Title: Friends, Romans, Countrymen
Author: Hi-mi-tsu
Fandom: Howl's Moving Castle
Challenge # 17- I think I used to belong here
Length: 5767 words
Rating: PG or PG-13 (never quite sure where the boundary is there)
Disclaimer: Still not mine. See the blurb on the first piece. (I'm kind of proud of the line the title came from. You'll know it when you see it... )

Somehow, Sophie's former customers and neighbors must have thought that she'd gone deaf when she'd married the most infamous wizard in the lands. There was no other way to explain why they thought she didn't hear them whispering.

"I hear he's collecting a harem, and now that the poor Hatter girl's gone and gotten herself in the family way, it's just a matter of time until he casts her aside like all the others he's tired of..."

"That would be just like him! Heartless wretch, utterly irresponsible, so horrendously vain-- I'm sure he'll cast her aside when she gets big..."

But rather than sympathetic or concerned, the voice of Letitia Horner, whom Sophie had previously counted as a friend, sounded positively delighted. Gloating, even.

"But isn't it shameful how big she's gotten already? And just brazenly walking around in public like that -- they suit each other, really they do! I'm not sure which of them is the more scandalous. The marvel is that he hasn't cast her off already--"

Sophie stormed her way home, rather literally; Calcifer ducked into the grate to avoid the lash of torrential rain that followed her in the door.

"Someone's in a mood!" the fire demon called to his wizardly master. "Watch your step, Jenkins; I don't take kindly to being drowned for someone else's offenses!"

From the second story, a black-winged Howl peered cautiously through the stair-railings, fluttering near the top of them in case he needed to duck for cover, and he asked, "What have I done this time?"

Sophie opened her mouth to lay a pox on Letitia Horner and all her cadre of gossips, and a good bout of itching on Howl for assuming that she would punish him whether or not he'd been at fault, or else for assuming that her moods were so capricious that he had no way of knowing whether or not he'd offended and so the only solution was to assume he had, or for getting her into a condition that was evident enough to be gossiped about, or just in general -- except that she found that she'd burst into tears instead.

There was a very unmelodic squawk from her bird-shaped husband, and then much thumping and banging as he half-flew-half-tumbled down the stairs. Howl hobbled over to her and wrapped her warmly in his wings, and then he began stroking her hair as though she were a chick in need of preening, murmuring to her in that lilting liquid nonsense of his native tongue. Sophie buried her face in the thick soft feathers and sobbed herself exhausted; when she was wearily sniffling at the end of it and leaning more on his support than on her own, he coaxed her over to the edge of the hearth and settled them down and kept preening her hair, his glass-gray eyes bright and anxious.

"Beth sy'n bod? What's gone wrong, cariad?"

"Nothing," she said, blowing her nose into her kerchief. "Everything. Letitia Horner-- and Elisabeth Bradford and-- and-- all of them--! They say you're going to jilt me now, because I'm -- I'm -- becoming misshapen, and--"

"They're a flock of shallow purblind idiots, you know," Howl said, quite conversationally, as though he were offering to pass the tea. "Surely you don't think I would, do you?"

"No, of course not -- though it's true you're overfond of beautiful things -- and I'm not precisely graceful now -- but it's not that I believe them, not really; it's... it's... I thought they were my friends, I thought we spoke to each other civilly at least, but all of a sudden it's like I'm not even real to them anymore, like I'm just a part of your legend, just someone to be gossiped over, someone to make a cautionary tale of -- like I'm just a story now -- or... I don't know..." She blew her nose again, and blinked up at him blearily, and asked in a small voice, "You wouldn't, would you?"

"Good heavens, no!" Howl said, indignant enough that his feathers were ruffling themselves at her.

"And you're not being shiningly dishonest at me?"

"...This is the disadvantage of a carefully blackened reputation, isn't it," he said, with a little quirk of pain at the corners of his eyes. "I swear to you on my life, cariad, and that is a very serious thing indeed for someone as self-centered as I am. I swear I will never abandon you. You would have to get a pry bar, several court orders, and likely two or three binding curses if you want to be rid of me; and even then I'm sure my inestimable talents in the slithering field would put up a challenge. So you're rather stuck with me, I fear. I take vows quite seriously, which may explain why I've gone to such lengths to avoid giving one to the King. Understand?"

