The Prickly Battle

abstract.”
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