Howl's Moving Castle: Chapters 14–21

“I’ve been so worried! And Howl’s terribly upset—”
“I’m sure he is,” Sophie said apprehensively.

“Yes, but I didn’t mention the matter before,” said Howl, “because the King might have thought you should have had the sense to sell him another dud. I had a conscience about it. Conscience. Notice that word, Mrs. Longnose. I had a conscience.”

In the time it took Sophie to sew ten more blue triangles Michael ran upstairs with lemon and honey, with a particular book, with cough mixture, with a spoon to take the cough mixture with, and then with nose drops, throat pastilles, gargle, pen, paper, three more books, and an infusion of willow bark.

“Don’t tell Wizard!” he whined and dwindled away inside reddish curly hair into a dog again.

“Sometimes,” he said reproachfully, “you sound just like Megan.”

Howl’s other arm did not come anywhere near the other huge sleeve. Sophie could see that arm in outline, making bulging gestures under a vast frill of collar.

His hackles came up, his ears lowered, and he growled.

The two identical dogs walked round one another, glaring, growling, bristling, and getting ready to fight.

Packets were jumping. Powder was seething in jars.

He let the Witch know she had missed by waving at her cheekily.

First they followed a river of sea water, then huge, wet paw prints, and finally white gouges and scratches where the claws of the creatures had dug into the stones of the street.

Food revived them all, except perhaps the dog-man, who seemed subdued now Howl was back after all.

He was azure with apprehension.

Howl set to work as hard as if he had just had a week’s rest. If Sophie had not seen him fight a grueling magic battle an hour ago, she would never have believed it.

The castle, tall and black and misshapen though it was, blowing its peculiar little wisps of smoke from one turret or another, did not look out of place here.

Between the bushes and their loads of purple, red, and white flowers, the wet grass was full of smaller flowers: pink ones with only three petals, giant pansies, wild phlox, lupines of all colors, orange lilies, tall white lilies, irises, and myriad others.

“If you come out here alone, bring your stick to test the ground with,” Howl said. “It’s full of springs and bogs. And don’t go any further that way.”

While he dashed about, Sophie cut armloads of long irises, or lilies, or frondy orange flowers, or branches of blue hibiscus, and Michael loaded the bath with orchids, roses, starry white flowers, shiny vermilion ones, or anything that caught his fancy.

Then, before the heat in the bushes grew too intense, they took the day’s flowers back to the shop and arranged them in a motley collection of jugs and buckets which Howl had dug out of the yard.

She arranged a sheaf of white lilies in a seven-league boot.

The dog stretched and straightened his back, and strained and strained. And just as Sophie was sure he was going to have to give up or topple over backward, he managed to rise to his hind legs and heave himself up into a distraught, ginger-haired man.

“How very quaint!” she said, looking at the bottles and the jars. “What a quaint little town!” she said, looking out of the window.

But it was derelict. Green mildew ran down the peeling wall from every window. Many of the windows were broken, and the shutters that should have folded against the wall beside them were gray and blistered and hanging sideways.

Percival was standing forlornly in the drive beside the bucket and the watering can.

“You barefaced—” Sophie stuttered. “That wasn’t the only thing you heard! You—you—How long have you known I was—I am—?”

While Michael carried the hamper to the bench and unpacked cold chickens and wines and honey puddings from it, Lettie hung on to Percival’s arm in an ownerlike way that Sophie could not quite approve of, and made him tell her all that he remembered.

Fanny and Mrs. Fairfax were transfixed with disgust at the state of Howl’s bedroom.

There was now a strong suggestion of a rather craggy face on the turnip. The trouble was, it was on the back of the scarecrow. The scarecrow gave a wooden scramble, hopped upright uncertainly, and then swiftly spun its body round so that the front of it was under the craggy turnip face.

Sophie had brief glimpses between long double strides: of the mansion down at the end of the valley, gleaming between trees, with Fanny’s carriage at the door; of bracken on a hillside; of a small river racing down into a green valley; of the same river sliding in a much broader valley; of the same valley turned so wide it seemed endless and blue in the distance...

But as she got nearer, she could see that it was as if something had fused together thousands of grainy yellow flowerpots into a tapering heap.

When Sophie walked straight up to her, brandishing her stick, the Witch backed away.

“I hope those weren’t real boys.”
“Only emanations,” said the Witch.

It vanished in wisps and swirled away in murky eddies.

“No he’s not!” Calcifer screamed, twisted into a writhing spiral shape.

She ran for the door, with Sophie’s stick hovering over her, still clouting at her.