Howl’s Moving Castle

“Something’s happened to Ben!” Miss Angorian said throbbingly. “He would never have parted from his guitar! Where is he? I know he can’t be dead. I’d know in my heart if he were!”

Sophie wondered whether to tell Miss Angorian that the Witch had caught Wizard Suliman. She looked across to see where the human skull was. She had half a mind to wave it in Miss Angorian’s face and say it was Wizard Suliman’s. But the skull was in the sink, hidden behind a bucket of spare ferns and lilies, and she knew that if she went over there, Miss Angorian would ooze out into the room again. Besides, it would be unkind.

“May I take this guitar?” Miss Angorian said huskily, clutching it to her. “To remind me of Ben.”

The throb in Miss Angorian’s voice annoyed Sophie. “No,” she said. “There’s no need to be so intense about it. You’ve no proof it was his.” She hobbled close to Miss Angorian and seized the guitar by its neck. Miss Angorian stared at her over it with wide, anguished eyes. Sophie dragged. Miss Angorian hung on. The guitar gave out horrible, out-of-tune jangles. Sophie jerked it out of Miss Angorian’s arms. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’ve no right to walk into people’s castles and take their guitars. I’ve told you Mr. Sullivan’s not here. Now go back to Wales. Go on.” And she used the guitar to push Miss Angorian backward through the open door.

Miss Angorian backed into the nothingness until half of her vanished. “You’re hard,” she said reproachfully.

“Yes, I am!” said Sophie and slammed the door on her. She turned the knob to orange-down to prevent Miss Angorian coming back and dumped the guitar back in its corner with a firm twang. “And don’t you dare tell Howl she was here!” she said unreasonably to Calcifer. “I bet she came to see Howl. The rest was just a pack of lies. Wizard Suliman was settled here, years ago. He probably came to get away from her beastly throbbing voice!”

Calcifer chuckled. “I’ve never seen anyone got rid of so fast!” he said.

This made Sophie feel both unkind and guilty. After all, she herself had walked into the castle in much the same way, and had been twice as nosy as Miss Angorian. “Gah!” she said. She stumped into the bathroom and stared at her withered old face in the mirrors. She picked up one of the packets labeled SKIN and then tossed it down again. Even young and fresh, she did not think her face compared particularly well with Miss Angorian’s. “Gah!” she said. “Doh!” She hobbled rapidly back and seized ferns and lilies from the sink. She hobbled with them, dripping, to the shop, where she rammed them into a bucket of nutrition spell. “Be daffodils!” she told them in a mad, croaking voice. “Be daffodils in June, you beastly things!”

The dog-man put his shaggy face round the yard door. When he saw the mood Sophie was in, he backed out again hurriedly. When Michael came merrily in with a large pie a minute later, Sophie gave him such a glare that Michael instantly remembered a spell Howl had asked him to make up and fled away through the broom cupboard.

“Gah!” Sophie snarled after him. She bent over her bucket again. “Be daffodils! Be daffodils!” she croaked. It did not make her feel any better that she knew it was a silly way to behave.

19. In which Sophie expresses her feelings with weed-killer.

Howl opened the door toward the end of the afternoon and sauntered in, whistling. He seemed to have got over the mandrake root. It did not make Sophie feel any better to find he had not gone to Wales after all. She gave him her very fiercest glare.

“Merciful heavens!” Howl said. “I think that turned me to stone! What’s the matter?”

Sophie only snarled, “What suit are you wearing?”

Howl looked down at his black garments. “Does it matter?”

“Yes!” growled Sophie. “And don’t give me that about being in mourning! Which one is it really?”

Howl shrugged and held up one trailing sleeve as if he were not sure which it was. He stared at it, looking puzzled. The black color of it ran downward from his shoulder into the pointed, hanging tip. His shoulder and the top of his sleeve grew brown, then gray, while the pointed tip turned inkier and inkier, until Howl was wearing a back suit with one blue-and-silver sleeve whose end seemed to have been dipped in tar. “That one,” he said, and let the black spread back up to his shoulder again.

Sophie was somehow more annoyed than ever. She gave a wordless grump of rage.

“Sophie!” Howl said in his most laughing, pleading way.

The dog-man pushed open the yard door and shambled in. He never would let Howl talk to Sophie for long.

Howl stared at it. “You’ve got an Old English sheepdog now,” he said, as if he was glad of the distraction. “Two dogs are going to take a lot of feeding.”

“There’s only one dog,” Sophie said crossly. “He’s under a spell.”