Sophie nodded against his chest, trying to smooth his feathers settled again, because he was still all rumpled and fluffy, like an indignant half-fledged chick, and it was far too adorable for her state of vexation to tolerate. "Then they really are fools," she said.

"Malicious fools at that, and envious."

Sophie scrubbed at her cheeks, and tried to summon the focus to glower at him despite how warm and soft and comfortingly fluffy he was being. "Because of course anyone would envy me capturing the most notorious skirt-chasing coward in all the lands, since he's so very beautiful and far too aware of it?"

"Of course," he said lightly. "And of course anyone would envy you the happiness they see in you. I often find myself baffled as to why life with a notorious skirt-chasing coward seems to suit you so well, but whenever I see you smile, it assures me that you are happy. Your joy is bright enough to light half the town, cariad. And any small-minded gossiping geese who would like to pick away at that as though they could steal it for their own by ruining it for you... they need to be plucked and trussed for a holiday roast, that's all there is to it. --I do know a thing or two about small-minded gossips, you see, having made quite a study of using their natural tendencies for my own purposes. We simply need to turn this on their heads."

"But you can get use from having your name dragged through the mud," Sophie murmured, glaring at her handkerchief. "You want to drive off the little petty nuisances who want a hex for this and a charm for that; if it takes courage to go knock on the door of the dreadful wizard Pendragon, then the day to day pettiness sorts itself somewhere else. There's nothing I can gain from having my name dragged through the mud, other than being a shame to my family..."

"There's always something to gain," Howl said. "How do you think I got my start in studied name-blackening? My family was more than ashamed enough of me as it was; I decided I may as well take advantage where I could."

"But you can't go back now," Sophie said, startled. "I mean -- you can, but you won't... you won't belong. It will never be home again. You can't fit all the power and all the whimsy and all the magic in you into their little mundane lives -- you've stretched your wings beyond their world, and Megan won't forgive you choosing that wild freedom over her horrendous respectability--"

"I know that, love," Howl murmured, wrapping her more securely in his wing. "I made my choice long ago. I should have realized how my choice would affect you, though, and for that I am truly sorry. --There's a reason my door opens into four places at once, you see. Because I can touch any of them, but I don't belong to any of them anymore; I only belong on the edge of their lives, never actually predictably there, never really a part of their worlds. And now I've gone and dragged you with me into a life where people up and make legends of a person, willy-nilly."

"I seem to recall I had quite a bit to do with the dragging," she replied. "Don't you take all the credit there."

"Or all the blame?" he asked lightly. "I'm not certain that you'll ever be at home in Market Chipping again, for much the same reason -- Lettie has the makings of a good solid housewitch, someone who keeps the hens laying and the cream from curdling, but she's too practical to imagine anything greater. You're both practical and wildly creative, and the combination is, frankly, terrifying when I consider it too deeply. A woman who can fight off a thousand-year-old fire demon with nothing but her walking-stick, who can hold Calcifer in her hands without so much as burning her palms, who broke a contract that should have killed me and forced my heart back into my body and kept it beating in her hands by sheer determination -- the power in you is far too vast and wild for a simple hatmaker in a dusty little village, cariad; and the silly geese recognize that, even if they don't know what name to put to it."

"...So I don't have a home either, now?" she asked, hating how her voice wavered at the thought.

"You most certainly do," Calcifer grumbled. "Where do you think you're sitting, girl?"

"Oh," Sophie said, and reached over to rumple Calcifer's bright flames a little; he arched his head into her hand almost like a sulky ginger-kitten, pleased by the affection but still a little cranky. "Of course this is home," she said, "of course I love you both-- it's just... I'm... I'm accustomed to having a home that comes with, er, neighbors. Someone I can ask for a cup of flour if I've run out..."

