~A/N~
Hi guys! Sorry for the late update. This is probably how it will be from now on, but don't worry, I fully intend to continue writing this story! It's my pet and I'm always sad not to have worked on it for as long as I always…don't. Anyway, just know that every review I get spurs me on to writing this chapter. It hasn't been nearly as hard to write as the last one.
I took a little artistic license with the moving castle in this chapter, I think. I'm making it a bit more like the Miyazaki castle because I just can't resist the concept. As I'm generally a big fan of the book canon, maybe this is a bit hypocritical, but it just feels…right somehow. Anyway, I leave you to judge for yourself.
Thanks for your support, and please review!
P.S. This chapter was going to be longer, but I decided to post it instead. More ought to be forthcoming. ^^
~AA-M~
~Chapter Four~
Which is mostly full of nonsense
~C~
"Nonsense," Calcifer said.
Howl turned a piteous green gaze to the ceiling, which presumably would be more helpful than the fire demon, and made titanically despairing gestures. "Exactly!" he wailed. "I can't make heads or tails of it either! Calcifer, I'm doomed!"
"Oh, spare me," Calcifer crackled. "That's not what I said." He was feeling quite put out with Sophie and Howl. Put out was just the word for it too. He no longer held Howl's heart in his belly, but he figured having it there for such a long time had given him a pretty good notion of what was going on inside the poor little thing. Right now what was going on was rubbish which ought to have been dealt with months ago, if Howl's heart had behaved like Calcifer figured a proper human heart with an ounce of courage would. But then perhaps Howl's heart had never been a proper human heart to begin with. Or was there even such a thing?
Howl was looking at him expectantly; Calcifer returned to the point. Sophie had stomped off into the flower shop fifteen minutes before; the wizard had trailed into the castle room five minutes later and draped himself onto the chair in front of the hearth in the manner of a yellow throw rug, exuding an aura of palpable defeat. The remaining ten minutes he had spent uttering what amounted in Calcifer's point of view to large amounts of effusive gibberish.
"You," he said in his most severe manner, "are not doomed. You're just nervous."
"What's the difference?" Howl covered his eyes with one hand and thumped the other into the ripples of yellow suit at the left side of his chest to indicate his heart. "I'm a wreck. I don't think this thing works right."
This was so similar to Calcifer's previous conclusion that he could not help letting out a burst of wet-sounding steam in laughter. Howl glared at him in a way the fire demon figured was supposed to look genuinely hurt. "Look, even you can't take me seriously," he muttered. "I'm good for nothing. Sophie obviously hates me."
"If she did, she would have left long ago," Calcifer said. Restating the obvious was a skill he had developed when dealing with humans, particularly Howl. Then a worrisome thought struck him, and he could not help but add: "Well, what have you done? You didn't do something so horrible she really is leaving, did you? I for one will miss her!"
Howl's green eyes went wide; he jammed his hands into his dark hair and yanked at great tufts of it with his fingers. "You're telling me!" he cried. "Did you see where she went?"
"That's none of my business," Calcifer said, immediately wary. If Howl had made Sophie cross it would be upon him to go find her; otherwise there was the risk of him trying to get Calcifer to solve all his problems. This happened with alarming frequency.
Howl made a strangled noise and began to pace across the hearth-rug in long nervous strides. "Whose side are you on, anyway?" he cried; and then, having gotten off the point, continued to deviate. "What am I supposed to do? Does she expect me to guess her every thought? Calcifer, you've got to help me! You've SEEN what happens to me around girls!"
That was a particularly distressing timbre and Calcifer had to interrupt it rather hastily. "This," he hissed, "is not girls. It's Sophie."
"That's even worse," Howl said despairingly. "All the others I could just leave."
"I remember," Calcifer said. "And look how that ended up: either Aunts or dripping." And another worry, or perhaps a suspicion, shot through him; the very idea of it made his insides feel cold and clammy. "Howl, if you ever do anything to make Sophie drip on me, you'll be very, very sorry."
In response to this Howl shot him a look of such utter misery that Calcifer could almost feel his heart contorting. "Good heavens," he said. "I hadn't even thought of that."
"It looks as though you're well on your way there," said Calcifer.
"That's an unfair accusation!" Howl said. He was apparently so shocked that he dropped back into the chair in front of the hearth. His yellow suit flapped as he waved his hands helplessly. "This isn't like that at all! Sophie isn't like that at all!"
"Maybe," Calcifer said, "You're not looking at it the right way. Sophie isn't drippy, but she's been yelling an awful lot lately. They seem to mean much the same to her."
Howl sat yellowly on the chair like a peeled banana and stared at Calcifer wide-eyed. The fire demon was almost tempted to laugh again; a whiff of smoke tickled through him. He tamped it down with some success; Howl actually seemed to be listening to him, which might be a first.
"Shit," the wizard said after a long moment, in which the dusty and cluttered shelves peered down disapprovingly and Calcifer flickered back and forth a few times for good measure. "I've got to do something."
"There's a thought," said Calcifer. He did not stop himself from using his dryest crackle. This behavior needed to end as soon as possible. As a whole he thought he preferred green slime.
