Howl's Moving Castle (16 page)

Howl looked at the gray paper in his hand. “It’s called ‘Song’— and that’s what it is, I suppose. But it’s not all here and I can’t remember the rest of it.” He stood and thought, as if a new idea had struck him, one which obviously worried him. “I think the next verse was important,” he said. “I’d better take it back and see—” He went to the door and turned the knob black-down. Then he paused. He looked round at Michael and Sophie, who were naturally enough both staring at the knob. “All right,” he said. “I know Sophie will squirm through somehow if I leave her behind, and that’s not fair to Michael. Come along, both of you, so I’ve got you where I can keep my eye on you.”

He opened the door on the nothingness and walked into it. Michael fell over the stool in his rush to follow. Sophie shed parcels right and left into the hearth as she sprang up too. “Don’t let any sparks get on those!” she said hurriedly to Calcifer.

“If you promise to tell me what’s out there,” Calcifer said. “You had your hint, by the way.”

“Did I?” said Sophie. She was in too much of a hurry to attend.

Chapter 11
:
In which Howl goes to a strange country in search of a spell

The nothingness was only inch-thick after all
. Beyond it, in a gray, drizzling evening, was a cement path down to a garden gate. Howl and Michael were waiting at the gate. Beyond that was a flat, hard-looking road lined with houses on both sides. Sophie looked back at where she had come from, shivering rather in the drizzle, and found the castle had become a house of yellow brick with large windows. Like all the other houses, it was square and new, with a front door of wobbly glass. Nobody seemed to be about among the houses. That may have been due to the drizzle, but Sophie had a feeling that it was really because, in spite of there being so many houses, this was somewhere at the edge of a town.

“When you’ve quite finished nosing,” Howl called. His gray-and-scarlet finery was all misted with drizzle. He was dangling a bunch of strange keys, most of which were flat and yellow and seemed to match the houses. When Sophie came down the path, he said, “We need to be dressed in keeping with this place.” His finery blurred, as if the drizzle round him had suddenly become a fog. When it came into focus again, it was still scarlet-and-gray, but quite a different shape. The dangling sleeves had gone and the whole outfit was baggier. It looked worn and shabby.

Michael’s jacket had become a waist-length padded thing. He lifted his foot, with a canvas shoe on it, and stared at the tight blue things encasing his legs. “I can hardly bend my knee,” he said.

“You’ll get used to it,” said Howl. “Come on, Sophie.”

To Sophie’s surprise, Howl led the way back up the garden path toward the yellow house. The back of his baggy jacket, she saw, had mysterious words on it: WELSH RUGBY. Michael followed Howl, walking in a kind of tight strut because of the things on his legs. Sophie looked down at herself and saw twice as much skinny leg showing above her knobby shoes. Otherwise, not much about her had changed.

Howl unlocked the wavy-glass door with one of his keys. It had a wooden notice hanging beside it on chains. RIVENDELL, Sophie read, as Howl pushed her into a neat, shiny hall space. There seemed to be people in the house. Loud voices were coming from behind the nearest door. When Howl opened that door, Sophie realized that the voices were coming from magic colored pictures moving on the front of a big, square box.

“Howell!” exclaimed a woman who was sitting there knitting.

She put down her knitting, looking a little annoyed, but before she could get up, a small girl, who had been watching the magic picture very seriously with her chin in her hands, leaped up and flung herself at Howl. “Uncle Howell!” she screamed, and jumped halfway up Howl with her legs wrapped round him.

“Mari!” Howl bawled in reply. “How are you, cariad? Been a good girl, then?” He and the little girl broke into a foreign language then, fast and loud. Sophie could see they were very special to one another. She wondered about the language. It sounded the same as Calcifer’s silly saucepan song, but it was hard to be sure. In between bursts of foreign chatter, Howl managed to say, as if he were a ventriloquist, “This is my niece, Mari, and my sister, Megan Parry. Megan, this is Michael Fisher and Sophie—er—”

“Hatter,” said Sophie.