"You're one of the most powerful magic-users I've ever seen, and on pure instinct at that," Calcifer replied, still grouchy. "Get your lazy husband to train you properly, and make your own cup of flour."

"Thank you, Calcifer, but it's... that's not what I mean. It's... different."

"Calcifer doesn't understand neighbors, really," Howl said, a bit rueful, smiling at them both. "Where he's from, neighborhoods are measured in billions of miles. But those of us who were born human are a little more attached to the thought of having others of our kind around us."

"You're not human anymore, either of you," Calcifer said. "'Human' is overrated anyway, if those petty little gossips are any example of what 'human' is supposed to mean."

"But we both remember what it was to be human, not so very long ago." Howl stretched and shifted beneath her, and the feathers melted back into his body, leaving her sitting in the lap of a now-perfectly-human-seeming young man wearing a black jacket with "Welsh Rugby" emblazoned across it. Then he ran his hands down her body, quite insinuatingly, and her dress shifted and snugged and rearranged itself until she was wearing something more like a much-abbreviated nightgown than a proper dress.

Staring down at herself in astonishment -- there were more than a few curves more visible than was really proper, particularly right at the moment -- Sophie plucked up the mental coordination to act as though she'd somehow been not the least discomfited, because Howl derived far too much entertainment from making her squeak in surprise, and normally the best thing to do was to plow right on through with her head held high and hope she didn't trip over something too embarrassing in the process.

"So, since we've decided I don't belong here anymore, we're going to shock all my former neighbors into heart failure by having me walk around dressed like some disgracefully-bulging harem girl?"

"Disgraceful? I'll have you know that's my child you're insulting, Mrs. Fussbudget! Of all the nerve!"

Sophie laughed, because she couldn't help herself, and said, "Some more-than-amply bulging harem girl, then?"

"Well, you would be quite charming with bells on, and you are quite nicely provisioned for a belly dance-- ouch. Careful, love; you've been sharpening those elbows again, haven't you? Rather fond of my ribs, really..."

"Hmph." Keeping her chin up by sheer willpower, Sophie was glad that she didn't have to meet anyone's eyes, even Calcifer's, as she said, "Then I suppose the last time I ever walk down that street may as well be memorable."

"Last? Who said anything about last?"

"I couldn't hold my head up in public if I walked out into Market Chipping wearing something like this in front of all the world," she said.

"Then we'll just have to walk out into someplace a little more welcoming than Market Chipping. I have just the door in mind, actually."

The sight of an enormous crow in a black leather jacket flying through Trehaven's night sky must have been unsettling, Sophie thought, if anyone had bothered to look up at them; but there were no particular outcries or flung stones, and Howl backwinged his way to a perch atop a faded brick building with a folding metal bridge attached to its side, and shrugged his way back into his human self again.

"I hope you don't mind the fire-escape entrance," he said ruefully, offering her his arm to hold. The one advantage Sophie was willing to grant her ridiculously undercut garment was that with so little fabric in the skirt, she didn't need a spare hand to hold the hem out of her way, and so she could steady herself quite confidently between Howl's arm and the metal bannister.

The front door of the building was painted in a script Sophie had never seen before; she'd thought his own language was written in the same characters as her own, since she could read some of his books, and she tugged at his sleeve a little. "What on earth does that say?"

"Taj Mahal Curry and Chips," Howl said, rubbing his palms together in anticipation. "Just the thing before a match starts and the local gets itself inundated."

"The local what?"

"One at a time, cariad. First we've got to introduce you to tikka masala!"

As it happened, "tikka masala" was not the woman standing behind the counter in clothing far more reminiscent of a harem-girl than Sophie's own. It was also not the man standing over several fragrantly steaming pots and vats of variously-colored oozes and slimes. Sophie was about to crossly demand why Howl had spoken of introducing her to someone who was clearly not present, when the smiling woman handed him a tray with an assortment of oozes, some golden-fried potato wedges, and some flat crispy-soft bread; and he whisked both Sophie and tray over to a table with surprising alacrity.

