The Unpharaoh cackled with glee. “What a glorious battle!”
Prong spun in the air and shot towards her fish friend like a dart at a dartboard. Scaler jumped aside and Prong’s beak lodged into the prickly spike-leg that was pinning Bab down.
“Yowch!” cried the Unpharaoh. “Get off me, you pathetic bird!”
The Unpharaoh Beard plucked Prong from her spike-leg with a giant hairy hand and shook her like a can of spray paint.
Prong honked in protest, her voice juddering. “B-b-buutttt I-I-I haaave to kill-l-ll myyyy best-t-t friend-d-d-d-d!”
Scaler reattached her limbs and leaped onto the Unpharaoh’s shaking arm, trying to climb along it and reach Prong.
“Musstt-t-t unwrap-p-p P-p-pronggggg!” she stuttered as the hairy arm rattled her from side to side.
SPLOOSH!
Prof Sharkey raced up, pulling the broken water pipe along with her. She used it to spray a jet of water over the Unpharaoh’s spike-legs.
“Blecch, what is this?” demanded the queen.
“Who needs a magic nostril hose,” the Prof chuckled, “when a real one will do?”
Because the spike-legs were made of hair, the water left them soggy. They now dangled wetly from the Unpharaoh’s head, and Bab was at last able to roll free.
The Prof hurled the pipe aside. She wrapped Bab in a hug and the colour returned to his cheeks.
But the Animal Mummies were nearly upon them.
With air finally in his lungs again, Bab’s mind sprang into action. I don’t want to hurt my friends. Even if they are trying to kill us.
“Beard,” he said, “shield me and Mum with . . . what’s soft and cottony, Mum?”
“Giant teddy bears,” the Prof replied without missing a beat.
“With teddy bears!”
Fuppa-foop!
The Cotton Beard expanded into six fluffy white teddies, each the size of a house. Sitting side by side, they formed a protective ring around Bab and the Prof.
Outside the ring of stuffed toys, the Unpharaoh was getting smothered by the Animal Mummies. Her own army was clambering over her to get to Bab and Prof Sharkey. Her giant hands had stopped shaking about, weighed down by bandaged elephants and hippos. She toppled over, and camels, bulls, crocodiles and falcons pushed her hairy face into the cracked pavement.
“Phfeeff, pheff,” she spat. She couldn’t command her army to get off her because her hairy mouth was stuffed with crawling Animal Mummies.
“Yowwwweee!” Cainus shrieked. “Get off my queen, you bedraggled oafs! Hey! Watch where you put those hooves!” Several Gazelle Mummies trampled his face on their way to the Cotton Teddies.
“Prong!” shouted Scaler. “Where are you? I can’t see you through this stampede!”
With the Unpharaoh flailing, Prong had wriggled out of her hairy hand. “I’m over here,” she honked, “among the other Fish Mummies. Come find me so I can destroy you!”
The swarming mummies reached the giant Cotton Teddies. They scratched and picked at the fluffy feet and legs, pulling out chunks of stuffing with their teeth and spitting them aside.
Bab knew it was only a matter of time before they carved their way through.
I can’t stop thinking about the way Cainus senses the Unpharaoh’s feelings, he thought. Her feelings must go right through the Beard hairs and into his chin.
An idea hit him like a nostril fireball.
“Mum,” he said. “Andica was so hurt when you said you never loved her. Her rage went next level.”
“I tried to love her Babby,” sighed the Prof, “I really did. But the purple magic warped her so badly that loving her became impossible.”
“I think that’s behind everything – everything she’s ever done. It drives her anger, her need to be number one. So maybe if we make her realise she is loved, she’ll feel the opposite.”
The Prof smiled sadly. “It’s a lovely idea, Bab. But after all she’s done to you and the world, who could possibly love her now?”
Bab grinned. “There is somebody.”
Bab seized the back of one of the Cotton Teddies and began to climb it. By grabbing fistfuls of cotton and jamming his feet in to make footholds, he was able to clamber right up to the teddy’s shoulder.
Below, the Animal Mummies swarmed around the teddy ring. Soon it was completely surrounded. They chewed and ripped at the soft fluff, compelled to break inside and destroy their Pharaoh.
