“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-new 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.”
His friends whipped the burgermuffs over their ears, just in time to block out the sound of the Unpharaoh’s command: “Follow me. And if anyone tries to stop us, destroy them!”
Bab could do nothing but watch as the Unpharaoh Beard drifted along the street, leading her parade of Animal Mummies towards the heart of Cairo. He slumped helplessly in a doorway, trying not to weep as his townsfolk marched past him.
Each Animal Mummy met his gaze as they marched, looking for hope in Bab’s eyes but finding none. Bab would never forget those ancient, desperate faces.
After the Animal Mummies had disappeared from sight, Bab felt a tap on his shoulder. Someone had popped out of the doorway and was leaning over to greet him.
“Cheer up, Babby-Boo,” said Prof Sharkey, showing him an ancient pot. “Look what I found.”
“Mum!” Bab cried. “You’re okay!”
“Yes,” Prof Sharkey assured him chirpily, “and it turns out my prickly sister was listening to my thoughts after all. We shall have to do something about her, shan’t we? Otherwise I won’t be okay, and neither will anybody else.”
Prong whipped off her burgermuffs and flapped over. “Hello, flesh-mum!” she honked.
“Heya, Shoshan,” said Scaler. “Sorry to see you ditched your camel face.”
“You look quite scary now,” added Prong.
Prof Sharkey chuckled. “The most extraordinary thing happened,” she told them all. “I was just driving away from the dig site, and all of a sudden I looked in the rear-view mirror and there it was. Your lovely animal city! Of course I couldn’t resist popping in for a stickybeak, although it wasn’t quite so lovely up close. Enraged cactuses everywhere.”
“Mumphis reappeared when I got this beard,” Bab explained. “I guess you could see it too because you wore the Pharaoh’s Beard yourself quite recently. Its magic
