The Prickly Battle

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