The Prickly Battle

by Andrew Hansen

  “There,” honked Prong. “Our mummies are over there.”

  She was pointing a crusty wing to the east. Bab’s breath caught in his throat as he realised Prong wasn’t pointing at anything inside Mumphis. She was pointing outside the city, to the desert beyond.

  “No way,” Bab whispered.

  A vast mass of wonky, misshapen figures was heading away over the dunes.

  They’ve all left, Bab realised. The Animal Mummies are marching off into the desert.

  Bab pulled a funny-looking telescope out of his pants pocket. He’d built it himself using curved pieces of bronze and glass he’d found at the dig site. He peered through it and ground his teeth.

  “That’s Cainus at the front of the crowd,” he told his friends. “He’s the one leading the mummies away! Hold on, what’s that thing attached to his face?”

  Bab adjusted the focus of his telescope.

  “Oh, man. I don’t know how to say this but . . . we’ve gone from no beards to two beards. Cainus has found his own beard!”

  “Cainus has a beard baby too?” Prong honked. “How special for him! He’s become a Beardfather!”

  “His beard baby looks rough,” Bab replied. “It’s turned into a big, gross, floating ball thing. Wait, it’s turning around. Whoa!”

  “You okay, Pharaoh?” said Scaler. “Your face has gone white.”

  Bab lowered his telescope. “His beard looks like the Unpharaoh’s head.”

  Prong beamed. “Aww, Cainus and the Unpharaoh must have had a beard baby together. How adorable!”

  Bab shook his head. “I don’t think so, Prong. I think the Unpharaoh is somehow inside Cainus’s beard. Actually, I think she is his beard! And from the look of that crowd, she’s commanded the Animal Mummies to follow her out of Mumphis. Hmm, some of them are carrying big stone planks.”

  He squashed his fists into the sides of his head, desperately thinking. “Stop!” he bellowed helplessly at the departing army. “Hey! It’s me, Bab! Come back!”

  “They can’t hear you from here, dude,” Scaler said.

  “You’re right,” sighed Bab. “And even if they could, they won’t follow my commands because of this stupid Cotton Beard.”

  Prong gasped. “Stupid?! I’ll have you know my baby is very advanced, Mr Pharaoh.”

  “Sorry, Prong.”

  Scaler scratched her fantail with an ostrich talon. “So Cainus has a tough beard with an Unpharaoh in it that can command all the Animal Mummies. You have a soft beard that no one listens to, which can turn into a dustburger. Sound like a fair fight to you?”

  The colour flooded back into Bab’s face. He grabbed Scaler in a hug. “That’s it, my fishy friend. Dustburgers!”

  Without waiting to explain, Bab bolted down the side of the Pyramid. Scaler and Prong followed, shrugging at one another. Bab led them through the twisting Mumphis streets, pausing every so often to avoid a rampaging cactus jackal, until he reached the Dustburgers restaurant.

  There were decorative palm trees growing at the entrance. Bab tore a frond from one, then kicked open the door.

  The restaurant was a mess of overturned chairs and busted tables. From the telltale cactus spikes all over the floor, Bab guessed the cactus jackals had already ransacked the place.

  But the jackals had been typically careless. Rummaging in the back of the kitchen, Bab found a stash of burgers inside a fridge-ophagus. He ripped a long, thin leaf from the palm frond and began tying a dustburger to each end.

  “Have you gone mad with grief from missing us?” Scaler asked him.

  Bab showed her his handiwork. “Earmuffs!” he said. “Or burgermuffs, I guess.”

  He placed the burgermuffs over Scaler’s head so that her tiny fish ears were blocked by two dustburgers. The thin palm leaf formed a neat band over her head.

  “Scaler,” cooed Prong, “you look so warm and cosy with those burgers on your ears.”

  “Pardon?” replied Scaler. “Sorry, I can’t hear you, my ears have burgers on them.”

  Bab lifted one of Scaler’s burgermuffs so she could hear. “We’re going to chase after that Unpharaoh Beard,” he explained. “Problem is, when we get close, she’ll be able to command you and Prong to do anything she wants. So listen to me carefully.”

  “I’ll listen if I’m not wearing burgermuffs,” said Scaler flatly.