According to Howl's running commentary, "tikka masala" translated to "chicken of the gods", "tandoori" translated to "grilled with red dye on," "biryani" translated to "contains fruitcake-innards only without the cake bit," "paneer" translated to "squeaks in your teeth," "chutney" translated to "pickles of everything that pickles oughtn't naturally be made of," and "vindaloo" translated to "kills small animals and uncautious linesmen."

Sophie suspected that his translations were somewhat lacking in integrity, but the ooze named tikka masala was certainly quite tasty despite that, and so was the mango chutney. There were tastes and fragrances coming out of the various little bowls of ooze that she'd never encountered before, and she wondered whether of any of the castle doors might be persuaded to open into a market where she could buy some of their spices. Of course, it would help to know what she was looking for, and she stewed over what to do about that for a while, because the language that the man and the woman were speaking to each other bore no resemblance to anything she knew.

Finally, much to Howl's snickering amusement, Sophie gathered up her nerve and what there was of her skirt, and marched over to try to speak hand-gestures-and-facial-expressions to the woman behind the counter.

The woman's name was Anathalakshmi, which Sophie contracted to Ana, and her cook's name was Raghuvinderjit, which Sophie contracted to a pointed finger and "him". Sophie's name came out more as "Sofi", and her husband's as "Haulu", which she felt uninclined to protest given what she was doing with their names. Beyond that, Ana's vocabulary seemed to consist mostly of the words for the various types of ooze, numbers, "please," "thank you," "yours," "mine," "yes," and "no." On the other hand, that was more than Sophie could reply with in Ana's language.

Ana showed her several containers of spices, and let her smell them, and pointed at each vat of fragrant ooze and then several spice containers in succession, all the while chattering away in melodic and completely foreign sounds. Then she started trying to explain something that didn't appear to involve cooking; she poured some tiny green seeds into Sophie's palm and mimed eating them, and ate one herself, and so Sophie took a nibble. The flavor was startling, bright and sweet-sharply licorice.

Ana giggled at the expression on Sophie's face, and poured her palmful of seeds into a little paper packet, and tucked it into Sophie's hands with another pouring-out of musical sounds. Ana made a gesture like rocking something in her arms; then, at Sophie's evident confusion, she patted the curve of Sophie's middle, and then made the rocking gesture again, and pointed at her teeth.

"...Oh! You mean they're for the baby? Teething? Oh goodness. I mean, er, thank you. That's very kind..." After a moment, she couldn't help herself: "Am I really that big already? Howl, you slithering reprobate, you told me people wouldn't mind here!"

"She certainly doesn't mind," Howl said, leaning on the counter watching them with one of his more indulgent smiles. "Lakshmi's got three of her own; she's sharing experience, that's all."

He made a beckoning gesture to Ana, and said "Your three," gesturing to her children's approximate height the last time he'd seen them. She shook her head with a laugh, and corrected their heights considerably upwards, and even her taciturn cook chuckled at Howl's wildly overexaggerated heart-clutching shock.

Ana produced a small but astonishingly well-done portrait from her handbag, and gave them the children's names; Howl came closer to being able to pronounce them than Sophie did, but Ana was clearly trying not to laugh at them both. Then Ana patted Sophie's middle again, and cupped a hand to her ear.

"Names?" Sophie guessed. "I'm not sure really... we've got some ideas, but..."

"Venkatesh," Ana said firmly, pointing to her cook and Howl. "Or Gurdayal." Then she pointed at herself and Sophie and said, "Madhushri. Or Rajani. Yes?"

"We'll, ah, certainly think about it," Sophie said brightly, hoping she didn't look as glazed and twitching as she felt. So with her little packet of seeds in hand, she tried to drag Howl out of the curry shop before he could promise Ana either an unpronounceable name or their firstborn's hand in marriage to one of her three.

"Just so you know -- nothing strange," she said firmly. "We're not naming this poor child anything with more syllables than I have fingers. Understand?"

"Llefelys, then?" he replied, with far too innocent eyes. "Or Myfanwy. Only three or four syllables there--"

Sophie chased him halfway through Trehaven, swinging her handbag more like an iron mace than like a fashion accessory.

