HI!

So I was thinking about what I was going to do about the story, when it jumped at me. No, literally. Something jumped at me in the garden and I screamed. My sister laughed at me.

Ah. Sisters. They make me remember why I wanted to be an only child. :D

So this is chapter two, hola, and I am very excited.

Please read and review!

Some of the dialogue is DWJ's, but what do you expect?

Love,

ME ME ME ME ME ME ME

There was only one word for what Howl was feeling. Terrified.

And angry. Partially because he was still mad at Sophie for not getting out while she could, and he was angry at the djinn for just bursting into the castle. He was terrified because, as Sophie would say, he was a coward.

The djinn eyed him with one large eye. He had large, bat-like ears and muscles that rippled all over his torso. His eyes were black where they were supposed to be white, and the irises were red and smoldering like coals on the fire. His wings flapped behind him. Calcifer shrank to a cinder.

Howl was terrified again.

"YOU are the famously powerful wizard?" the djinn asked. His wings flapped behind him and the tips of his fangs were peeping out from his mouth. They were surprisingly white, Howl thought in a detached way.

Since Howl was still mad and fired up from his argument with Sophie, he replied cockily, "Yes. And what, pray tell, are you going to do about it?"

An ugly smile spread across the djinn's hideous face, splitting it in two, his maw red against the blackness of his skin. He spread out his arms and Howl felt magic being cast, magic that was far beyond anything he could do, even if he was the most powerful wizard in the world. Pain rippled its way through Howl and he heard Calcifer scream, as if he was getting the same treatment. A year ago, Howl's heart had been brutally squeezed by Miss Lily Angorian, the former fire demon of the deceased Witch of the Waste. That, in itself, was painful. But compared to what was happening to him right now, he would have gladly taken the heart-squeezing. It felt like the djinn had stuck him in the oven and he was slowly being broiled.

He passed out gladly.

When he woke up, he was in a glass thing. He went to the side of it and felt it. Warm. He looked down at his arm. It was the same.

"Where the hell am I?" Howl asked himself. He looked down at the ground and saw a patch of light coming in from something. He looked up and saw an opening high up from where he was. "This is not going to work unless I fly." But curiously, all of his magic powers had been reduced. When he tried to fly, nothing happened.

Slowly, Howl sank into himself, searching for what happened. As he shrank back into his mind, his body slowly dissipated to blue mist and he found that he could go wherever he wanted. But the minute that he was out of the glass thing, he tried to let go of the blue-mist thingy, but nothing happened. He saw that he was actually in a cloudy glass bottle, and he was floating in a lake. There was a stopper in the bottle with a small hole in the top, so he carefully poured himself into the bottle. He now found that he could turn into himself again.

Now he knew what had happened.

"What are the odds?" Howl asked himself grimly. "I just had to be turned into a genie."

He wiped away some of the cloudiness and found that he could see a little through the glass-enough to see that he was floating near land. He started to turn to mist, and then made a vow, because that's what genies did. "Whoever opened this bottle, I shall turn to a frog," he said. Since he was technically not a wizard anymore, he was allowed to do that.

Something picked up the bottle.

"Is it food?" that thing asked.

"No, food isn't generally in bottles."

"How would you know? You pee in bottles and call it wine."

"Wine is red!"

Howl winced. The conversation was disgusting.

There was a shout, a holler, and Howl's bottle was knocked into the lake again. There was a splashing and many curses as a man floundered into them. He was actually quite nice looking, in a other-worldly kind of way. Almost as handsome as Howl himself, Howl thought, flattering himself. The young man had thick, wavy hair and dark eyes with a dark tan. His face was open and honest, a bit like Michael's. Howl rubbed harder at the glass and kicked it, trying to get out.

The young man seemed to be saying something, despite the fact that a pistol was at his temple.

A villainous-looking man picked up Howl's bottle. "It's quite light," the man said once he reached the obvious leader of the group. Howl could hear faintly through the cork. He shook the bottle and Howl was thrown about. His head hit the wall and he concentrated on turning into mist. He succeeded. "And it neither rattles, nor sloshes."

Howl carefully stuck a bit of blue mist through the cork and listened.

"It's a genie bottle," the young man said. Howl's eyes jolted up and he nearly became solid again. How did that young man know? "Know, denizens of the desert, that it could be very dangerous. Do but take these chains from me and I will control the genie within and make sure that he obeys your every wish." Howl desperately wanted to change the young man into a frog. "Otherwise, I think no man should touch it."