~S~
The seven-league boots weren't in the cupboard. Sophie looked for them among the flowerpots in the shop, but she could not discover them anywhere; hopefully Michael hadn't sold them. She was disappointed. Going any multiple of seven leagues away from Howl would have been a mercy at the moment.
At a loss, the girl threw the door handle purple-side down and stumbled out among the flowerbeds in the waste. The sun was on its way down out of the sky by now, sending shafts of flickering golden light sheeting down among the late-summer blossoms. Dust motes and insects floated through the air in little glowing specks. It was going to be an absolutely gorgeous sunset.
"Bother!" shouted Sophie as loud as she could. She tried out a few of Howl's words too. "Blast! Damnation!" It gave her a savage sort of pleasure to imagine what the flowers were thinking of her.
"Don't you go judging me," she told a large bush of blushing roses. "You can't even decide whether you're going to be red or pink. Oh, you look really pleased with yourself, but I'll bet you've got a nasty streak in the center."
There were an awful lot of roses in the wastes, after all. Pink ones and purple ones and big white ones and trailing red ones and orangey-red ones and magenta ones and a green one here or there. Sophie got distracted from her rage for a moment imagining a gigantic rose garden in the mansion's backyard.
"It'll have to be full of thorns," she said aloud to the sunset. "That way Howl will get stuck every time he tries to slither out of things." The thought made her smile, and then the smile made her sigh. She was rapidly running out of anger, and the idea was, frankly, worrisome. She hoped she was not going back to being hat-shop Sophie. Speaking her mind about things had been nice for a change.
"Sophie!" a crackling voice hissed, quite near. Sophie jumped and pricked her thumb on the rose she had been looking at. "Calcifer!" she said. "What is it?"
The fire demon came zipping up to her in a zigzag, forming a gauzy halo around the flower heads as he hopped from blossom to blossom. He looked odd with the late sun beaming through his orange flames, dimmed and smoky somehow. "Help!" he said.
"What is it?" Sophie asked, alarmed. Calcifer sounded truly upset, but it was often difficult to tell. The castle could be falling down; on the other hand, Michael may have just forgotten the new temperament of the mop and sent another water-spell dousing through the castle room.
"Howl's in one of his moods," Calcifer said, and Sophie felt her alarm turn hot and dangerous in her stomach.
"Good. He can rot in it for all I care," she said. She sucked a bead of blood off her thumb in irritation and determined not to listen to another word on the subject.
~C~
Calcifer sputtered dully.
"Oh, no," he said. "This has gone on long enough. You can't just leave him alone in there. This is at least half your fault, you know!"
Sophie seemed as though she did not want respond, but after a moment she was apparently unable to help it. She compensated by throwing Calcifer a glare full of daggers. "How can it be my fault?" she asked. "Howl doesn't even want me around!"
The fire demon stopped flickering for a full thirty seconds and gaped at her. He knew his blue flame teeth were hanging out, but this was really ridiculous. "Nonsense!" he finally said.
Sophie snorted at him and studiously avoided the point. "What do you mean, nonsense?"
"Exactly what I said, nonsense," Calcifer crackled. He leapt rapidly from rose to rose on the bush in front of Sophie, trying to channel his frustration. Some of the blooms were begginning to smolder nicely, but he could not be bothered with them at the moment. He didn't know which was worse—getting through Howl's pathetic whining or Sophie's abject denial. Why on earth the two most pigheaded human beings in all of Ingary had turned out to be his humans was beyond him.
He said, "Nobody here wants you to leave—least of all Howl! He's just too much of a coward to say anything about it! Do you realize what it's like living with the two of you? It's felt like something is going to explode all week! You'd better go in there and fix it, or we'll all be miserable forever!"
Sophie's large hazel eyes were filtered with waning sunlight; at last she fixed her gaze on Calcifer instead of the flowers. "You think it's making you miserable," she said thickly. "You can't just fix people, Calcifer. Believe me, there is nothing I can do about Howl's feelings."
Calcifer's whole being flamed up in irritation. The level of denial in which these two lived was astounding. "Humans!" he said, and heard his own voice snap like a log in a hot fireplace. "Howl's feelings are the last thing you need to be worrying about!"
"What makes you so sure of yourself?" Sophie said, folding her arms across her chest as though she were desperately trying to hold something in. But she had played straight into his hands.
"I," Calcifer crackled, rising up off the rosebushes until he was level with her face, "was in charge of Howl's heart far before you came along! I know all about it! All about it," he added, disgustedly. There were some points he did not feel like going into for their sheer human silliness.
"Oh," Sophie said, and fell silent for a time. Her face did a number of very strange contortions that Calcifer, whose range of expertise in human emotions was limited to a long list of Howl's dramatic faces, could not entirely decipher. They appeared to be along the lines of irritation; unless it were joy, or perhaps anger. "Oh," the girl said, and then once more, "Oh, this is silly!"
"That's what I've been saying all along," Calcifer said in a low hiss, fluttering among the blossoms, miffed. Maybe he ought to just sulk until the two of them fixed things. Then he said, "Hey! Wait up! What are you doing? Don't do anything stupid!" For Sophie had stomped off in the direction of the moving castle as fast as her furious legs could carry her.
~4~
