The Prof removed her crooked glasses and tossed them aside. Her face looked younger, smarter.
“You’re no longer the only sister with nostril magic,” she told the Unpharaoh.
Bab’s mouth fell open as he watched his mum place a finger against her nose.
My mum can make nostril fireballs!?
The Prof took a deep breath and . . .
Fff.
. . . snorted out a tiny puff of harmless mist.
“Hoo-haachhhh!” shrieked the Unpharaoh, her bushy form shaking with mirth. “It appears your magic remains pitifully weak, sister.”
The Prof sighed. “I’m sorry, everyone,” she said. “I thought it would work, but my mummified brain chunk must be too old.”
Bab fiddled with Cainus’s pot.
The Smoothie brings mummies to life, he thought. What about mummified brains?
Bab dipped his beard into the grey liquid, soaking up a good deal of it. “Now, Beard,” he whispered, “it’s Prong’s turn to get cotton up her nose.”
Fuppa-foop!
The Cotton Beard formed a thread, soggy with the Smoothie of Immortality, and snaked into one of Prong’s tiny nostrils.
“Wrap around the brain chunk!” Bab ordered the Beard.
The Ibis Mummy spluttered and honked as the thread went into her head and looped around the mummified brain chunk, soaking it in Smoothie.
The effect on Prof Sharkey was immediate. Bab’s mum looked even stronger and smarter than before, a fresh power filling her expression. Smoking wisps of purple magic danced about her.
Yes! Bab thought. The brain chunk must have come to life inside Prong’s head.
“If you hope to distract me with this nonsensical display,” the Unpharaoh croaked, “then you are truly beaten.”
The fires were closing in. Bab swayed. He was beginning to pass out.
Prof Sharkey again pressed a finger to her nose.
Surely Mum doesn’t mean to shoot a fireball into a room full of fire?
But what the Prof shot was quite the opposite to a fireball.
WHHUUUFF!
A high-pressure stream of water blasted from Prof Sharkey’s nostril. She aimed it at the nearest flames, and the gushing water snuffed them out. Then she turned in a gentle circle, with Prong awkwardly clinging to the side of her head. The Prof’s nostril hose hit all the fires in the mummy room with a ferocious whoosh, dousing the lot.
Everyone had been caught in the stream. They stood in silence among the wreckage, dripping wet. The Unpharaoh looked like a big, bedraggled dog that had just been for a swim. The tentacles that had bound Bab and his friends fell loosely to the floor, soaked.
“You still won’t join us, Andica?” asked the Prof.
“Never,” replied her sopping, hairy sister. She shook herself dry (just like bedraggled dogs do), spraying droplets all over the place.
The Prof sighed and squashed a finger against her other nostril. “Then I fear we must fight, as we did four thousand years ago. And this time, I won’t let you chew on my brain!”
SPRICK!
Prof Sharkey snorted a jagged icicle from her nose. It zigzagged towards the Unpharaoh and froze her entire hairy body in a huge cube of ice. Only the roots of the Unpharaoh Beard were free, trailing from the ice cube onto Cainus’s chin.
“Mum,” said Bab. “That. Was. Awesome.”
“Ice cold,” Scaler agreed.
The dripping jackal began to panic, his paws scrabbling on the stone floor. He pulled at the ice cube but it would not budge.
“What have you done to my queen?” he whimpered.
“Put her on ice, it seems,” said Bab.
Then a dreadful thought occurred to him. “It’s a super-hot day though,” he said. “How long till it melts?”
Bab stormed right up to the frozen Unpharaoh. Her hairy face was stuck in a hideous snarl. Cainus desperately scratched at the ice cube but his claws barely made a dent.
That ice looks thick, Bab thought. And it’s magic, so with luck she’s stuck in there for good. But if not . . . well, I guess Mum is an awesome sorceress again now, so she can just refreeze her. Can’t she?
He looked to his mum for reassurance. The Prof’s eyes were screwed up into small wrinkles, and she was pressing her fingers into her forehead.
“Arrgh, brain freeze,” she moaned. “I feel like I slurped one of those blue slushy drinks you love so much, Babby. Always happens with nostril ice magic, you know. Oh, what I would give for a hot cuppa right now.”
