that Bab was gone.

  At the bowling alley, Elephant Mummies hurled sandstone balls at each other with their trunks.

  BUNK!

  “Ow!” one trumpeted, rubbing her bruised head. “Is this really how we’re meant to bowl?”

  “Only Pharaoh Bab knew the rules,” another replied, “so what does it matter?”

  Over in the doorway of Salon Nile, a furious Gazelle Mummy flailed her legs. “I’m telling you, Celeste, you overcharged me for this pedicure. By six whole ankhs!”

  Celeste, the pink Cat Mummy, meowed back. “It’s not my fault my adding system is different from yours.”

  “Pharaoh Bab would’ve sorted this. He knew maths. He could even count past four!”

  “Well he’s not here, Jezmeena,” snapped Celeste. “One Pharaoh minus one Pharaoh equals zero.”

  “Zero is what you should be paid. Your so-called pedicure made my stunning hooves look like human toenails. Disgusting!”

  Next, Scaler and Prong passed some Crocodile Mummy builders. They were trying to fix the front of the Mummy College, which had begun to sag. A cranky old Ibis Mummy professor honked at them: “You’re meant to repair the walls with stone!”

  “Bab told us to fix buildings with bones,” replied a confused croc. He was up a ladder, jamming several of his ribcage bones between the college bricks.

  “Did he?” said another croc. This one was pouring a barrel of brown liquid over the bricks. “I’m not using bones, I’m using date juice foam. Bab said to use foam.”

  The ibis professor scratched her curved beak. “I think you’re right, Otsek, Bab did recommend foam. Jolly good job!”

  A gust of wind wafted by. SHKLUMP!

  Cracked apart by bones and softened by date juice, the entire front wall of the college collapsed around the crocs. Scaler yanked Prong aside just in time.

  The ibis and the crocs began pummelling each other in a flurry of rotting paws.

  All across the city, it was the same story. The Animal Mummies were lost and angry without their Pharaoh.

  “Let’s hoof it, Prong,” Scaler said, “and pray we can bring Bab back. For all our sakes.”

  The two friends burst into their wonky yellow house. Brown vines and branches twisted every which way, completely filling the living room. The mummies had to squeeze and duck to get inside.

  “Just imagine,” Scaler said, slipping between the plants, “if one of your experiments had some use besides filling our house with spikes and prickles.”

  “They’ll be very useful one day, Scaler, I promise,” Prong honked. “I study plant-growing at Mummy College, remember?”

  “And what an ace student you are. You even passed an assignment once.”

  Prong inspected the pots, poking her beak into each. Some sprouted the dry, stick-like plants that filled the room. Others – the ones containing the magic sand of Mumphis – grew various objects instead.

  “Wow-ee,” Prong declared. “I planted a feather in this pot and now it’s growing a peacock’s tail. This one’s growing a mug of hot chocolate! Probably ’cos I planted an old cocoa bean in it. My nursery customers will adore these! Ooh, what about this one? I sneezed in this pot last week and now . . . well, I’m not sure what that is, but it doesn’t look very pleasant.”

  Scaler shot her friend a frank look. “I’m sure this slimy, humongous sneeze tree will sell like hot cakes at your nursery,” she said. “Nevertheless, I recommend you rip it out and plant the hairs instead.”

  Prong sighed and patted the disgusting tree. It made a moist sound: sssSnerfl.

  “I feel sorry for the poor sneeze tree,” she said. “Hey, I know!”

  Prong picked up another plant. “This is my beautiful masterpiece, Scaler. The one assignment I didn’t fail – in fact, I got a D!”

  Scaler curled her lip. “D for dust? This is a stick with some dust balls on it, Prong.”

  “Not dust, Scaler, cotton! It’s lovely, soft, one-hundred per cent Egyptian cotton. This plant is my good luck charm, the only plant I’ve ever properly grown. We can’t risk the hairs not growing, so I’m going to use the same lucky pot.”

  She tore the cotton plant from the pot and slid it under some nearby brambles. Scaler shrugged and carefully upended the silver box over the pot. The black hairs settled on top of the magic sand, and Prong poked them in with a talon.