  “That’s why you’ll just carry them instead of wearing them,” said Bab. “But the second you hear the Unpharaoh say anything that sounds like a command, what should you do?”

  “Obey her without question!” honked Prong.

  “No, Prong. You place the burgermuffs over your ears till the Unpharaoh shuts up again. Here, Prong, I’ve made a pair for you too.”

  Prong beamed with delight and tucked her new accessory under one wing. Scaler folded hers up in her fantail.

  “Now,” said Bab, hurrying out to the street, “the Animal Mummies are heading east. And I can take a good guess at why.”

  The air outside was brutal, even hotter than before.

  “The Unpharaoh means to invade Cairo,” Bab continued. “Which is exactly where Mum has gone shopping.”

  “Can’t I wear my burgermuffs the whole time?” honked Prong.

  “No, Prong,” Bab replied. “Only when the Unpharaoh is about to command the Animal Mummies. Otherwise you won’t hear anything.”

  “Aww, but I love the feeling of dust mites crawling into my ears. They’re so tickly!”

  Prong was flying Bab and Scaler towards Cairo. As they drew nearer, Bab could hear terrible noises coming from the city.

  WUMP! WOMP!

  “I know those sounds,” he said, his throat dry with fear. “The Unpharaoh’s fireballs.”

  Beneath them, the dunes ended and the outskirts of Cairo began. They flew over the pyramids of Giza, and Bab was again awestruck at their size. He also felt a little embarrassed to see the Great Pyramid looking so floppy, a side-effect of his last adventure.

  Beyond the pyramids, a staggering number of sandy-coloured shops and houses stretched out before them. Shrieks and screams erupted from below as several buildings went up in flames.

  “There she is,” Bab said, pointing. “And she’s sprouted arms!”

  The Unpharaoh Beard had indeed grown two revolting, hairy arms. Still attached to Cainus’s chin by a hairy sort of rope, the Unpharaoh led her chief jackal and the Animal Mummies through Cairo’s back streets. Every so often, she would place a finger against a hairy nostril and . . .

  WUMP!

  . . . blast someone’s house with a fireball. Everyone scrambled for safety.

  The Unpharaoh opened a terrible, furry mouth and bellowed, “You are my people now!”

  “Fly closer, Prong,” said Bab. “This looks bad.”

  In their hundreds, the people of Cairo scurried about. They ducked and weaved and screamed in confusion. Drivers, spotting the rising smoke, avoided the area.

  “Of course!” said Bab. “The people can’t see Cainus and the Unpharaoh Beard. They can’t see the Animal Mummies either. Everyone from Mumphis is invisible except you two, remember?”

  “What fun for those people,” said Scaler sarcastically. “So as far as they’re concerned, their houses are exploding in flames for no reason at all?”

  “Yep,” agreed Bab. “And we need to stop it. Prong, what say you land us at that street corner there?”

  Prong flapped anxiously. “Right in front of the hairy Unpharaoh?”

  “Right in front of the hairy Unpharaoh.”

  The Ibis Mummy gulped, but she folded her rotting wings and dived.

  Bab’s heart leaped as the Cairo street rushed towards him with amazing speed. The air was fast and boiling on his face. Just before they hit the road, Prong opened her wings and arrested their fall. She plonked Bab and Scaler onto the ground.

  New shrieks erupted all around Bab. Dozens of people were staring at his friends, aghast.

  “What are those?” cried a horrified man.
>
  “Two mummies!” hollered a young girl. “Alive!”

  “Cool it, guys,” Scaler told them. “You never seen a living Animal Mummy before?”

  The people fled, screaming.

  “I guess not,” added Scaler with a shrug.

  But there was a much worse thing for Bab and his friends to worry about. They had landed directly in the path of the Unpharaoh Beard.

  The Unpharaoh and Cainus stopped. Behind them, the street was packed with a horde of Animal Mummies, who gazed at Bab in astonishment.

  “It’s Pharaoh Bab,” meowed a Cat Mummy. “He’s back!”

  “With Scaler and Prong,” added an Ostrich Mummy.

  A Fish Mummy gurgled in delight. “We’re saved!”

  The mummies from Mumphis barked, meowed, bleated and honked in a deafening mash of noise. Bab’s heart almost broke.

  They need me to save them, he thought. But my fluffball beard is so soft and unpredictable. What if I can’t?