By the time she'd worn herself out of breath and he was laughing too hard to run further, the sun had thoroughly set for the evening and the great enchanted fireflies attached to posts along the road were beginning to light themselves for the night; Howl slung a black-jacketed arm about her shoulders and rumpled her hair, and said, "Perfect timing. The game should be on in ten minutes or so; shall we?"

"Shall we what?" she asked warily.

"Right, then," he said, as if that had been in any way interpretable as a 'yes,' and he tucked her arm through his. He led her through a narrow little side alley and up a much smaller road to the door of a place that proclaimed itself "Y Gath Ddu," which sounded like the symptoms of a messy and unpleasant respiratory disorder to Sophie, but which made Howl beam with anticipation.

"You might want to be prepared to duck," he said gaily, "the boys have a tendency to greet folk with tankards chucked at one's head, you see--"

And on the heels of this less than reassuring pronouncement, Howl flung the door open and took up one of his most dramatic poses in the doorframe, leaning on one hand, hair tossed back, palm to heart as he declaimed to the room at large.

"Friends! Romans! Countrymen! Lend me your beers!"

And as he ducked out of the trajectory of a ceramic ashtray that was promptly lobbed at his head, Sophie tugged at his elbow. "I don't think that's quite how the quote went somehow--"

"It is tonight," he replied, laughing, as he dodged another piece of furniture and dove headlong into the lager-scented chaos.

They clearly knew him here, because he was greeted with a torrent of Welsh -- "Hywel! Hywyn bach! Sut hwyl? -- uffern na, mae Siencyn y lloerig yn dod eto! -- beth yna? Doethur Siencyn y lloerig sy'n dod, Sioni -- Eirfon, un peint arall--" and also with a torrent of projectiles, ranging from beer mats to peanuts to more solid objects that kept him nimbly dodging while he slapped people's shoulders and scruffled their hair and helped himself to a swig from other people's beverages at random.

Someone noticed the door was still open, and called a fluid interrogative that seemed to involve a few extra throat-clearings and a cat-hairball or two; Howl put down someone else's glass and waded his way back through the fracas toward Sophie, still laughing. He put an arm about her waist and said something to the room at large that involved her name, and then within ten seconds the entire room was silent.

"Howl?" she asked, a bit nervously. "Howl, what did you just say?"

"Saesnes?" someone said into the silence, clearly incredulous. "'Dy saesnes ddim siarad? Siencyn bach, beth sy'n bod arnoch chi?"

"Well, this is going just swimmingly," Howl said, and reached blind for someone's glass and drained it before he tried again.

His voice sounded like she hadn't heard it since the Witch of the Waste, strained and desperate beneath a too-thick layer of frivolity, even when she couldn't understand a word he was saying; even without knowing the words she could hear the tension of his worlds pulling themselves apart again, the tension of coming to a place he'd thought of as refuge, a place he'd thought would always welcome him as one of their own, and finding himself a cast-off once again.

Sophie decided it was time to take matters into her own hands. "Do these people speak English?" she demanded.

"Not by choice," Howl replied softly. "Can you give me a moment, love? I'm trying--"

"I know what you're trying," she said, and picked her way carefully through the mess of shells and beer mats on the floor to where the bartender was. "Excuse me, sir. Um. Un peint os welk in da. Is that right?"

The bartender was twitching a little. "Os gwelwch yn dda, saesnes fach," he corrected.

"Right, then," she said, and took some Welsh coins from her purse, and offered them to him.

The bartender looked at Howl over her head, and said something incomprehensible; Sophie rapped the edge of a coin on the bar, and said, "Excuse me. Os gwelwch yn dda."

Howl looked a little wild around the eyes, the whites visible all round, like a startled deer, and he said very carefully, "Cariad, it's not that he won't serve you, just that you oughtn't drink in your condition."

"All right, then," Sophie said, chin up and refusing to blush by sheer force of determination. "How do you say hot tea with milk?"

"This is, er, a rugby pub," Howl said. "We're not quite that civilized in here. Um." He cast a rather desperate, pleading look at the bartender, and rattled something off, and the bartender grunted and fetched a couple of pint-glasses down from the rack, and slowly the conversation began to restart itself with fits and twitches.

