Author's Notes
The war mentioned here is a battle between Ingary and High Norland against Strangia. It's on the brink of being declared in Howl's Moving Castle and is basically resolved by the time Castle in the Air takes place. I've worked out a timeline here where the war has started nearly a year before and it's right in the thick of it during this story.
Chapter 2, In Which (Some) Revelations are Made
Sophie woke up the next morning to find that it was still raining in Kingsbury and that Howl was already gone.
Reluctantly, she left her warm bed, dressed, and headed downstairs to make some breakfast. There was no one in the kitchen. Howl was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Michael or the new apprentice, Edmund.
Furrowing her brow, Sophie took the teakettle from the cupboard, and while it filled with water at the tap, she put three dripping slices of bacon into a frying pan.
"Calcifer?" she called.
"Yes?" came from the next room.
So she wasn't alone. "Where is everyone?"
She heard him mutter something that sounded distinctly like 'do I not count?' before he answered more loudly, "Howl and the boys went over to Wizard Suliman's. They're trying to figure out what that wind blowing off the Waste yesterday was all about."
Armed with the makings of her breakfast, Sophie approached the hearth where Calcifer was blazing.
"Oh no!" Calcifer whined the second he caught sight of her. "No, no, and no. You humans eat too much. This is degrading and I won't stand for it anymore!" He drifted out of the grate, leaving behind some blackened logs.
"That's fine, Calcifer." Sophie walked past him, setting down the teapot and the pan. She knelt in front of the hearthstone and from her sleeve pulled out a packet of matches.
"You would light some pathetic little spark in my fireplace?" He sounded absolutely scandalized.
It was the same every mealtime. Whenever someone—usually Sophie—would try to go about fixing food, Calcifer would throw a tantrum if they so much as looked at him while holding a ladle, but if they tried using another fire, he acted mortally offended at the thought of an unintelligent flame burning in his rightful place. This would go on until he conceded to cook their food, but only after he established that he was not doing it out of servitude, but as a thoughtful favor.
Today, however, Sophie was not in the mood to flatter him into returning to the fireplace. She had not slept well, her touch of nausea revisiting her and keeping her up half the night.
"Calcifer," she said wearily, gripping the kettle and getting back to her feet abruptly so she could face him, "do we have to go through this every—?"
The room was spinning. Her question died on her tongue as a dizzy sensation besieged her and dark spots clouded her vision.
"Sophie?"
She crumpled to the floor.
/\/\/\/\/\
"Sophie!"
Her eyes cracked open. She was flat on her back on the floor and she felt wet.
Outlined by the ceiling, Calcifer bobbed above her with an upset look distorting his flames. She could feel his heat on her face he was so close. Slowly, Sophie pushed herself up and propped herself against the stonework of the hearth.
"What happened?" he was asking. "Are you all right?"
She saw that the teapot had fallen from her grasp and the water had sloshed all over her as it hit the floor. At least it hadn't been warmed up.
"Yes. I must have made myself giddy from standing up too fast." Sophie probed the back of her head with a small flinch.
"I'm going to get Howl."
"What for?" she laughed. "So you can alert half of Ingary to how clumsy I am? Besides, if you go tell Howl, Michael and Edmund will overhear, and Ben will surely tell Lettie who will tell Martha, and it'll all be for a silly fainting spell. Leave him be, especially if he and Ben are working on something important."
Considering the matter settled, she stood up and ignored the ebbing vertigo as she walked to the kitchen to grab a dishcloth for the water she had spilled. As she finished mopping up the last puddle, she raised her head only to find Calcifer watching her warily like he expected her to drop again at any moment.
"I'm fine, Calcifer," she told him, touched by his concern. "Really."
"I still think I should go get Howl."
"You're free to think it as long as you don't actually do it. Besides, it's raining out. You should stay inside. Now, I'm going upstairs to change and get a bit of cleaning done. I'm not very hungry after all, and I can't remember the last time I dusted Michael and Edmund's rooms."