  “Silence, Animal Mummies!” howled the Unpharaoh Beard. Magically bound to obey their Pharaoh, they immediately fell quiet.

  The Unpharaoh turned her scarlet eyes on Bab. They smouldered with impossible rage. “This . . . this cannot be,” the Unpharaoh croaked. “I saw you swallowed by the Spongy Void. The entire pyramid collapsed on you. You are dead, Bab Sharkey! Dead, I tell you!”

  Bab patted his shirt front. “Am I? Funny. The more you kill me, the more alive I seem to get.”

  He sounded braver than he felt.

  “You have a new hairstyle,” Scaler told the Unpharaoh. “No, wait. You are a hairstyle.”

  The Unpharaoh gave a dry, growling sound. “So you live, Bab Sharkey. That explains the happy thoughts I sensed from your mother.”

  Bab swallowed. “Sensed?”

  “Oh, did I not mention? I mummified a piece of her brain. Because it was mummified, its spirit came with me to the Afterworld and I was able to listen in.”

  Bab reeled. He remembered seeing the Unpharaoh on Cainus’s magic wall during his last adventure. She’d been underwater, clutching a squishy lump of grey stuff that looked like a bizarre sea creature.

  It wasn’t a sea creature, he realised. It was a chunk of Mum’s brain.

  The Unpharaoh cocked her hairy head. “Are you pleased that I’ve been listening to your mother’s brain? They weren’t only happy thoughts, of course. There’s an awful sense of loss mixed in there too. How is your father? I do hope he escaped the Spongy Void safely, hoo-haaccchh!”

  Bab felt his fingernails dig into his palms.

  Cainus dropped to his haunches, quivering. “Your Hairiness, may I recommend we flee? Our track record against this boy is hardly encouraging. Especially when you make him cross. Please don’t make him cross. Every time he wins, I lose my fur or my jackal friends or something else I love. Flee, I beg you! Flee from the terrifying might of Bab Sharkey!”

  “Flee!?” roared the Unpharaoh. She walloped Cainus with a hairy hand. He yowled, and Bab winced in sympathy. Those arms of hers weren’t just hairy – they were covered in thorny prickles too.

  The Unpharaoh hissed at Bab. “Your chin. What is the meaning of that white thing?”

  “Looks like I have a beard of my own,” Bab said. He pointed at Cainus. “Aren’t you worried that your prickly beard will switch to someone else’s chin, Unpharaoh? It’s not as if Cainus is the smartest dude in Cairo.”

  “Pah!” she spat. “It’s amazing how much knowledge one can absorb about a beard when one is the beard. And I can tell you, this beard does not attach to the smartest one around.”

  Cainus’s eyes grew wide. “It doesn’t?” he said, offended. “Who does it attach to, then? Let me guess – the best looking? The one with the most dapper sense of style, perhaps?”

  “I’m betting it attaches to the nastiest one around,” said Bab. “Given there’s an Unpharaoh inside it.”

  The Unpharaoh chuckled quietly. “Excellent guesses, but you are both wrong. It attaches to the most selfish one around.”

  Cainus’s jaw dropped. “Selfish? Me?! I’ll have you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about myself, and talking about myself, and studying myself in the mirror, and I’ve learned that I am definitely not selfish.”

  Bab planted his hands on his hips. “Point is, guys, it’s one beard against another.”

  “What an intriguing battle,” the Unpharaoh cooed. “And do you suppose your funny little white beard can stop me doing this?”

  Bab saw tiny flames smouldering inside the Unpharaoh’s hairy nose. She blocked one nostril with a prickly finger and aimed at a small grocery store.

  “Beard,” commanded Bab, “make a giant cushion against that shop!”

  WUMP!

  Bab’s Cotton Beard just managed to form a huge, fluffy cushion in front of the shop before the Unpharaoh’s nostril fireball blasted into it. But the cotton wasn’t fireproof. The flaming missile tore right through it, smashing into the shop behind.

  The Beard Cushion was left with a blackened, smoking hole in the middle. It retracted onto Bab’s chin with a sizzle.

  “HOO-HAAACHH, your beard is useless!” the Unpharaoh crowed. “A pale imitation of the original. So pale, it’s white! Tell me, whatever happened to the genuine Pharaoh’s Beard?”

