Howl's Moving Castle (12 page)

Michael obviously wished he had not spoken. Sophie could see he was thinking that a thousand miles was a terribly long way from Martha. “But what happens to your Lettie Hatter,” she said to Howl, “
if
you up and move?”

“I expect that will be all over by then,” Howl said absently. “But if I could only think of a way to get the King off my back… I know!” He lifted his fork, with a melting hunk of cream and cake on it, and pointed it at Sophie. “
You
can blacken my name to the King. You can pretend to be my old mother and plead for your blue-eyed boy.” He gave Sophie the smile which had no doubt charmed the Witch of the Waste and possibly Lettie too, firing it along the fork, across the cream, straight into Sophie’s eyes, dazzlingly. “If you can bully Calcifer, the King should give you no trouble at all.”

Sophie stared through the dazzle and said nothing. This, she thought, was where
she
slithered out. She was leaving. It was too bad about Calcifer’s contract. She had had enough of Howl. First green slime, then glaring at her for something Calcifer had done quite freely, and now this! Tomorrow she would slip off to Upper Folding and tell Lettie all about it.

Chapter 8
:
In which Sophie leaves the castle in several directions at once

To Sophie’s relief
, Calcifer blazed up bright and cheerful next morning. If she had not had enough of Howl, she would have been almost touched by how glad Howl was to see Calcifer. “I thought she’d done for you, you old ball of gas,” Howl said, kneeling at the hearth with his sleeves trailing in the ash.

“I was only tired,” Calcifer said. “There was some kind of drag on the castle. I’d never taken it that fast before.”

“Well, don’t let her make you do it again,” said Howl. He stood up, gracefully brushing ash off his gray-and-scarlet suit. “Make a start on that spell today, Michael. And if anyone comes from the King, I’m away on urgent private business until tomorrow. I’m going to see Lettie, but you needn’t tell him that.” He picked up his guitar and opened the door with the knob green-down, onto the wide, cloudy hills.

The scarecrow was there again. When Howl opened the door, it pitched sideways across him with its turnip face in his chest. The guitar uttered an awful
twang-oing
. Sophie gave a faint squawk of terror and hung on to the chair. One of the scarecrow’s stick arms was scraping stiffly round to get a purchase on the door. From the way Howl’s feet were braced, it was clear he was being shoved quite hard.

There was no doubt that the thing was determined to get into the castle.

Calcifer’s blue face leaned out of the grate. Michael stood stock still beyond. “There really
is
a scarecrow!” they both said.

“Oh, is there? Do tell!” Howl panted. He got one foot up against the door frame and heaved. The scarecrow flew lumpishly away backward, to land with a light rustle in the heather some yards off. It sprang up instantly and came hopping toward the castle again. Howl hurriedly laid the guitar on the doorstep and jumped down to meet it. “No you don’t, my friend,” he said with one hand out. “Go back where you came from.” He walked forward slowly, still with his hand out. The scarecrow
retreated
a little, hopping slowly and warily backward. When Howl stopped, the scarecrow stopped too, with its one leg planted in the heather and its ragged arms tilting this way and that like a person sparring for an opening. The rags fluttering on its arms seemed a mad imitation of Howl’s sleeves.

“So you won’t go?” Howl said. And the turnip head slowly moved from side to side. No. “I’m afraid you’ll have to,” Howl said. “You scare Sophie, and there’s no knowing what she’ll do when she’s scared. Come to think of it, you scare me too.” Howl’s arms moved, heavily, as if he was lifting a large weight, until they were raised high above his head. He shouted out a strange word, which was half hidden in a crack of sudden thunder. And the scarecrow went soaring away. Up and backward it went, rags fluttering, arms wheeling in protest, up and out, and on and on, until it was a soaring speck in the sky, then a vanishing point in the clouds, and then not to be seen at all.

Howl lowered his arms and came back to the doorway, mopping his face on the back of his hand. “I take back my hard words, Sophie,” he said, panting. “That thing was alarming. It may have been dragging the castle back all yesterday. It had some of the strongest magic I’ve met. Whatever was it—all that was left of the last person you cleaned for?”