To Howl's annoyance, the leader just laughed. "It looks more like something good to drink," he said, tossing it to another man. Howl had just chosen that time to turn solid, and suffered a bad bruise on his elbow. He cursed the leader soundly, but was drowned out by someone hacking at the lead seal, while someone else held the bottle. Howl was about to let everything loose.

The cork came out with a pop. Howl turned to a thin, mauvish vapor and trickled out. The young man groaned. Howl thickened and became a thick cloud. He made a craggy face that reminded him of Ben Suliman's, and then became a true genie. "I made a vow!" he howled, wind whipping around him. The handsome young man groaned again. "The one who lets me out suffers! THERE!" With a wave of his arms, and with a surge of power that was greater than anything he could have done when he was a wizard, he turned the two men into frogs. They hopped into the lake.

Howl folded his arms and found that he could read people's minds and their memories. For an instance, the young man was named Abdullah and the snooty leader was named Kabul Aqba. He glowered at them. Kabul was not scared, but Abdullah seemed to be terrified witless. A thought flashed in Abdullah's mind, the picture of a lovely young woman.

Howl thought of Sophie when he had first seen her. She had also been a lovely young lady that seemed to be brainless and silly, but turned out to be stubborn, sarcastic...and Howl was infatuated with her. A picture flashed in Howl's mind of her the last time he had seen her, her belly full and her red-gold hair flying around her head, a look of terror on her face. She was the most beautiful person in the world for him. He glowered even more at Abdullah and Kabul Aqba.

"I am the slave of the bottle," Howl said menacingly. "Much as I hate and detest the whole arrangement, I have to tell you that he who owns me is granted one wish a day, and I am forced to grant it." That was not strictly true. He could grant more than one wish a day, but he was forced to grant at least one. "What is your wish?"

"I wish-" the young man started, but then Kabul Aqba rammed his hand across Abdullah's mouth, which Howl found agreeable.

"I am the one wishing," Kabul Aqba said sternly, his ugly face narrowed at Howl. "Get that quite clear, genie?"

Howl was beginning to like being a genie. He could see what people were thinking, and could tell what were their deepest, darkest secrets. But the only thing was that he missed being Howl Pendragon, Howl Jenkins, or Horrible Howl, as Sophie called him sometimes when she was extremely mad at him for something that he had no recollection doing. And he now knew how Calcifer felt when he still had Howl's heart: exploited. "I hear," Howl said. "What wish?"

"One moment," Kabul Aqba said and started to talk to Abdullah in such a low voice that Howl felt like he wanted to swoop in closer and listen. He discovered that he could become as big as he wanted, but he could only fly a few feet into the air before something tugged him down to the bottle again. Kabul Aqba began to talk in earnest to Abdullah, and to Howl's amusement, put the pistol yet again to Abdullah's head. Abdullah said something back and then Kabul snarled, "A waste of a wish. Think again." Abdullah said something again, sweat running down his face clearly enough that even Howl could see it, though his senses had been curiously sharpened when he was in genie form. Finally, Abdullah seemed to say something that pleased Kabul Aqba, because he turned to Howl, who had an annoyed look on his face. "That's better!" Kabul Aqba exclaimed and slapped Abdullah on the back.

Howl raised his eyebrows. "Have you decided?" asked Howl, letting some of his annoyance leak out into his voice.

"I wish for a most lavish feast," Kabul Aqba said most grandly, outstretching his hand to the desert.

Howl decided that he would make all of the wishes have dire consequences. "Done," he said, and took the feast from a royal person. He bowed, the wind making some of the mist swirl around him. "And much good may it do you," he added, just for the fun of the kick of it. He poured himself back into the bottle, where he stared at the cloudy wall.

Then he remembered the spell.

SOPHIE! He yelled in his mind.

H-howl? Sophie asked tentatively.

Sophie? Thank god. Are you safe? Where are you? Howl asked, relieved. He pushed his flaxen curls out of his face.

I-I'm not sure where I am. But all I know is that I'm safe. Are you safe? He remembered that Sophie was a cat and smiled inwardly. She was probably having fun, but he was having a grandly miserable time.

I'm a- Howl felt the word 'genie' ripped out of his head.

You're an idiot? Sophie asked and laughed in her mind.

Never mind.

The magic of a djinn ripped their connection apart. Howl reached for where it was supposed to be, but nothing happened.

The spell was demolished.

Yeah. In case you didn't remember, in the first chapter, there was a part where he was thinking about the spell that he cast with Sophie in case she needed him.

Yeah.

Okay...