The bartender put two glasses in front of her, both of them filled with an amber liquid that bubbled; it looked something like what the rest of the inhabitants were drinking, but when Sophie took a sip, it tasted of apple juice and a child's ginger-beer, not of alcohol. But it was a beverage, so she pushed her coins toward him and said carefully, "Iawn yn fawr."

"Not quite," Howl murmured into her ear. "Diolch. Diolch yn fawr."

"Diolch yn fawr, then," she said, and the bartender nodded at her gruffly, turning back to pulling pints for his other customers.

There seemed to be a three-foot sphere of denial surrounding the two of them; even in a crowded room, nobody approached them, and nobody spoke to Howl, though there were plenty of disbelieving looks. Sophie used both hands to keep her pint-glass steady, because her hands were shaking with frustration.

"You don't have to sit with me," she said. "You don't have to drink what I drink. They're your friends. Go have fun. It's all right; I'll be all right; go make up with them!"

"If we're not both welcome, cariad, then neither of us are welcome. If you'd like, we can go--"

"No."

"Cariad, really, we can just--"

"You always do think running away is the best answer, Howl Jenkins. Now, I admit you know them better than I, so you may well be right. But even if you're right, I'm too bloody-minded stubborn to let go of this so easily! Now hush and drink your juice!"

She put her glass down carefully, and tried to think through the throbbing headache. It was terribly gallant of him, of course, but also terribly frustrating, because she knew that he'd brought her here precisely because he'd expected that they'd both be welcomed, and it had to be a bitter disappointment to be so bluntly proven wrong. And after a life with Megan, he was terribly sensitive to being pushed away. Surely some of these people had to know him well enough to know that.

Most of the men were huddling around the two enchanted boxes at the end of the room. Like Howl's window, they showed a view of something that couldn't possibly be on the other side; it was a bright green field with stripes and several red-shirted and blue-shirted men on opposing teams, wrestling in the mud over a small oval ball. From the way they reacted when one of the red-shirted men put the ball across a certain line, Sophie presumed that the red-shirted team was Welsh somehow.

So she picked up her glass and elbowed her way through the crowd to find a seat closer to one of the boxes. Her new neighbors cast her some startled looks, and scooted over on the bench to leave her room; and then something of interest happened in the box. Sophie crossed her ankles and sipped at her juice as the men around her erupted in cheers and catcalls.

A few moments later they remembered her again, and hastily clamped down on what must have been some fairly colorful language not fit for mixed company, but Sophie could give them a perfectly untroubled smile because she hadn't understood a word of it.

Someone had accosted Howl at the bar, and they were having a heated conversation complete with much throwing-of-hands-in-the-air; Sophie wasn't quite sure if she should be concerned or not, because that seemed to be the way a lot of conversations with Howl went sooner or later. And so she kept nursing along her apple juice and trying not to spill when people jumped off the bench howling imprecations at the box.

One of the younger ones, one who barely looked old enough to be in an establishment of the alcoholic sort, came back from the bar with a double-armful of pints, and his comrades expressed their vocal and somewhat tipsy appreciation at great volume. Sophie flinched in absolute astonishment when he held out the last one to her. It wasn't quite like the others -- the bubbles were larger, and there wasn't a froth on the top, just like her juice and ginger-beer; she cast a questioning look across the room at the bartender, who made a shooing gesture at her, and so she took the pint-glass from the far-too-young-faced boy and said carefully, "Diolch yn fawr."

He beamed as though he'd just taught a dog to speak, and nudged a benchmate and commented, and then he shoved someone else out of the way to sit down beside her as though she were a new and fascinating type of pet.

"Don't mind the lads, ma'am," the boy said, leaning on the table quite a lot, and Sophie wondered how much he'd had to drink already. "It's just -- Dr. Jenkins, you know? That Dr. Jenkins, our Dr. Jenkins, going and getting himself married of all things, and to saesnes at that--! Never ever thought we'd see the day--"

"What does that word mean?"