/\/\/\/\/\
"Ugh."
Sophie swung open the door to Michael's room, and the noise that came from her pretty accurately described just how it looked: ugh.
A thick coat of dust lay over everything, and it looked as if the spiders she had cleared out from Howl's bedroom when it went from being his to theirs had reinstated themselves into the castle by way of the corners of the ceiling here. The dresser drawers were all open to varying degrees, but she doubted whether closing was part of their functionality anymore or not because they were crammed with so many garments, they were overflowing. Books and loose pages torn from them were scattered across the floor and furniture. The bed at the center of the room was not only unmade, but the sheets were basically half-off the mattress and trailing onto the floor as if Michael couldn't be bothered to right them. Something that looked suspiciously like a potion gone wrong stained a large chunk of the carpet while the rest was eaten away as though the concoction had been acidic.
"He's lived with Howl too long," she murmured as she stood in the doorway.
Not for the first time, Sophie wondered if she had done the right thing in closing the flower shop for a month or so as a sort of self-proclaimed holiday. She couldn't help thinking how she would much rather be picking and arranging her flowers right now than staring down the prospect of scouring grime from the upholstery of Michael's chair.
Picking her way over a balled-up robe, a container of frogspawn, and some wadded up parchment, she decided to start by making some space on his bookshelves so she could at least clear part of the floor for her to maneuver around. They were lined with not only books, but cracked phials, broken quills, and several pairs of shoes. Sophie didn't stop to question any of it as she tossed the wrecked items away and stowed the shoes into the closet. With that a little more freed-up, she collected the books from around the room. The bottom half of the bookcase was actually a desk, and as she placed Commonly Misspelled Spells on the shelf, she noticed a framed photograph on it and took it up.
It was a picture of Michael and Martha at the bakery, both smirking playfully with smudges of flour on their faces and clothes. Sophie smiled. In the confusion of Michael's room, this alone stood out as a possession carefully tended to and cherished.
The rest of the morning was spent setting rights to his room. Sophie managed to talk most of the things into cleaning themselves up after reproaching them for being so untidy, though this was still by no means an easy task, not the least reason being that certain articles like his socks had become shameless about the squalor they contributed to. In the end, the carpet was still somewhat singed, but she was relatively pleased with the outcome.
Howl, Michael, and Edmund hadn't come home by the time Sophie returned downstairs. She prepared herself some cold cuts for lunch to avoid cooking and any chance of repeating that morning's episode. As she devoured her well-earned cheese and sausage sandwich, she tossed bits of it to Calcifer, who it seemed had spent the better half of the morning amusing himself by popping out of the chimney to scare away the children of Kingsbury by wailing and pulling grotesque faces.
Sophie mounted the stairs once again to go to Edmund's room.
Edmund Cress first came to the moving castle a couple of months ago. A small, freckly boy three years younger than Michael, he had hammered on the Kingsbury door and demanded that he be accepted as Howl's apprentice. He was an elegantly-dressed kid, so he clearly wasn't asking out of need. Howl turned him away, replying that he already had an apprentice and that to take on another would be too much of a hassle, better luck with the next wizard.
But the next day, he was back. This time, Michael answered the door, and after hearing his petition told him to bugger off before he cursed him. It continued this way for almost a whole week, Edmund coming only to be refused, until Sophie stepped in.
"Howl," she said to him just after he rolled his eyes and closed the door in the kid's face before he even got a word out, "maybe you ought to give the boy a chance. You can handle another apprentice—Michael practically teaches himself by now." Seeing that Howl was about to complain and very probably stamp his foot in show, she hastily suggested, "At least look into whether or not he has the ability and deserves your attention."
In that way it was decided that the next morning when Edmund came, as he was bound to do, Howl and Sophie would accompany him home to observe the boy and have a talk with his parents.