Bab noticed that Prong was no longer hugging the Prof. In fact, she had fallen to the floor and her dirty pink hat sat a few feet away. Most notably, her head had swollen up like a giant balloon. It had swallowed up most of her beak, leaving only a tiny bit sticking out, like a pair of tweezers.
Prong stood up, planted her wings on either side of her huge head, and shook it vigorously.
“I can’t hear my potato rattle,” she chirped through her teeny beak. Her voice was high-pitched, like someone was pinching her nose. “My precious potato, where is it?”
Scaler scuttled over and peered inside one of Prong’s bird-hole ears. “Your head’s running on empty,” she said.
Bab rushed to his mum and peered closely at her. She’d changed, too. Her head wasn’t swollen like Prong’s – it was its regular, slightly-bigger-than-normal self. But her face was lined and tired, just as it had been before. The dancing wisps of purple magic had faded to nothing.
“Mum, are you okay?” Bab asked. “You look like . . . regular Mum again.”
“Purple magic is powerful stuff, Babby,” she said, straightening her glasses. “Even in ancient times it was a strain on my brain. I suppose all those nostril blasts were too much for that little mummified brain chunk to handle. It must have exploded inside Prong’s head.”
Bab turned to the big-headed ibis and frowned. “Hold still, Prong,” he told her. Remembering how you let air out of bike tyres, he pulled her tweezers-beak to relieve the pressure in her skull.
Pfffttttt!
Prong’s head deflated back to its normal size. The Ibis Mummy honked with relief.
Scaler placed a rotten hoof on her bird friend’s shoulder. “Sorry Prong,” she said, “but it seems your potato got baked.”
“Baked?” squawked Prong. “I didn’t see any chefs around!”
The frazzled Ibis Mummy flapped about the ruined room. “Where are you, chef? Come out and give me my baked potato please. Preferably with some yummy herbs.”
She spotted her dirty pink hat on the floor and snatched it up. “A-ha. My potato wasn’t baked after all – someone stole it! See, my hat fell off. It had no protection. I made this hat specifically to protect the potato!”
Scaler shot Bab a sideways glance. “And you didn’t believe me when I said the potato made her smarter.”
Bab gave Prong a gentle pat. “It’s gone, Prong,” he explained. “Mum’s magic was too much for it. The brain chunk blew up and now it’s probably just a pile of dust behind your eyes.”
Hearing this seemed to cheer Prong up. She placed the old hat back on her head. “Well I’d best keep wearing this, then. There could be more chefs lurking around. They’d love to get their hands on some potato dust. Mmm, sounds delicious doesn’t it? Ahhh-chooo!”
Prong sneezed a brown cloud into Bab’s face.
“And there’s the potato dust,” Bab said, coughing and spluttering. Wiping the brain powder off his face, he smiled at his ibis friend.
At least Prong is still herself without the brain chunk, he thought. More bonkers maybe, but still my funny, loving friend.
CREAKKK. CRACK-K-K.
Bab spun around to check the Unpharoah in her ice cube. Her scarlet eyes glowed like hot coals. The ice around her was splintering.
CRACKKK. SNAWP-P-P.
Cainus was busy fanning the roots of his Beard with his patchy paws. “Hot hot hot,” he cried. “My queen is furious. This Beard feels like it’s on fire!”
He desperately blew at his chin like it was one of those trick birthday candles that never goes out.
CHACK!
A hot horn of hair burst through the surface of the ice cube.
CHACK!
CHACK!
CHACK!
Wicked spikes of hair pierced the cube in three places. Its surface was webbed with white cracks.
Dammit, thought Bab. His Cotton Beard couldn’t beat the Unpharaoh. And his mum had lost her power again.
I can’t believe I put Mum in this dangerous situation, he thought. She wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t asked her to shop for more marshmallows . . . MARSHMALLOWS!
“Beard,” Bab shouted, “turn into a giant marshmallow. With a tunnel leading inside!”
The fluffy white tuft grew into exactly that.
“Quick, everyone in!” Bab commanded. Prong, Scaler and the Prof scrambled inside the delicious treat and Bab followed them.
“Oooh, it’s cosy in here,” honked Prong. “Reminds me of the Spongy Void!” She sank her cheek affectionately into the side of the tunnel. Bab shuddered at the memory and pushed Prong deeper into the Beard Mallow.
CHACK-ER-RACK!
