As for the sorceress’s brain, Bab realised it was still lying squashed and dried up in the corner. He’d tossed it away when he’d first battled his aunt. It felt so long ago.
The Unpharaoh’s bare remains lay there in perfect stillness.
Bab frowned. In the darkness it was hard to tell, but he could swear he saw a figure standing behind the slab. A frightful man with sunken eyes and moonlight glowing from beneath his skin.
The magician by the Nile, Bab thought. The teacher of purple magic.
Bab blinked and the figure changed. Now it was a creature with the body of a jackal and the head of a donkey.
That’s Seth, thought Bab, the god of chaos and terrible game shows. Was Seth the magician all along?
Then with a quiet puff, the Unpharaoh’s remains crumbled to dust. The strange figure vanished with them – if it had been there at all.
Bab felt a delicious warmth spread from his belly up to his face. “Do you feel that?” he asked his mum.
“Yes,” she said. “It proves Andica’s spirit is gone. Gone forever. Even in the Afterworld, her very existence planted a deep chill inside everyone. But now she is no more.”
Prong ruffled her wings and honked, “I feel the warmth too.”
“And me,” said Scaler, stretching her sewn-on legs with a satisfied groan. “A world without the Unpharaoh sure feels fine!”
But a sense of disappointment swept over Bab. He sat on the cold floor of the tomb, clutching his knees. “I wish Andica had taken the chance,” he said. “She could have let go of all that ambition and settled down with Cainus. I just wish it had worked out better.”
“No.” A posh, silky voice rang out from the far end of the tomb. “This way is best.”
Bab stood up and made his way over to Cainus. “Cainus. I’m sorry she let you down.”
Cainus whimpered like a puppy. Bab wasn’t sure how to handle the heartbroken creature.
Should I ruffle his pointy ears? Hmm, let’s not go that far.
“She can’t break your heart any more,” Bab told him. “The thing about love is . . . geez, I don’t know about love, I’m twelve! But I can see you’re pretty bummed out.”
Cainus shot Bab a pleading look.
“Nooo way,” said Bab. He grabbed Cainus’s headscarf and led him out of the tomb and into the town square. “Don’t think you’re staying with us. Not after all you’ve done. I was happy to bring you here to watch me destroy that mummy, but you need to head off to your big old tomb now. There’s a good dog.”
Cainus blinked in the sunlight and sighed. “I shall return there on one condition, Bab Sharkey. Allow me to go shopping in the Souk for as many dashing outfits and velvet cushions as I can carry. All I require are a few nice knick-knacks, then the mummies of Mumphis will never hear from me again.”
Bab considered this. “Deal.”
“Plus, I don’t mind the Tomb so much,” Cainus admitted. “Not now that my jackal friends are back.”
Indeed, when Bab had first returned to Mumphis with Cainus and the others, the cactus jackals had tried to attack them. But Bab had explained how Cainus had destroyed the Unpharaoh Beard. The cactuses had to obey him, as he was their true master now.
“See here,” Cainus had announced, showing the cactus jackals the dark shen rings. “Behold the evidence of my victory!”
The cactus jackals had been so impressed, they began panting and hanging on Cainus’s every word.
Now they sat their spiny behinds outside the Unpharaoh’s tomb, waiting for their beloved master to emerge.
“Jackals!” Cainus said to them. Bab detected a new note of pride in his tone. “I think we’ll have a jolly old time in the Tomb of the Jackals from now on. There’s no more Unpharaoh to bow and scrape to. Let us return there and brick up that dreadful magic wall!”
The cactus jackals yelped in approval, stomping their prickly green paws.
“And then,” Cainus added, “we must have a proper jackal party. No cactus juice, this time. Just plenty of snarling and yapping and fashion parades!”
Inspired, Scaler yanked her bony bass guitar out of her bandages and began plucking a riff. Her Fish Mummy bandmates heard the twanging and sand-swam over to join in.
“Hit it, Cainus,” said Scaler.
Cainus struck a disco pose and cried, “My moment in the spotlight has finally arrived!”
For effect, he leaped into a pool of sunlight that shone through a cracked shop.
“It’s been four thousand years and now I finally see,” he sang.
“The Unpharaoh’s not for me.
She’s gone forever so the good times are here.
You know we’re gonna have to mark the day,
So let’s party in our Tomb, the cactus jackal way.
Let’s have a prickly party!
Let’s have a prickly party!
Let’s have a prickly party, in fancy clothes!”
The upbeat song ended and all the Animal Mummies in town cheered and whooped. Beaming, Cainus seized a nearby Baboon Mummy – the one he’d attacked a while ago – and said, “So, Mr Critic. What do you think of my rhyming now?”
“Your rhyming is . . .”
The Baboon Mummy stared skywards, trying to think of a suitable word.
“. . . lame,” he concluded.
“Bah!” Cainus snapped. “Jackals, let us leave this city of tone-deaf ingrates!”
Yowling in glee, the cactus jackals followed Cainus out of Mumphis and over the dunes.
Prof Sharkey chuckled. “My toes are quite worn out from tapping to that funky beat,” she declared.
“Not just your toes, Mum,” said Bab with a grin. “All of us are worn out from top to bottom. I could sleep for as long as you’ve been alive!”
The Prof grinned back at her son. “Precisely. We need a break,