As Edmund led the Jenkinses to his home, they were quick to notice that their impression of his being well-off was in fact true. They followed him into the upper-half of Kingsbury where the homes of nobility clustered around the outskirts of the Royal Palace and entered a pale lavender mansion.
Edmund seemed stunned that both of his parents were home, and after exactly four minutes of conversation, Sophie could see why. Lord and Lady Cress were the most self-interested people she had ever met in her life, and she was married to Howl. But where Howl's selfishness was tempered with his loyalty to the people he loved and other natural human qualities, the Cresses did not appear to be hampered by any such traits. It was clear that Edmund, while well provided for, had never known a moment's happiness in his parents' home and, in spite of having dozens of servants inhabit the same space as he did, had led a very lonely childhood. It was a surprise to his parents that Edmund had an interest in magic, but then, Sophie guessed they also would have been surprised to learn their child was thirteen years old.
Before she had even finished her first cup of tea, her knuckles had gone white from gripping the arms of the chair she sat in to prevent herself from shouting at these beastly people. It was no longer a question. As he and Sophie rose to take their leave, Howl asked Edmund if he could start immediately.
Howl also added that as part of the apprenticeship, he would have to come live in the moving castle with them. This wasn't necessarily true, but Edmund seemed so excited and his parents so indifferent to whether he stayed or not that Sophie was fiercely gratified to see him come down the sweeping main staircase ten minutes later dragging an improbably large suitcase behind him. She even gave him a swift hug as he joined them, and his face lit beet-red but he looked pleased.
She opened the door to Edmund's room and was relieved to see that it was nowhere near the condition Michael's room had been in and—dare she think it?—rather tidy. She didn't let herself get her hopes too high though. He had only been living here three months. Give him a little over double that in close quarters with Howl and Michael and there was no doubt his semblance of neatness would pass faster than a trek across the Waste in seven-league boots.
While she was lightly dusting and straightening up the little there was to, Sophie was suddenly forced to smother the urge to empty the contents of her stomach in the wastebasket next to the nightstand. The room was pretty much in order by then, so she went to her bedroom to lie out on the bed until the feeling passed, wondering if the bangers she had eaten for lunch were bad and wreaking revenge.
/\/\/\/\/\
Howl walked into the castle by way of the Kingsbury door.
His suit soggy from the rain, he trudged into the common room and threw himself onto the sofa, tilting his head back and shutting his eyes. A soft crackling noise from behind him announced Calcifer's presence.
"I should have asked you to come along today," he said without opening his eyes. "We didn't find out a bloody thing. All that spell-casting for nothing."
"Are Michael and Edmund still with Ben?" Calcifer asked.
Howl could see the hazy orange glow of him silhouetted through his eyelids as he hovered overhead. "No, they left after lunch to visit Martha. They should be back soon. Ben and I were summoned to the palace to see the king, on the other hand."
"More war plans?"
"Of course," Howl said somewhat bitterly.
Calcifer's flames spit contemptuously. "What's he demanding that the two of you contribute to that insanity now?"
"A portable device that the soldiers can use to cloak their garrisons from enemy eyes." He pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. "Where's Sophie?"
Calcifer hesitated.
"Calcifer?"
"She doesn't want me to tell you this, but I'm going to anyway!" burst suddenly from the fire demon. "It's probably nothing, but you should know that Sophie collapsed this morning a little while after you left."
Howl opened his eyes.
"She said she's fine," Calcifer plunged on, "and she wouldn't let me come get you, but it was a close call; she nearly bludgeoned herself on the hearth. She still did stuff like she normally does all day though, so I guess she's not doing too badly."
He stood from the couch and started going towards the stairs. "You should have come to get me anyway, Calcifer." He didn't say it like he was mad, just like it was a plain fact.
"You know how persuasive she is, Howl." To which the wizard only grunted and then scaled the steps two at a time.
