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
