“But I always loved you, Andica,” said the Prof.
“Really?” said the Unpharaoh. “Did you, really?”
“Of course I did!”
The two fell silent for a moment. All Bab could hear was the crackling of the spreading flames. Their heat was becoming very uncomfortable.
Prof Sharkey swallowed. “No,” she admitted. “You are right, Andica, and I cannot lie to you. I did try, but you made it impossible to love you.”
“There it is. That is what drove me to visit the magician. To learn purple magic and become the Pharaoh of Egypt. It was bad enough how our mother and father felt about me. But knowing that you, my twin sister, despised me . . .”
Scaler clamped her burgermuffs over her ears and groaned. “I don’t wanna hear your hard luck story, lady,” she said.
The Unpharaoh frowned at the Fish Mummy’s burgermuffs. “Ah! So that is why you and the bird have not been following my orders. Dustburgers! I must admit, I’m impressed.”
Scaler shrugged at her. “Can’t hear a word, honey.”
Cainus harrumphed. “You will listen to my mistress!” he said haughtily. “Besides, those earmuffs are a fashion disaster.”
He jumped on Scaler’s burgermuffs, munching them up and swallowing the lot.
Tears streamed down the Prof’s face. “I’m sorry, Andica,” she wept. “I’m truly sorry. And I am sorry for the world too, for I cannot convince you to join us in it peacefully.”
I know what that means, Bab realised. We have to fight.
Bab looked desperately around for something to fight with.
Among the burning relics, he spotted the new Smoothie of Immortality. Cainus, now busy chewing up Prong’s burgermuffs, had discarded the pot just nearby. Could it be of use somehow? Bab picked it up.
Shaking off Cainus, Prong flapped over and hugged the Prof. “Don’t be sad, flesh-mum. You did a terrific job as a twin sister! Except for the not-loving-her bit, that’s all.” The sweet ibis planted a big kiss on the Prof’s cheek.
As soon as she did so, Prof Sharkey’s hair sprang up in coils. Her posture became more alert and her dim eyes glowed with sharp intelligence.
“Mum?” said Bab. “Are you okay?”
Bab was starting to feel dizzy from the heat, and smoke was cooking his lungs.
“My brain!” cried Prof Sharkey. “Don’t move, Prong.”
“I don’t intend to move ever again!” Prong honked. She was blissed out, hugging Bab’s mum as they pressed their heads together.
“It seems the chunk doesn’t need to be attached,” the Prof said with a grin. “Just close by!”
The Unpharaoh scoffed. “What are you on about, you prattling twit?”
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.
