Bab ignored her and kept on. “The Unpharaoh would have you believe you can’t command the Beard. But you’re wearing it, Cainus. It chose you! And there’s a funny thing about magic beards. They can be destroyed.”
“That’s true, Cainus,” said Prof Sharkey. “I did it myself recently.”
Cainus’s eyes were fixed steadily on Bab. Froth spilled over his lip. “How?” he asked quietly. “Tell me how.”
“Order those shen rings to come off!” Bab yelled.
The Unpharaoh shrieked. “Nooo! Do not listen to him, Cainus. He is the foul, false Pharaoh Bab Sharkey, you cannot trust him. He is trying to trick you!”
Cainus looked at his mistress, then back at Bab. He trembled with indecision.
The Unpharaoh grinned. “You cannot do it, can you? You love me too dearly, even beneath your rage. Hoo-haaccchhh! Listen to me, Animal Mummies!”
“Do it, Cainus,” Bab told him. “Don’t let her take control of her army again. Think of the time you wasted on her.”
Bab hoped he was right. That Cainus could indeed command the shen rings to come off.
The Animal Mummies emerged from their hiding places, alert and ready to obey the Unpharaoh. Bab saw a hundred different feelings register on Cainus’s face as the jackal thought back over the centuries.
Every insult, every nostril fireball, every lightning bolt, every cruel command . . . everything the Unpharaoh had done to Cainus seemed to be whizzing through his mind. His pointy snout twitched and his tongue flapped. His tail whipped around and his eyes blazed.
Just before the Unpharaoh could call on her army, Cainus barked his command: “Beard! Remove your shen rings.”
The dark rings shone purple, then fell to the charred ground. The Unpharaoh Beard began to shrivel and smoke. The hairy rope that attached Cainus to the Unpharaoh’s head burned like a fuse on a stick of dynamite.
The flames were blacker than night. With amazing speed, they engulfed the prickly head of the ancient sorceress. Bab gagged as the bitter stench of cooking hair and horns and meanness overwhelmed him.
“What have you done, Cainus?” the Unpharaoh bellowed. “Animal Mummies, destroy! Destroy everyone and everything. And especially, destroy Cainus the Jackal!”
But the Unpharaoh’s army just stood there. Deprived of the eternal life of the dark shen rings, the prickly Beard had no power any more. It couldn’t make them obey.
When Prof Sharkey had destroyed the original Pharaoh’s Beard, it had been strangely quiet. The Unpharaoh Beard did not disappear like that. Bab, Prof Sharkey and the Animal Mummies blocked their ears as the Beard exploded in a black inferno.
KLARP!
The deafening sound warped the sky itself.
The Unpharaoh Beard was gone. Only the dark shen rings remained, lifeless on the cracked pavement.
All was silence – except for the voice of the Unpharaoh. It echoed around the ruined square and turned Bab’s blood to ice: “I will return.”
When the Unpharaoh Beard was destroyed, the Real World had slipped apart from the world of Mumphis. Once again, the Animal Mummies became invisible to everyone – except Bab and Prof Sharkey, who were linked to them by Beard magic.
They’d been able to patch up Scaler and Prong’s torn bandages, and slip out of Cairo unnoticed among the chaotic clean-up that followed.
Social media and the TV news were ablaze with footage of the Unpharaoh and her Animal Mummy invasion. But within a few hours, most people decided they must have been mistaken about the whole experience.
“It was very hot that day,” some said.
“It was all an advertising stunt for nose drops,” said others.
“Nah,” others disagreed, “that was when the Great Pyramid grew a nose that time. The Animal Mummy invasion was an ad for the local vet.”
The Prickle Mummies created by the evil Smoothie of Immortality stopped their wandering. Their horns and prickles shrank to nothing, and they became regular Animal Mummies. Guided by strange instincts of mummy magic, they hurried to Mumphis in search of a better life.
Mumphis itself was again hidden from the Real World, its misshapen citizens safe from being thrown into museums. Especially the Egyptian Museum, which now consisted of three stone stumps and a badly twisted water pipe.
Now, Bab set his jaw grimly in the shadows of the Unpharaoh’s tomb, beneath the Mumphis Pyramid.
“She said she’d return again,” he said. “But thanks to her, I know how to stop that from ever happening.”
“We Animal Mummies should’ve done this a long time ago,” said Scaler. “It was on the Mumphis Council agenda, you know. But to be honest, we were way too freaked out to go near the Unpharaoh’s mummy.”
“The mummy looks nicer with its tummy torn open, though,” added Prong. She poked her curved beak into the cavity, which Cainus had left gaping when he’d retrieved the Beard hair.
Weird, thought Bab. I feel kind of guilty about this.
“I need to do this with some sort of respect,” he said. “She’s my aunt, after all.”
“And my sister,” said Prof Sharkey. “Tricky as she is to love.”
Bab took a deep breath. “I didn’t even think of doing this till she burned the mummies of those Pharaohs. Now she’ll get a taste of her own plan.”
He stroked his Cotton Beard. “Beard? Do this as gently as you can. Make it decent. But do it.”
The Cotton Beard twitched. Two little white hands popped out and made a shrugging gesture, as if asking Bab what he wanted.
Bab closed his eyes for a moment till he felt ready.
“Unwrap the Unpharaoh’s mummy,” he said.
Fuppa-FOOP!
The Beard extended into a long trunk and sprouted a dozen large, fluffy hands. They set to work on the mummy, delicately peeling away its bandages.
SHHPLURG. SHHPLURG
The bandages made unpleasant slurping noises as they came off. The process didn’t take long. Within minutes, the foul wrappings lay in a pile beside the stone slab and the Unpharaoh’s skeleton was exposed for all to see.
Some of her organs had been mummified