Just beyond them, the Unpharaoh was finally free from the last of the mummy stampede. She lifted herself back up onto her spike-legs, which had dried stiff again in the unusual heat.
“Hey, Andica,” Bab shouted to her. “I finally understand why you’re doing this. Why you’re so set on being the only one!”
His aunt glared up at him, scarlet eyes smouldering.
“It’s because no one ever loved you,” Bab went on. “Not your mum and dad. Not even your twin sister. No one. Right, Cainus?”
Cainus puffed his chest out and stood to his full height. “How dare you say that!” he snarled. “There is someone who loves my mistress. Someone who has always been there for her. Who has loved her for centuries, would even die for her.”
The Unpharaoh narrowed her eyes, tense with suspicion. “Who? Who is this loving fool?”
“Me,” declared Cainus. “I love you, Your Majesty. I love you even more than I love myself – which is a lot!”
Never had Bab heard Cainus sound so poshly passionate.
“You know he does, Andica,” shouted Bab with a triumphant grin. “Cainus loves you. Can’t you feel it? Come on, Aunty, you’re attached to his head. He’s been feeling your emotions, so concentrate. Maybe you can feel his emotions too. Maybe – whoa!”
The Cotton Teddy swayed dangerously beneath Bab.
Shrup! SHRUP!
The frenzied Animal Mummies had torn away so much from the base of the Cotton Teddies, the huge fluffy toys were becoming unstable. The one Bab was on flopped badly, almost tipping him backwards into the middle of the protective ring.
He clutched the cotton, staring intently at the Unpharaoh.
Come on, he thought. Try it, lady. Try to feel something.
The Unpharaoh might not have been persuaded. But Cainus was.
The jackal threw himself down before his mistress’s spiky legs.
“I have indeed felt your emotions through the Beard, Your Majesty,” Cainus said to his mistress. He looked at her pleadingly. “Can you not feel mine too?”
An expression passed over the Unpharaoh’s face that Bab had never seen on her before. Somehow, her normally hideous visage softened. The bristly hair turned smooth. Her wicked horns and spikes became plump.
What the heck is that look? Bab wondered.
Then it hit him. It’s affection. Love, even.
The Unpharaoh is feeling love!
“What is happening to me?” said the sorceress. “What is happening inside meeee?”
It wasn’t just her face that had changed, her voice sounded different too. Gentler somehow.
“Cainus,” she said, “I feel so . . . so many things. Warm and excited and . . . what’s this one? Perhaps a little scared! Tee-hee-hee!”
The scarlet of her eyes drained away to a pale pink. She blinked her hairy eyelids and her eyes turned white – white, with gentle brown irises.
Her rage has gone, thought Bab with wonder. Her eyes are like a normal person’s.
But his wonder was soon torn apart.
Shhrupp!
All at the same time, the Animal Mummies ripped through the base of Bab’s Beard Teddies.
The giant soft toys collapsed, sending Bab tumbling into the middle of the now-useless teddy ring. The remaining giant tufts of teddy cotton softened his fall, but as soon as he hit the ground, his Cotton Beard shrank back onto his chin and the teddies were gone.
He got up. And in a flurry of claws and hooves, snarling and yapping, the Animal Mummies came for him.
Ned the Crocodile Mummy was
the first to reach Bab. He opened his bandaged snout and chomped down on Bab’s neck, his ancient teeth pricking the skin. Bab was accidentally saved from instant death by Madge the Elephant Mummy, who walloped Bab with her rotten trunk, knocking him onto his back. Then Chase the Camel Mummy reared up, flailing his front hooves as he prepared to smash them down on his old Pharaoh.
BAM!
Bab turned his face aside just in time, only to find Larry the Moth Mummy trying to suffocate him with a flapping wing.
Beside Bab swooped a flurry of Scarab Beetle Mummies. They buzzed around Prof Sharkey and nipped her with tiny pincers. She cried out and fell as Celeste the Cat Mummy stabbed her leg with needle-sharp whiskers.
All the while, the attacking mummies hollered: “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry, Pharaoh Bab! Sorry, Shoshan!”
Meanwhile, Prong closed a bandaged talon around Scaler’s throat. A claw hooked under one of Scaler’s bandages and began to pull it away. Flames sparked out of the wound it left as Scaler began to burn up.