Sophie gave a weak little cackle of laughter. Her heart was behaving badly again.

Howl realized something was wrong with her. He jumped indoors across his guitar, took hold of her elbow, and sat her in the chair. “Take it easy now!” Something happened between Howl and Calcifer then. Sophie felt it, because she was being held by Howl, and Calcifer was still leaning out of the grate. Whatever it was, her heart began to behave properly almost at once. Howl looked at Calcifer, shrugged, and turned away to give Michael a whole lot of instructions about making Sophie keep quiet for the rest of the day. Then he picked up the guitar and left at last.

Sophie lay in the chair and pretended to feel twice as ill as she did. She had to let Howl get out of sight. It was a nuisance he was going to Upper Folding as well, but she would walk so much more slowly that she would arrive around the time he started back. The important thing was not to meet him on the way. She watched Michael slyly while he spread out the spell and scratched his head over it. She waited until he dragged big leather books off the shelves and began making notes in a frantic, depressed sort of way. When he seemed properly absorbed, Sophie muttered several times, “Stuffy in here!”

Michael took no notice. “Terribly stuffy,” Sophie said, getting up and shambling to the door.
“Fresh air.”
She opened the door and climbed out. Calcifer obligingly stopped the castle dead while she did. Sophie landed in the heather and took a look round to get her bearings. The road over the hills to Upper Folding was a sandy line through the heather just downhill from the castle.
Naturally.
Calcifer would not make things inconvenient for Howl. Sophie set off toward it. She felt a little sad. She was going to miss Michael and Calcifer.

She was almost at the road when there was shouting behind her. Michael came bounding down the hillside after her, and the tall black castle came hobbling along behind him, shedding anxious puffs of smoke from all four turrets.

“What are you
doing
?” Michael said when he caught up. From the way he looked at her, Sophie could see he thought the scarecrow had sent her wrong in the head.

“I’m perfectly all right,” Sophie said indignantly. “I’m simply going to see my other sister’s granddaughter. She’s called Lettie Hatter too. Now do you understand?”

“Where does she live?” Michael demanded, as if he thought Sophie might not know.

“Upper Folding,” said Sophie.

“But that’s over ten miles away!” Michael said. “I promised Howl I’d make you rest. I can’t let you go. I told him I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”

Sophie did not look very kindly on this. Howl thought she was useful now because he wanted her to see the King. Of course he did not want her to leave the castle. “Huh!” she said.

“Besides,” said Michael, slowly grasping the situation, “Howl must have gone to Upper Folding too.”

“I’m quite sure he has,” said Sophie.

“Then you’re anxious about this girl, if she’s your great-niece,” Michael said, arriving at the point at last. “I see! But I can’t let you go.”

“I’m going,” said Sophie.

“But if Howl sees you there, he’ll be furious,” Michael went on, working things out. “Because I promised him, he’ll be mad with both of us. You ought to rest.” Then, when Sophie was almost ready to hit him, he exclaimed, “Wait! There’s a pair of seven-league boots in the broom cupboard!”

He took Sophie by her skinny old wrist and towed her uphill to the waiting castle. She was forced to give little hops in order not to catch her feet in the heather. “But,” she panted, “seven leagues
is
twenty-one miles! I’d be halfway to Porthaven in two strides!”

“No, it’s ten and a half miles a step,” said Michael. “That makes Upper Folding almost exactly. If we each take one boot and go together, then I won’t be letting you out of my sight and you won’t be doing anything strenuous, and we’ll get there before Howl does, so he won’t even know we’ve been. That solves all our problems beautifully!”

Michael was so pleased with himself that Sophie did not have the heart to protest. She shrugged and supposed Michael had better find out about the two Letties before they changed looks again. It was more honest this way. But when Michael fetched the boots from the broom cupboard, Sophie began to have doubts. Up to now she had thought they were two leather buckets that had somehow lost their handles and then got a little squashed.

