Summary: Markl had never had a good sense of dates. Post-movie.
Codes: Sophie/Howl
Disclaimer: Hayao Miyazaki and Diana Wynne Jones were kind enough to make their characters available for us to enjoy. I simply want to take a different look at it.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: The movie itself.
Feedback: Please! I love praise and constructive criticism, but flames will be promptly extinguished.
Archive: Ask first and I'll probably say yes.
Authors Note: I saw the movie in an anime club meeting and absolutely fell in love with it. I actually read the book by the brilliant Diana Wynne Jones later, and while it was fantastically written, it was the movie that stayed in my mind. Eventually, I started musing and came up with this, and I decided after thinking about it for a while that it was something that others may enjoy.
The Making of Memories By B.L.A. the Mouse
Markl had never had a good sense of dates. He had never been able to remember the exact day that Howl had found him, or the day that he had made a formal request of Markl's parents, such as they were, to take him on as an apprentice. He couldn't have told any questioner the date that he had moved his meager belongings into the moving castle. That was the day he had been astonished by Calcifer, amazed by the changing door, and mystified by the blackness that swallowed Howl like he had never been.
His first instructions from Howl had been to practice a simple charm until he got it right. After his fifth day straight attempting it, something had backfired and coated the entire room with glittery pink dust. Markl had been terrified of Howl's reaction when he returned, so scared that his knees were knocking. Instead of being angry, Howl had laughed and banished the dust with a gesture before advising a choking Calcifer to breathe shallowly. It had been the first time Markl had ever felt that he truly had someone to guide him, an older brother not given him by birth.
As time went on, he'd been entrusted with more responsibilities to carry out, in Howl's absences and his presence both. Markl had filled with pride on the day that he had handed over a pouch of his own compound to a customer. He could not remember whether it had been a Tuesday or a Friday, but he could still recite every ingredient of that wart poultice, and he could remember how very much aware he was of the feel of the nubby cloth pouch and the warm coins clinking into his hand. He could still taste, if he concentrated, the sticky-sweet candy he had run out to buy with one of the coins- even though he was a wizard's apprentice, he was still a boy and focused on his stomach. He could remember it melting in the hot sun, but could not remember whether that sun was July or August's.
Only a few short months after Markl joined Howl and Calcifer, they moved house. He wasn't told why, something about an angry husband (or at least that's what Howl said, although sometimes he wondered), but that was when the wizards Jenkins and Smith were created as aliases. It was in the winter, and he thought near Valentine's Day, but he wasn't sure at all and it might have just been because of the angry husband story that he was told.
Markl could remember fairly closely the day that Sophie had made her presence known. It was near the end of the month that he had come downstairs to discover an old woman snoozing by Calcifer's hearth. How could he not remember, with all that followed?
Her chasing him out of his bedroom to clean was memorable. Her subduing Calcifer was more so. That chase through the marketplace was frightening and embedded in his mind, but overlaid by her helping to carry Howl up the stairs and pronouncing his actions a mere temper tantrum. Even her associates were remarkable: the Witch of the Waste, the Turniphead-cum-Prince, the dog Heen. Sophie was full of surprises, and every one of them stayed in one's mind.
Many of the changes stayed, like the order and the square meals and the wooden floor's bright gleam under a layer of fresh wax. They did move house a few more times, though, especially since Howl was never one to stay in one place. After the flower shop and the moving castle were lost, they had to rebuild, now to a flying cottage. That stayed the same for years; it gave them the freedom of mobility, and there was room enough for all of them. Even after the Witch of the Waste passed on, Howl saw no need to rearrange the house again. "After all," he said, smiling with patient acceptance of his familys foibles, "Sophie will only accumulate more strays, and we'll need the room."
It was not for reason of strays, however, that they next changed house. Sophie put her foot down- and when Sophie put her foot down, not even the fire demon dared argue- and said that while she loved the flying cottage, she wanted something a bit closer to the ground lest the children go over the garden wall. Calcifer and Howl very obligingly converted the flying cottage into a moving castle again, with one door opening again into the flowered field that Howl remembered and a new room for a nursery.
Markl remember perfectly that day. He had noted, in his diary, that he intended to learn several flashy tricks to amuse the little ones. In later years, though, that day still paled in comparison to the first entry in his diary.
Working alongside Sophie, Markl had worked up the courage to ask her about something that had been bothering him. Even as soon as a few days after the moving castle had fallen, he had come to regard her as almost as much of a confidante as Howl himself. "Sophie? Can I ask you something?"
"Of course." She nudged him. "Get me the bacon slices while you do it, though, please?"
He obediently retrieved it, trying to decide how to ask. "How do you remember days?"
That made her pause, and she weighed an empty eggshell in her hand, contemplating him. It was only when Calcifer began agitating for his share of the breakfast that she moved, throwing him the shell. "I'm not quite sure what you mean, Im afraid."
"I... I remember what happens on days. I just- I can't remember the day. I mean, I can tell you all about the day you arrived, but was it Tuesday or Thursday? The twentieth or the twenty-fourth? I don't know!" He rushed through the explanation, ashamed of his own ignorance.
"It was Wednesday the nineteenth, actually. But I dont blame you: I dont think Howl knows what a calendar is, let alone has one. Hmm." Sophie tested the bacon absently. "Here, start slicing the bread. I'll see what I can do."
It was much later that day that she approached him, bearing a leather-bound book with blank pages. "I'm sure this doesnt have anything in it, I looked through it and checked with Howl, so you can use it without any problems."
Markl gently turned it in his hands, marveling at the smooth feel and rich scent of the binding and paper, before he thought. "But what's it for?"
"Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself. It's so you can keep a diary. Just write down the day and what happened, and you can look back at it later. It's the only thing I could think of." She smiled, somehow knowing what he was going to ask next. "I've already put a pen and ink in your room, and today is Sunday the sixth."
He started to brush past her, already starting to think about what he'd write down for the day and knowing he'd write about how she fixed something else that had been just a little bit off for a long time, but something flashed on her hand and caught his attention. "Sophie, what's that for? It looks like Howl's ring."
She lifted her left hand and tilted it until the smooth blue stone caught the light and shone. "It's a new spell-ring that Howl created. It's a locator spell and protection, to replace the one that broke. Ask him about how he did it, he made one for himself, too."
"Why? He always knows where he is."
"Because I asked him to, so we can always find each other if we have to. I don't want to lose him like that again." Sophie smiled again, a sweet, wistful sort of smile, and told him to go write in his new diary before he forgot, and he did, sparing only a sentence on her new ring and his curiosity as to why she wore it on the finger that only married women wore rings on.
It wasn't until many years later that he looked back over his first diary entries and wondered how much of the reason behind that ring was really for protection and how much for other reasons. He thought sometimes in a fit of fancy that it seemed appropriate that the first real memory that he could point to and say that this was when was his first confirmation of a concrete family, as mixed-up and crazy as it could be.
The End