Megan shook hands with both of them in a restrained, disapproving way. She was older than Howl, but quite like him, with the same long, angular face, but her eyes were blue and full of anxieties, and her hair was darkish. “Quiet now, Mari!” she said in a voice that cut through the foreign chatter. “Howell, are you staying long?”

“Just dropped in for a moment,” Howl said, lowering Mari to the floor.

“Gareth isn’t in yet,” Megan said in a meaning sort of way.

“What a pity! We can’t stay,” Howl said, smiling a warm, false smile, “I just thought I’d introduce you to my friends here. And I want to ask you something that may sound silly. Has Neil by any chance lost a piece of English homework lately?”

“
Funny
you should say that!” Megan exclaimed. “Looking everywhere for it, he was, last Thursday! He’s got this new English teacher, see, and she’s very strict, doesn’t just worry about spelling either.
Puts the fear of God into them about getting work in on time.
Doesn’t do Neil any harm, lazy little devil! So here he is on Thursday, hunting high and low, and all he can find is a funny old piece of writing—”

“Ah,” said Howl. “What did he do with that writing?”

“I told him to hand it in to this Miss Angorian of his,” Megan said.
“Might show her he tried for once.”

“And did he?” Howl asked.

“
I
don’t know. Better ask Neil. He’s up in the front bedroom with that machine of his,” said Megan. “But you won’t get a word of sense out of him.”

“Come on,” Howl said to Michael and Sophie, who were both staring round the shiny brown-and-orange room. He took Mari’s hand and led them all out of the room and up the stairs. Even those had a carpet, a pink-and-green one. So the procession led by Howl made hardly any noise as it went along the pink-and-green passage upstairs and into a room with a blue-and-yellow carpet. But Sophie was not sure the two boys crouched over the various magic boxes on a big table by the window would have looked up even for an army with a brass band. The main magic box had a glass front like the one downstairs, but it seemed to be showing writing and diagrams more than pictures. All the boxes grew on long, floppy white stalks that appeared to be rooted in the wall at one side of the room.

“Neil!” said Howl.

“Don’t interrupt,” one of the boys said. “He’ll lose his life.”

Seeing it was a matter of life and death, Sophie and Michael backed toward the door. But Howl, quite unperturbed at killing his nephew, strode over to the wall and pulled the boxes up by the roots. The picture on the box vanished. Both boys said words which Sophie did not think even Martha knew. The second boy spun round, shouting, “Mari! I’ll get you for that!”

“Wasn’t me this time. So!” Mari shouted back.

Neil whirled further round and stared accusingly at Howl. “How do, Neil?” Howl said pleasantly.

“Who is he?” the other boy asked.

“My no-good uncle,” Neil said. He glowered at Howl. He was dark, with thick eyebrows, and his glower was impressive. “What do you want?
Put that plug back in.”

“There’s a welcome in the valleys!” said Howl. “I’ll put it back when I’ve asked you something and you’ve answered.”

Neil sighed. “Uncle Howell, I’m in the middle of a computer game.”

“A new one?” asked Howl.

Both the boys looked discontented, “No, it’s one I had for Christmas,” Neil said. “You ought to know the way they go on about wasting time and money on useless things. They won’t give me another till my birthday.”

“Then that’s easy,” said Howl, “You won’t mind stopping if you’ve done it before, and I’ll bribe you with a new one—”

“Really?” both boys said eagerly, and Neil added, “Can you make it another of those that nobody else has got?”

“Yes. But just take a look at this first and tell me what it is,” Howl said, and he held the shiny gray paper out in front of Neil.

Both boys looked at it. Neil said, “It’s a poem,” in the way most people would say, “It’s a dead rat.”

“It’s the one Miss Angorian set for last week’s homework,” said the other boy. “I remember ‘wind’ and ‘finned.’ It’s about submarines.”

While Sophie and Michael blinked at this new theory, wondering how they had missed it, Neil exclaimed, “Hey! It’s my long-lost homework. Where did you find it? Was that funny writing that turned up
yours
? Miss Angorian said it was interesting—lucky for me—and she took it home with her.”