“You’re supposed to put your foot in them, shoe and all,” Michael explained as he carried the two heavy, bucket-shaped things to the door. “These are the prototypes of the boots Howl made for the King’s army. We managed to get the later ones a bit lighter and more boot-shaped.” He and Sophie sat on the doorstep and each put one foot in a boot. “Point yourself toward Upper Folding before you put the boot down,” Michael warned her. He and Sophie stood up on the foot which was in an ordinary shoe and carefully swung themselves round to face Upper Folding. “Now tread,” said Michael.

Zip! The landscape instantly rushed past them so fast it was only a blur, a gray-green blur for the land and a blue-gray blur for the sky.

The wind of their going tore at Sophie’s hair and dragged every wrinkle in her face backward until she thought she would arrive with half her face behind each ear.

The rushing stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Everything was calm and sunny. They were knee-deep in buttercups in the middle of Upper Folding village common. A cow nearby stared at them. Beyond it, thatched cottages drowsed under trees. Unfortunately, the bucketlike boot was so heavy that Sophie staggered as she landed.

“Don’t put that foot down!” Michael yelled, too late.

There was another zipping blur and more rushing wind. When it stopped, Sophie found herself right down the
Folding
Valley
, almost into Marsh Folding. “Oh, drat!” she said, and hopped carefully round on her shoe and tried again.

Zip! Blur. And she was back on Upper Folding green again, staggering forward with the weight of the boot. She had a glimpse of Michael diving to catch her—

Zip! Blur. “Oh, bother!” wailed Sophie. She was up in the hills again. The crooked black shape of the castle was drifting peacefully nearby. Calcifer was amusing himself blowing black smoke rings from one turret. Sophie saw that much before her shoe caught in the heather and she stumbled forward again.

Zip! Zip! This time Sophie visited in rapid succession the Market Square of Market Chipping and the front lawn of a very grand mansion. “Blow!” she cried. “Drat!”
One word for each place.
And she was off again with her own momentum and another Zip!
right
down at the end of that valley in a field somewhere. A large red bull raised its ringed nose from the grass and thoughtfully lowered its horns.

“I’m just leaving, my good beast!” Sophie cried, hopping herself round frantically.

Zip!
Back to the mansion.
Zip!
to

“Oh,
confound
it!” Sophie cried, almost in Marsh Folding again.

This time she hopped round very carefully and trod with great deliberation. Zip! And fortunately the boot landed in a cowpat and she sat down with a thump. Michael sprinted up before Sophie could move and dragged the boot off her foot. “Thank you!” Sophie cried breathlessly. “There seemed no reason why I should ever stop!”

Sophie’s heart pounded a bit as they walked across the common to Mrs. Fairfax’s house, but only in the way hearts do when you have done a lot rather quickly. She felt very grateful for whatever Howl and Calcifer had done.

“Nice place,” Michael remarked as he hid the boots in Mrs. Fairfax’s hedge.

Sophie agreed. The house was the biggest in the village. It was thatched, with white walls between the black beams, and, as Sophie remembered from visits as a child, you walked up to the porch through a garden crowded with flowers and humming with bees. Over the porch a honeysuckle and a white climbing rose were competing as to which could give most work to the bees. It was a perfect, hot summer morning down here in Upper Folding.

Mrs. Fairfax answered the door herself. She was one of those plump, comfortable ladies, with swathes of butter-colored hair coiled round her head, who made you feel good with life just to look at her. Sophie felt just the tiniest bit envious of Lettie. Mrs. Fairfax looked from Sophie to Michael. She had seen Sophie last a year ago as a girl of seventeen, and there was no reason for her to recognize her as an old woman of ninety. “Good morning to you,” she said politely.

Sophie sighed. Michael said, “This is Lettie Hatter’s great-aunt. I brought her here to see Lettie.”

“Oh, I
thought
the face looked familiar!” Mrs. Fairfax exclaimed. “There’s quite a family likeness. Do come in. Lettie’s a little bit busy just now, but have some scones and honey while you wait.”