Returning the attack, Scaler clamped her spiky green teeth around Prong’s wing. She tore a chunk out of the ibis’s bandages, causing her friend’s body to flicker with flame.
“Goodbye, Scaler!” Prong wailed. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“We have the coolest friendship a fish could ask for, Prongy,” Scaler said. “Even if we do wipe each other out of existence occasionally.”
In Scaler’s desperation not to chew up her best friend, she tried to pry her own mouth back open with her hooves. But it was no good. The Beard magic was too strong. She couldn’t disobey the Unpharaoh’s order.
Bab squeezed his eyes shut as a fresh batch of crazed, apologising Mumphis townsfolk piled on top of him. Every part of him was squashed, prodded or pierced by ancient claws and teeth. The mummies’ breath reeked of rotten spices. Bab tried to draw his own breath, but the creatures were crushing his chest.
He had a mad thought as he began to black out. If I can get inside one of them, I’ll go back to the Afterworld. Like when the Moth Mummy swallowed me up.
Insanely, he started tearing at the mummies’ bellies.
Then a booming voice stopped everything.
“Animal Mummies!”
The shout came from the Unpharaoh.
She gazed around at her squawking, hooting, barking army. “Animal Mummies!” she cried. “Stop the attack! Stop at once, I say!”
Bab sucked in a giant breath as the Animal Mummies piled off him. He noticed his mum doing exactly the same as the mummies freed her too.
Scaler and Prong instantly stopped tearing at one another. Their ferocious grapple turned into a giant, teary hug.
“This pointless violence must end at once!” the Unpharaoh declared. “What was I doing? What was I thinking?”
She surveyed the destruction she’d caused – the ruined gardens, the shattered buildings. A strange sound came out of her hairy mouth as realisation struck her. It was a heartbroken moan.
Bab stood up, wincing at his bruises and cuts. “Now do you see, Andica?” he said. “All those thousands of years of ruining lives, just to be number one. There’s no need for that now.”
“I do,” she said, her voice breaking. “I do see. These feelings, Cainus, gushing into me from your chin. This is what it feels like to truly care for someone?”
Cainus blushed as red as the Egyptian sunset. “It is, Your Majesty. My Majesty. My darling Majesty, who I love more than fashionable clothing itself. What you’re feeling are my feelings about you.”
Tears welled in the Unpharaoh’s newly white eyes. “You love me so much, Cainus. You always have, and you always will.”
“It’s not bad, is it, Andica?” Prof Sharkey asked her. “And if you can feel love, then . . . perhaps you and I can begin to love each other. As we should have all those centuries ago.”
“Indeed we can,” Andica replied. She swished over to Bab. “And you, Bab Sharkey, I should feel like this about you too. My wonderful, funny, clever nephew.”
She reached out a hairy tentacle and gently ruffled Bab’s hair. It made him feel very peculiar.
“Cainus,” she said, turning to her faithful jackal, “let us leave this world together. I want to settle down somewhere comfortable in the Afterworld, with you by my side. Forever. To think I didn’t like that lovely place, with its five-star facilities and family-friendly water sports!”
Prong broke into a round of applause. “This is the sweetest love story I ever heard,” she honked, wiping away joyous tears. “Except maybe for that one about the Ostrich Mummy who fell in love with a tray of dustburger crumbs.”
“That’s a real tearjerker,” Scaler agreed. “You need a whole box of papyrus tissues to get through that one.”
Bab couldn’t help grinning at the idea of Cainus and the Unpharaoh living happily ever after in paradise. “So now you know you’re not alone,” he told her. “Cainus has always been there for you.”
The Unpharaoh patted Cainus with a tentacle and he quivered with glee. “You have, haven’t you, Cainus?” she cooed.
Then she frowned. Which made Cainus frown too.
“Thank goodness you sent your feelings into me through the Beard,” she went on. “Otherwise I would have gone on thinking of you as . . . just a jackal.”
Cainus’s ears pricked up and he chuckled. Bab heard a nervous edge to the laugh.
“Very amusing, Your Majesty,” Cainus replied. “‘Just a jackal,’ ha-ha! Just a jackal who you always cared for, don’t you mean? A jackal who shared a small, special place in your eternal heart? Just a little, that is?”