Like an enraged hedgehog, the Unpharoah Beard burst through the ice cube. She sent showers of freezing splinters all over the mummy room.
Smoke and fire fumed from her nostrils. The hairy horns on the top of her head grew and grew and grew until they pierced through the museum’s ceiling. Whizzing about like a blender blade, she thrashed around the room, sending ancient artefacts, chunks of wall and even whole pillars soaring through the air.
The spinning queen biffed into the fluffy Beard Mallow. It bounced like a beach ball through the broken walls and onto the dusty pavement outside the museum.
“Waarghh!” yelled Bab, Scaler and the Prof from inside the marshmallow.
“Weeee, yippee!” honked Prong in delight.
Cainus looked at his mistress, trembling. He could feel her rage burning into him through the Beard.
“My Majestic Spikiness,” he babbled, “don’t you think we should simply make the best of it and return to Mumphis? We don’t need Cairo and the rest of the world. Mumphis is a lovely little town, really, with all the shops one needs. It’s just that . . . I don’t like feeling the feeling of your feelings. If you know what I mean?”
Cainus shook with rage. It was not his own, it was the rage he was absorbing from the Unpharaoh. It turned his patchy skin purple and he shivered violently.
The Unpharaoh glared at him. Without so much as a word, she sprouted two long, hairy spikes from the base of her head. She balanced on the spike-legs gracefully for a moment, like a ballerina. Then she gave Cainus a swift kick to the head before tiptoeing through the rubble and heading outside.
Cainus rubbed his patchy head. “I take it that’s a no, then.”
The Beard Mallow rolled like a huge fluffy die and came to a stop outside the rear of the museum.
Most of the Animal Mummy army had scampered off into Cairo to cause more damage, as the Unpharaoh had ordered. The Elephant Mummies were still here though, obediently guarding the museum’s exterior.
The area was a wreck. Fires crackled, rubble lay strewn about, water gushed from a broken pipe. A few helicopters whirred overhead, wary of coming too close.
The Elephant Mummies poked the giant fluffball with their trunks.
“What is it?” asked Madge the big-boned Elephant Mummy.
“It’s a cloud, it’s fallen from above,” replied Betty with the floppy ears. “The exploding building must have broken the sky. Look! There’s another cloud coming out of the museum . . . and it’s walking.”
Madge peered at where Betty was pointing. “That’s a storm cloud, Betty. It’s so dark! I haven’t seen many storm clouds in Egypt before.”
“Especially not a walking one with red eyes and a bad attitude,” agreed Betty.
The Unpharaoh Beard tiptoed towards them on its needle-like legs at great speed. She pressed a hairy finger to her nostril and let fly a stream of fireballs. Madge and Betty leaped aside as the balls slammed into the fluffy Beard, toasting it black like a marshmallow at camp.
Inside the Beard Mallow, beads of sweat ran down Bab’s face. “Man, it’s hot in here.”
“What’s that smell?” asked the Prof.
Sniff, sniff. “Smells like sweaty human to me,” Scaler said, and pinched her pinhole nostrils shut.
“Pee-yeww, it’s burning hair!” Bab hollered. Wisps of toxic smoke began to fill the marshmallow, making him and his mum choke.
Shlop!
Unable to take the heat, Bab’s Beard Mallow shrank away and retracted onto his chin. Its occupants fell in a heap on the hot pavement.
They were just getting their bearings when the Unpharaoh Beard jumped on them.
“Oof!” Bab gasped.
“Whoofff!” spluttered Prof Sharkey.
The Unpharaoh used her prickly spike-legs to pin Bab and his mum to the ground. Bab could hardly breathe.
For a mop of hair, he thought, the Unpharaoh Beard is extremely heavy.
“Now that you have witnessed your worlds collapsing,” the queen sneered, “it is time to get rid of you. I could end you so easily, Bab and Shoshan Sharkey.”
“Don’t rush into it,” choked Bab.
“I shan’t do it at all.”
Bab wrinkled his nose. What?
“You would not suffer enough if you were destroyed by your worst enemy. No, no. I have thought of much better people to finish you both off.”
She crouched and peered into Bab’s face. Her scratchy hairs pricked his cheeks. Heat blazed from her eyes.
“You value love and friendship so dearly,” she croaked. “Let us see how you like them when they turn against you. Animal Mummies!”