"Saesnes? English. Englishwoman." His mouth twisted like he'd bit into a lemon.

"But I'm not English," she said.

"Really?" He seemed compelled to translate this to the room: "Oi! 'Dy hi ddim saesnes--" Then he blinked, and shoved his hair back from his eyes, and asked, "Then what on earth are you? You're too -- too -- not-obnoxious-like to be American or Aussie -- Canadian maybe?"

"I'm Howl's wife," Sophie said, since it seemed safer than guessing at a nationality she'd never heard of before.

The boy let out a bark of laughter, and clapped her on the shoulder. "Wel, gwraig doethur Siencyn, rhaid i chi fynd i dysgu cymraeg!" He lined up the empty glasses on the table -- there were quite a few of them -- and started counting them for her: "Un peint. Dau beint, tri pheint, pedwar peint... reit, come on, then, not-saesnes; un, dau, tri..."

By the time she'd finished that second glass, she could count to ten (most of the time, unless the words decided to mutate in more than one direction on her), declare that several of her neighbors were drunk (much to their amusement), thank Aidan her young tipsy instructor and Eirfon the bartender for her juice-and-ginger-beer, and give a toast declaring that the beer was lovely and the fire hot.

At some point in the process, Howl had slithered his way over to her and insinuated himself between her and the bench, so that she was sitting in his lap before she even noticed; it had probably happened around the time that Aidan had discovered that her midsection was inhabited with something that kicked, and the boy had gone about excitedly declaring to the room at large that clearly the baby was intended for future greatness in rugby, with both hands cupped to her bulge as though she were a particularly docile specimen at a petting-farm.

At first she was too astounded to slap him, and then Howl was there and inconveniently had her hands caught in his, and then more of "the boys" wanted to greet the future rugby star, regardless of the possibility that it might be a girl -- "girls can play rugby just fine," Aidan assured her, and Sophie didn't have the heart to inform him that that wasn't nearly as reassuring as he expected it to be. Because between her temper and Howl's passion for rugby, Sophie was quite certain their daughter might well be more of an unholy terror on a rugby field than their son.

By the end of the game, Howl was having an emphatic rollicking debate with two or three of them at once, and Aidan had convinced his brother Aled to help train the language-impaired not-saesnes their Dr. Jenkins had married, and their friend Ieuan was laughing at the lot of them. And then someone started singing the saucepan song.

"Wait, I know this one!" Sophie said in delight, and picked up her empty apple-juice pint to wave in tempo with the rest of them.

Astoundingly, even a pack of drunk-out-of-their-minds Welshmen could produce breathtaking four-part harmony, with Aled and Ieuan and Sophie singing the melody line thanks to the boys' astonishing falsetto range. Howl's voice was better than he claimed it was, probably assisted by the fact that he wasn't drunk this time round; but Ieuan was far and away the best singer of the group, and he blushed ferociously when Sophie told him so.

In a way, Sophie was sorry to say farewell for the evening, because even if it wasn't her home or her culture, she'd felt the beginnings of what might be a family's type of welcome there when she tried to meet the rugby boys halfway. But then again, she was quite, quite glad to see the castle door once more, because she was six months heavy with child and had just drunk two full glasses of juice, and so the w. c. was the very first order of business.

Second was producing the souvenir she'd brought for Calcifer, of course. Eirfon had given her a pocketful of coal as a parting-gift; though clearly puzzled about what the not-saesnes lady might want with it, he also just as clearly knew not to bother questioning any oddities that drifted about Howl Jenkins, because it would have been even odder if there weren't any oddities. Calcifer jumped straight out of the grate into her hands, crackling away in delight; laughing, Sophie tucked the coal into the hearth safely, and patted him good night.

"Why didn't you tell me neighbors come up with coal for you?" Calcifer called after them as the two made their way up the stairs for the night. "Flour, who cares; but if I'd known neighbors had coal... --Oi! Jenkins! Jenkins, this castle needs more neighbors, you hear me?"

"You know, cariad, we're never going to hear the end of this one," Howl said with a martyr's sigh.