  “Now pour yourself a dustshake, Scaler,” she said, sitting back and crossing her legs. “This could take ten or twenty years to grow.”

  WAMP!

  A wave of solid light exploded from the pot, shattering all the vines in the room to splinters. The force of it rippled Scaler and Prong’s bandages.

  “Or not,” Prong corrected herself.

  A moment ago, just a few hairs had been sticking out of the sand. Now, a thick tuft of fluff sprouted in the cotton pot.

  The hook in Scaler’s lip almost fell out. “That looks familiar. I think?”

  “More than familiar,” honked Prong. “We know exactly what that is. It’s the very thing our entire lives have centred around for centuries! It’s everything we’ve been working towards! It’s . . . I give up. What is it?”

  Scaler clapped a fin on Prong’s shoulder. “That, my birdy friend, is none other than the Pharaoh’s Beard. Version Two.”

  FLOMP.

  Prong fainted.

  “With one key difference,” Scaler observed, studying the tuft. “It’s white instead of black. Must have been some cottonseed left in that pot. Prong? Prong, are you awake?”

  Prong immediately regained consciousness. She whooped with glee and danced around her newly cleared-out living room. “Scaler, it worked! I grew a plant. Not just any plant, either. I grew a lovely, white, cottony Pharaoh’s Beard!”

  The cotton Beard came to life. It bent over, then jumped as hard as it could, uprooting itself from the magic sand. It flew upwards and hovered in front of Prong.

  The Ibis Mummy gave it a tender pat. “Welcome to the world, little friend,” she honked quietly. “My name is Prong and I’m . . . I’m your Beardmother.”

  The tuft gently touched Prong’s cheek. The ibis quivered all over.

  “If I’m not wrong, Prong,” said Scaler flatly, “your new Beard baby just gave you a kiss. Excuse me, I’m having some feels.” She dabbed her green eyes with a gazelle hoof.

  With great tenderness, Scaler leaned towards the Beard and whispered, “If you like, you can call me Aunty Scales.”

&nbs
p; But the newborn Beard didn’t linger with its mummy family. It had Beard business. Driven by the same ancient purpose as the hairs from which it had grown, the white tuft whooshed out the window.

  “We’d better get after it,” Scaler said. “It’s searching for a Pharaoh.”

  Scaler and Prong had already left Mumphis by the time Cainus the Jackal emerged from beneath the Pyramid.

  He blinked as his sharp eyes adjusted to the Egyptian sunlight. He’d struggled back into his elephant disguise, though it was now filthy with the dust of the Unpharaoh’s tomb.

  The town square was a flurry of activity. Falcon Mummies and Dog Mummies and Cow Mummies and Ostrich Mummies headed this way and that, each intent on solving some mad problem or another.

  “Now, the sand,” Cainus muttered. “My mistress said to use the magic sand near the Pyramid.”

  He noticed the many cactus jackals dotted around. They had once been Cainus’s slaves – until Bab and Scaler had tricked them into drinking Prong’s cactus juice. Now they were green and spiky and buried up to their necks.

  His own neck stiff with pulled muscles, Cainus inched painfully over to one of the cactus jackals. He peered closely at its spiky head. “Is . . . is it really you?” he said quietly. “Brudd? My loyal henchman, I’ve never forgotten you. Do you remember me? Your beloved boss?”

  The cactus stared back, completely still.

  FWITT!

  It spat a cactus spine into Cainus’s face.

  “Yeeowww!” Cainus howled, plucking the spine out of his forehead. “There’s no need for that, you cactusy brat!”

  A groovy-looking Baboon Mummy strolled past and casually said, “Your rhyming is lame, sir.”

  Enraged, Cainus seized the Baboon Mummy by the throat. “Listen here, you shade-throwing baboon. The day of your doom is coming quite soon!”

  “That rhyme is even lamer, sir,” the baboon replied in a choked tone.

  “Bah!” Cainus spat. He released his victim, who scampered away. “I mustn’t let these cruel mummies distract me from my mission.”

 

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