“Thank you,” said Howl. “Where does she live?”

“That flat over Mrs. Phillips’ tea shop.

“When you remember how the rest of the poem goes,” said Howl.

“That’s not fair!” said Neil. “I can’t even remember the bit that was written down now. That’s just playing with a person’s feelings—!” He stopped when Howl laughed, felt in one baggy pocket, and handed him a flat packet. “
Thanks
!” Neil said devoutly, and without more ado he whirled round to his magic boxes. Howl planted the bundle of roots back in the wall, grinning, and beckoned Michael and Sophie out of the room. Both boys began a flurry of mysterious activity, into which Mari somehow squeezed herself, watching with her thumb in her mouth.

Howl hurried away to the pink-and-green stairs, but Michael and Sophie both hung about near the door of the room, wondering what the whole thing was about. Inside, Neil was reading aloud. “You are in an enchanted castle with four doors. Each opens on a different dimension. In Dimension One the castle is moving constantly and may arrive at a hazard at any time…”

Sophie wondered at the familiarity of this as she hobbled to the stairs. She found Michael standing halfway down, looking embarrassed. Howl was at the foot of the stairs having an argument with his sister.

“What do you mean, you’ve sold all my books?” she heard Howl saying. “I needed one of them particularly. They weren’t yours to sell.”

“Don’t keep interrupting!” Megan answered in a low, ferocious voice. “
Listen
now! I’ve told you before I’m not a storehouse for your property. You’re a disgrace to me and Gareth, lounging about in those clothes instead of buying a proper suit and looking respectable for once, taking up with riffraff and layabouts, bringing them to this house! Are you trying to bring me down to your level? You had all that education, and you don’t even get a decent job, you just hang around, wasting all that time at college, wasting all those sacrifices other people made, wasting your money…”

Megan would have been a match for Mrs. Fairfax. Her voice went on and on. Sophie began to understand how Howl had acquired the habit of slithering out. Megan was the kind of person who made you want to back quietly out of the nearest door. Unfortunately, Howl was backed up against the stairs, and Sophie and Michael were bottled up behind him.

“… never doing an honest day’s work, never getting a job I could be proud of, bringing shame on me and Gareth, coming here and spoiling Mari rotten,” Megan ground on remorselessly.

Sophie pushed Michael aside and stumped downstairs, looking as stately as she could manage. “Come, Howl,” she said grandly. “We really must be on our way. While we stand here, money is ticking away and your servants are probably selling the gold plate.
So
nice to meet you,” she said to Megan as she arrived at the foot of the stairs, “but we must rush. Howl is such a busy man.”

Megan gulped a bit and stared at Sophie. Sophie gave her a stately nod and pushed Howl toward the wavy-glass front door. Michael’s face was bright red. Sophie saw that because Howl turned back to ask Megan, “Is my old car still in the shed, or have you sold that too?”

“You’ve got the only set of keys,” Megan answered dourly.

That seemed to be the only goodbye. The front door slammed and Howl took them to a square white building at the end of the flat black road. Howl did not say anything about Megan. He said, as he unlocked a wide door in the building, “I suppose the fierce English teacher is bound to have a copy of that book.”

Sophie wished to forget the next bit. They rode in a carriage without horses that went at a terrifying speed, smelling and growling and shaking as it tore down some of the steepest roads Sophie had ever seen—roads so steep that she wondered why the houses lining them did not slide into a heap at the bottom. She shut her eyes and clung to some of the pieces that had torn off the seats, and simply hoped it would be over soon.

Luckily, it was. They arrived in a flatter road with houses crammed in on both sides, beside a large window filled with a white curtain and a notice that said: TEAS CLOSED. But, despite this forbidding notice, when Howl pressed a button at a small door beside the window, Miss Angorian opened the door. They all stared at her. For a fierce schoolteacher, Miss Angorian was astonishingly young and slender and good-looking. She had sheets of blue-black hair hanging round her olive-brown heart-shaped face, and enormous dark eyes. The only thing which suggested fierceness about her was the direct and clever way those enormous eyes looked and seemed to sum them up.