The Animal Mummies snapped to attention.
“Kill Bab Sharkey and his half-brained mother!”
Scattered through the nearby streets, the Animal Mummies stopped pulling the city apart and gasped, horrified by their new order. But there was no resisting the power of the Beard. For centuries its magic hairs had commanded the animals of Egypt, and today was no exception. The mummies had no choice but to obey.
Teeth gnashing, claws extended, hearts broken, they started towards Bab and the Prof.
Without their burgermuffs, Scaler and Prong had heard the command too. Tears streamed down their faces as they slowly turned to attack their dear friend.
But the hairy queen pointed a long, spiky fingernail at them. “Hold it right there, fish and bird.”
Scaler and Prong stopped as ordered. Prong gave a little honk of relief.
“You two mummies are awfully fond of each other, aren’t you?” said the Unpharaoh. Her usual vicious croak sounded almost tender.
“Oh yes,” Prong honked, “Scaler and I are the bestest buddies in the whole of Mumphis-est!”
“Aww,” cooed the hairy head. “Such a friendship deserves special treatment, then. You are excused from killing your Pharaoh.”
Scaler and Prong beamed and bowed to the Unpharaoh. “Thank you!” they enthused. “Thank you, that’s really very nice of you!”
“Instead . . .” The Unpharaoh leaned in close to them and whispered her most dreadful command yet: “You will unwrap each other!”
“Oh, great,” Scaler moaned, helplessly turning towards her ibis friend. “As if killing Bab wasn’t gonna suck enough.”
Bab struggled to get out from beneath the heavy Unpharaoh leg-spike. “Scaler, look out,” he spluttered.
Prong had flapped into the air and was now pelting towards Scaler at full speed, her beak slashing the hot air like a samurai sword.
“I’m sorry, Scaler,” she honked. “I don’t know what I’m doing but my bird body seems determined to kill you!”
Scaler looked about in desperation. The pavement had been broken up by fireballs and rampaging mummies, leaving an exposed patch of sand. Scaler tore off her sewn-on legs, wrapped them in her fant
ail, and dived into the open patch. Behind her, Prong’s beak stabbed the sand like a javelin.
Like a mole underground moving at super speed, Scaler flopped and bucked, making cracks and humps in the pavement above her. Prong followed them, pecking at each one, till Scaler jumped out at her like a flying fish. Her green spiky teeth chomped together, narrowly missing Prong’s head.
“Hoo-haaaachhh!” the Unpharaoh laughed.
Attached to her, Cainus smiled from pointy ear to pointy ear. “I am so pleased to feel your sense of joy is back, Your Happiness,” he fawned. “Such a welcome break from the constant stream of rage I was absorbing.”
Bab and the Prof madly tried to wriggle free from the Unpharaoh’s spike-legs, but it was no use. They were pinned like food under chopsticks and running out of breath.
The Animal Mummies were returning. Bab recognised all his old friends. Ned the Crocodile Mummy, Celeste the Cat Mummy, Boovus the Hippo, and little Quacker the Egg Mummy, who used to hug Bab’s legs. Bab saw their ragged claws and green teeth getting ready to rip him to shreds.
I can’t move, he thought. I can’t breathe! Mum . . . help . . .
The Prof reached out and grabbed Bab’s hand. She looked weak and pale but squeezed his fingers so tightly he feared they’d break.
Perhaps it was selfish, but Bab shut his eyes and thought, I’m glad my mum’s here.
A great force tore the Prof’s hand out of Bab’s.
BAMP! BOOF!
A mound of earth ballooned under Prof Sharkey, bumping her out from under the Unpharaoh’s spike-leg. But Bab remained pinned.
Scaler burst from the ground in an arcing leap. In mid-air, she cast the fish hook from her lip. It spooled out towards Prong on the end of a bandage fishing line, but missed. Instead, Scaler’s line whipped around and around Cainus’s patchy head, till her fish hook buried itself in his snout.
“Yaaargh!” yelped the jackal.
The Fish Mummy yelled at Bab and the Prof. “While I’m trying to kill Prong, I’ll try and save you Pharaoh dudes!”
Twirling, she unlooped her fishing line from Cainus and dived into the sand once more. She poked her head out again just beside Bab.
The Prickly Battle Page 7