The Spongy Void filled with muffled cheers and whoops. It was the painted people celebrating Bab’s remarkable escape.
“Jolly good, old boy!”
“You rock, rocky dude!”
“Yes! This inescapable trap is escapable!”
Bab gave them all a stony thumbs-up. “We’ll fix you somehow, Dad,” he told the hieroglyph on his belly. “So, er, Prong, can I have the Beard back now please?”
Prong shrugged her wings. The Beard remained stubbornly on her beak.
“Hmm,” Bab pondered, “it probably won’t go to a statue.”
“Or perhaps I’ve become stupider than you,” honked Prong. “I mean smarter. Which one does it go to, smart or stupid?”
Bab chuckled. He looked down at the painting of Richard on his tummy. “So Dad,” he said, “we’d better show you to Mum. Although how do you think she’ll take you being a painting and me being a statue?”
The Richard hieroglyph looked up at Bab. “What exactly did she tell you about this place?”
“Almost nothing. She just said you fell in and when she came to look, you’d disappeared. Trust you to dive headfirst into a weird void, Dad!”
“Look who’s talking,” his dad chuckled.
Bab smiled. His dad had always been the first to rush off and explore dangerous ruins. His bravery had inspired Bab to be adventurous, too. His mum had always been the exact opposite, folding him up in warnings and bubble wrap.
A new thought struck Bab and he frowned. “How come Mum didn’t see you on the wall after you got trapped? I mean, did she not search the Void properly?”
“You know your flesh-mum,” Prong butted in, “she’s not very good at finding things. Although I did choose an excellent hiding spot on your bedroom ceiling.”
“Well,” said Richard, patting down the front of his painted shirt. “There’s a little more to it than that.”
Bab sensed his dad’s awkwardness. “How come Mum didn’t get sucked into the wall herself? I don’t understand!”
“This Void, Bab, and your mother. There’s only so much I can say. I can tell you the Void’s been here for thousands of years. It absorbs people’s bodies and souls. It drinks their entire lifespans. These people around us, they got lured into this place at different times throughout history, and they each got, well . . .”
“Stuck!” yelled a painted police officer. “Get us out!”
Other painted people began yelling.
“Pull us out!”
“Please don’t leave me!”
“I’d prefer not to spend eternity in a sponge!”
Bab felt something prickly on his tummy.
“Ouch!” cried Richard. “Stop that, P.P.!”
SCRATCH! SPIT. SCRIBBLE! SPIT. SCRATCH!
“Prong?” said Bab.
Bab frowned at the mummified bird. She was spitting on the hieroglyph of Richard and rubbing her crusty talon on his painted boots.
“Sorry, flesh-dad,” she honked. “I need a bit of your paint for my artwork. Everyone’s complaining that you’re free and they’re still in the wall, so I’ve drawn you back on there to even things up! See?”
She pointed to the blank bricks where Bab and his dad had been. They were no longer blank – Prong had drawn wonky hieroglyphs of Bab and Richard on them.
“Calm down, everyone,” Prong honked at the trapped souls. “You don’t have to miss them any more.”
“We don’t miss them,” snapped the lady in the billowing dress. “We want you to pull us out with that beard!”
Bab looked at Prong. “Well, Prong, what are you waiting for? Ow! Dad!”
Richard was furiously banging his painted fists on Bab’s belly. “No, son,” he cried, “P.P. can’t release them now. It’s . . . not the right time.”
“Not the right time? But we can’t just leave them, Dad.”
Bab felt baffled. The dad I know and love would never leave people trapped.
“Look, mate!” Richard pointed. “Look at the wall where P.P. sketched us back in.”
Bab peered at the spongy bricks. Prong’s bad drawings were rippling. The stone surface wobbled like water when you drop a stone into a lake.
“The Void didn’t like us getting out, son,” Richard warned, “and that means everyone’s in danger. There’s so much you don’t know. We must leave now.”
LLLURG!
The rippling bricks gave a vicious little growl. The painted people all began hollering at once.
Bab took a deep breath. “Everyone listen!” he shouted at them. “You will be freed, I promise. We’ll sort this out. But first we need to leave and let the Void calm down! Right, Dad? Those ripples will stop if we leave?”
The colour drained from Richard’s painted face. He just nodded and said nothing.
“Prong,” said Bab, “fly us out through the ceiling hatch.”
The ripples had spread over other bricks in the chamber. Some of the wobbling hieroglyphs yelled for Bab not to leave. Others shouted for him to hurry up and go.
“Go! I can’t take this rippling much longer!”
“It feels like a dance that’ll never end!”
“And not even a funky dance!”
Prong gripped the top of Bab’s stone head with her talons and flapped up through the hatch.