  Bab’s mind whirled. Might as well tell her the truth. She might get angry enough to be thrown off her game.

  “Mum destroyed it,” he said. “She told the shen rings to come off.”

  But the Unpharaoh was not angry. Instead she grinned, showing black fangs. There was something weird about them.

  Those aren’t fangs, Bab realised with disgust. Those are horns inside her mouth.

  “My poor, deluded sister,” the Unpharaoh cackled. “It took her centuries to destroy the Pharaoh’s Beard in the hope of keeping me away. Yet here I am. And I’m not just wearing the Pharaoh’s Beard – I am the Pharaoh’s Beard!”

  Bab was shaking, but he forced himself to take a step forward. “What are you doing in Cairo?” he demanded.

  “Why, I am their new Pharaoh, of course. And unless your bit of cotton can stop me, there’s very little you can do about it.”

  Bab felt sweat break out on the back of his neck. “The world doesn’t have Pharaohs any more, you know,” he told the Unpharaoh.

  “Time for a Pharaoh reboot, then,” she said.

  NEE-NAW, NEE-NAW, WEEA-WEEA-WEEA-WEE!

  Bab heard sirens approaching. It was a police car, tearing along the cross-street. It must have come to investigate the explosions.

  Of course, Bab thought, we’re not in the ancient world of Mumphis. Here in the Real World, we have grown-ups. They’ll sort everything out.

  How wrong he was.

  The Unpharaoh Beard narrowed her scarlet eyes. She morphed into a spiky tentacle of hair and flapped herself across the road, into the path of the approaching vehicle. The police car drove over the Beard Tentacle, but the spikes tore its tyres to shreds.

  The car spun out of control, flipped onto its roof and smashed through the front windows of a fruit shop.

  “That’s called a car, right?” said Scaler. “Fat lot of good those things are.”

  Bab felt eyes on him. Looking up, he saw hundreds of people lining the rooftops. Having overcome their initial fear of Scaler and Prong and the burning buildings, human curiosity had taken over. People began filming the scene on their phones.

  The Unpharaoh turned back into her floating head form and snarled at Bab. “Now you shall watch me take over your world,” she snarled. “Get out of my way.”

  Bab couldn’t breathe. It was one thing to fight the Unpharaoh in Mumphis. But in a teeming, modern city full of real people and police cars, he felt way out of his depth.

  Panicking, he issued a desperate order. “Beard, wrap her up. Just wrap her up and stop her doing anything at all!”

  The Cotton Beard expanded into a mass of cotton bandages. It sailed at the Unpharaoh Beard, intent on wrapping her up like a brand-ne
w mummy.

  KHHRAKK!

  The moment the Cotton Beard made contact with the Unpharaoh, there was a mighty jolt. Bab felt it shudder through his ribs, his belly, his brain.

  The Cotton Beard reeled back onto Bab’s chin as if it had touched a hotplate. The sky above flashed with golden lightning.

  Somehow Bab knew what had happened.

  The worlds just collided. Mumphis and the Real World.

  The people on the rooftops were first to see the change. “Mummies,” they gibbered. “Animal Mummies!”

  “Plus a very ugly hairball,” somebody added.

  Some gazed in fascination. Others clambered to get away from the hundreds of Animal Mummies who had just materialised in their street.

  The Animal Mummies themselves were no calmer. “They can see us,” snapped a Crocodile Mummy. “The smelly humans can see us!”

  “They’ll eat us!” shrieked a Cat Mummy.

  “Or put us in kennels!” woofed a panicking Dog Mummy.

  Another Dog Mummy looked up to the people above. “Can I please go in a kennel?” he asked.

  Bab took another few steps towards the Unpharaoh. He was close enough to smell the hair, sour and unwashed.

  “This is bad,” he told her. “When the two beards touched, they must have knocked the worlds together again. They can see you, Unpharaoh. That’s not going to help you.”

  The Unpharaoh cackled like a deranged bat. “On the contrary! It is fitting that my people see their new queen.”

  “They are clearly captivated by your beauty,” Cainus fawned, just as a dozen locals ran away, shrieking.

  The Unpharaoh turned to face her animal slaves. “Animal Mummies!” she commanded.

  Bab spun and snapped at Scaler and Prong. “Burgermuffs,” he ordered. “Now.”