He walked into their bedroom to find Sophie asleep on their bed with her head pillowed on her arm, a scene Howl found disconcerting not only because it was barely early evening, but also because her face looked a little paler than normal. Her chest lightly rose and fell as he came closer to her. He swept a few stray hairs back from her forehead and brushed his lips against hers.
Her eyes fluttered open. "You're back."
"Only just now," Howl told her, climbing into bed to lie down next to her.
Sophie shifted to turn and look at him. "Did you find anything?"
"Neither Ben nor I could make head or tail of any of it. We're going to try again tomorrow with Calcifer's help, but it may very well turn out to be nothing."
"Mmm," she mused.
He picked up a different thread of conversation, tired of worrying about that wind and war and anything else that wasn't to do with the woman beside him. He'd had enough turmoil for today. "By the way, I went ahead and congratulated Ben and your sister, but I think I still might have waited too long for her taste."
"Oh! I clean forgot to tell you yesterday. Lettie must think I'm such a thoughtless little bungler."
"I think she was pleased in her own way that you hadn't because I was one more person for her to tell the news to herself. She nearly dropped half her china when we were having lunch because she kept turning out her hand while offering me things so I would notice the ring."
Sophie laughed.
"So," Howl started casually, "what were you up to without me today? Besides pining for me, I mean."
"I spent most of it purging the seedy underbelly of Michael's bedroom. Between the pining, of course." She smirked and gave Howl a peck on the cheek.
"Anything else?"
"No. I tell you, if you had seen that bedroom, you'd be impressed that I still have all my arms and legs."
He gazed at Sophie. "So you're planning on not telling me at all that you fainted?"
She briefly looked taken aback before her eyebrows contracted down over her eyes in comprehension. "Calcifer."
"Yes, Calcifer told me, and it's a good thing he did because clearly you weren't going to."
"It was nothing." Shrugging, Sophie sat up, but Howl wasn't going to let this go so easily.
"It's not nothing," he said scathingly, sitting up with her. "People don't faint for nothing. Have you been feeling sick?"
"No."
Howl searched her with a piercing look that clearly said he thought she was lying. "Why were you sleeping?" he asked suddenly.
Sophie floundered. "Honestly, am I not allowed to nap, especially after tackling the mess in Michael's room?"
"You usually don't," he countered. He wondered why she was being so evasive about being sick.
"Howl, you're worrying over nothing." She slipped off the bed and went over to the door as she spoke. "I'm going to start dinner."
Left alone, Howl decided that for now, this too would have to be something he would figure out another day.
/\/\/\/\/\
The boys came running into the castle a second after the square knob in the lintel above the door turned to yellow, the portal from Market Chipping.
Dinner had already been laid out on the table near the hearth, where Sophie and Howl were just sitting down. Michael and Edmund chattered cheerfully to Sophie as they ate, Michael mostly about Martha while Edmund focused on describing how delicious the treacle tarts Martha had given him were.
Calcifer munched on sweet, young twigs from his place in the grate. Howl was quietly watching Sophie. If she was aware of his eyes on her, she didn't show it. Her concentration seemed wholly devoted to the boys, but in all honesty, she was thinking to herself that she had done a poor job of keeping her ill health hidden from Howl. He had enough going on as it was, what with being at the king and Prince Justin's every beck and call to magically strengthen their army, and now this wind business. The last thing he needed was to make himself uneasy over some trifling cold or other she had caught. She wasn't concerned about it herself. After all, it was trivial enough that it only affected her every once in a while, but she knew once Howl found out he would blow the thing out of proportion.
Later, when dinner was over and they had all gone to bed, Sophie felt a little unsettled as she crawled in between the sheets in case Howl started up again. To her relief, he only drew her to him in the dark and, after a minute or two, fell sound asleep, no doubt exhausted from the trials of the day. She followed soon after.
/\/\/\/\/\
In the first hints of dawn, Sophie's eyes snapped open very suddenly from deep sleep.
She knew what was the matter with her.
End Author's Notes
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