A tear rolled down the Unpharaoh’s hairy face. “No. That’s the shame of it, Cainus, I never cared for you at all.”
Cainus cocked his head to one side. “Come now, Your Greatness. Not at all? Not even a teensy, tiny, weeny little itty-bitty bit?”
“Not one bit. It breaks my heart now to realise just how little you meant to me. You were just a useful jackal slave – and not even that useful, if truth be told.”
Bab swallowed as he saw a terrible change come over Cainus. The jackal’s blushing complexion turned grey. His pointy ears folded back against his head. His body stiffened. He looked like a dog ready to attack.
“It’s true,” Cainus said in a low growl. “I feel it through the Beard. I can feel your nothingness. Your total lack of feelings for me.”
The Unpharaoh’s face began to change too. She was absorbing Cainus’s fury from the hairs attached to his chin. Her eyes flooded red once again. The hair she was made of bristled, and her prickles stood on end. She bared her horn-fangs and hissed.
“Cainus’s anger is feeding back into her, Bab,” warned Prof Sharkey. “This will undo everything.”
“No, no, no,” Bab said. “Cainus, stop sending her your feelings!”
The Unpharaoh howled. “Never have I felt such rage,” she cried. “Even my own is not as strong as this bitter anger of yours, Cainus, bursting forth like a torrent of sour blood. This is bliss! I shall use this to fuel my ambition anew!”
She planted a finger against her nose and blasted a fireball straight at the Egyptian Museum. But this wasn’t just any fireball. Fuelled by the rage she’d absorbed from Cainus, it was ten times the size of her usual missiles.
WUBBA-WUMP!
Bab crouched and covered his head as the enormous ball of flame flattened the entire museum. All its priceless treasures were obliterated, and vast chunks of blackened stone hurtled skyward. Bab rolled aside to protect himself from the searing heat.
The hundreds of Animal Mummies squealed and scurried for shelter among the ruined buildings nearby.
Cainus snarled at his mistress. “Curse you, Your Majesty. No, not Your Majesty – Your Nastiness. Your Selfishness, Your Emptiness. Your Worst-ness! I will destroy you!”
Prof Sharkey gave a grief-stricken sigh. “And I thought love might solve this,” she said.
Bab felt impossibly sad. Cainus is right, he thought. Now she has to be de
stroyed. Or she’ll destroy the world.
Cainus bit savagely at the base of his Beard, then yelped as his teeth clamped onto something hard.
CLONK!
It was the dark shen rings. Bab noticed them for the first time, just as Cainus’s fangs bounced off them.
That’s it! he thought.
“Cainus, listen to me,” Bab said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Before your heartless boss’s nostril recharges.”
“Careful now, Bab,” said Prof Sharkey.
Bab continued. “You wear the Pharaoh’s Beard now, Cainus. You don’t have to let that selfish sorceress push you around any more.”
The Unpharaoh cackled at Bab. “That idiotic mutt has no power, boy. Surely you see by now, I am the Beard. It is I who am in charge. And now, thanks to my jackal slave’s anger, I am more powerful than I ever dreamed possible.”
Bab ignored her and kept on. “The Unpharaoh would have you believe you can’t command the Beard. But you’re wearing it, Cainus. It chose you! And there’s a funny thing about magic beards. They can be destroyed.”
“That’s true, Cainus,” said Prof Sharkey. “I did it myself recently.”
Cainus’s eyes were fixed steadily on Bab. Froth spilled over his lip. “How?” he asked quietly. “Tell me how.”
“Order those shen rings to come off!” Bab yelled.
The Unpharaoh shrieked. “Nooo! Do not listen to him, Cainus. He is the foul, false Pharaoh Bab Sharkey, you cannot trust him. He is trying to trick you!”
Cainus looked at his mistress, then back at Bab. He trembled with indecision.
The Unpharaoh grinned. “You cannot do it, can you? You love me too dearly, even beneath your rage. Hoo-haaccchhh! Listen to me, Animal Mummies!”
“Do it, Cainus,” Bab told him. “Don’t let her take control of her army again. Think of the time you wasted on her.”
Bab hoped he was right. That Cainus could indeed command the shen rings to come off.
The Prickly Battle Page 8