February Breath
Disclaimer: If I owned Howl's Moving Castle, trust me, you'd know it.
A/N: Tek and Soar, thanks so much for the reviews! Soar: thanks for the feedback- I was kind of questioning myself on that too, it's something I need to work on. I always have a tendency to throw all this information out there just so I can get to the more eventful parts…I could have made that more interesting. *sighs* Well either way, I'm liking my chapters better the farther I get—more exciting. Some emotional drama, turmoil, et cetera, which sadly I love to write. Lol! Also Howl in all his hotness being sketchy (haha also fun to write!) Enjoy and comment
You take the breath right out of meAnd left a hole where my heart should be
You gotta fight just to make it through
Cause I will be the death of you
Breath – Breaking Benjamin
Chapter 4:
"I see I've retained my incredible timing," Sophie sighed. "Oh, and I got a little bit of something about myself. I was shorter than I am now, I'd say about five foot four, but in my mind I could tell that I was older."
"You were twenty-four; I was twenty-seven," he waved a hand impatiently. "But we really should figure out if you're capable of doing magic at this point. What are your strengths?"
She snorted. "None to speak of whatsoever."
"Stop insulting yourself, you're killing me here." Howl made a pained face. "Fine, what do you like to do, then?"
Sophie thought for a minute. "I dance…you figured that out," she shot him a disgruntled look. He smiled back, looking like an angel. "And, um, I guess I have a knack for chemistry. Although most of the time it doesn't end well for the rest of the room…" She winced, remembering a particularly—ah, exciting—day in chem class. Oops.
Howl coughed to cover a laugh, guessing at her thoughts. "Go on."
"And…well, I'm planning to go to college to maybe study computational or psycholinguistics, although morphology and syntax seem like they'd be more—you don't even know what that is, do you." It was more of a statement than a question. She loved the linguistics field, but she wasn't sure what path she would take.
Howl looked offended. "Of course I do!" Then he looked at her slyly. "It means you have a gift with tongues."
Sophie exhaled emphatically and rolled her eyes. What an idiot. Shameless player. "Sure. You wanna call it that, whatever. That's about it."
"That's all? Come on, you have to give me more than that. That can't be all your hopes and dreams and fears from your whole life stuck in a few sentences."
"Wellll…" Sophie had never told anyone this particular detail of her many impossible wishes. "I've never been afraid of heights at all, so before I die I want to climb Mount Everest and go skydiving. I suppose it's impossible, like, how could I ever pull that off? But still."
What Howl did next just about gave Sophie a heart attack. He laughed like a crazy person, jumping out of his seat. "I knew it!" he shouted. Sophie was baffled. Howl reached over and picked her up, twirling her around in a circle before setting her on the floor again. "I knew it really was you! Did you hear that, Calcifer?!"
Calcifer faked a yawn while Sophie stared at Howl. "What was that? Sorry, I missed that entire exchange, can I have an instant playback, please?"
"Oh, stop it, Cal, you know you're relieved too."
"Excuse me, but what proved that I'm who I'm supposed to be which I don't even remember?" Sophie planted a hand on her hip.
"It was—we—before—you always—I'll show you!" Howl was practically incoherent. "But, uh, first let me fix something. Close your eyes and don't move. That's important."
"You're asking me to close my eyes and not move," Sophie said dryly. Howl nodded impatiently, telling her to hurry up. "Fine," she gave in reluctantly, squeezing her eyes shut and attempting to stay perfectly still. After a second she felt a delicate tingling all over her that spoke to her intuition, telling her that Howl was working some kind of magic on either her or something in very close proximity to her. But, knowing Howl, if she moved he'd probably make something explode by accident, so she stayed still to wait it out. When the feeling went away, after several bursts, she opened her eyes tentatively and felt a little different. She was also ticked off that Howl had magicked her without warning her, so she acted on that first by stepping towards him and reaching up to smack him upside the head.
"Agghh! What was that for?!"
"You did magic on me without telling me it'd be magic?!"
"My god, you really haven't changed—you can thank me later, by the way." He flicked his fingers and a full-length mirror appeared between them.
Sophie's eyes got big as she took stock of the girl in the mirror, momentarily forgetting her annoyance. She was thin and of medium height, with long brown waves of hair and big, unusually gray eyes. That wasn't anything new, though. What was different was that she was wearing an ankle-length, simple green dress with a scoop neck and three-quarter length sleeves. Looking at the drapes of the skirt, Sophie decided that one could spin for hours and never be bored with that dress on. She truly registered in a moment that that was her in the mirror.
Howl poked his head around the side of the mirror cautiously. "Did I get it right?" he asked.
Sophie's previous anger with him had all but vanished from her mind and she managed to choke out a few words. "It's beautiful…" she murmured. It was old-style, like something a princess would wear, but simplified, and she absolutely loved it. It was almost familiar to her, like she used to dress this way but hadn't in years.
"About four hundred years, to be exact," Calcifer unexpectedly piped up, carrying on her train of thought perfectly.
"I suppose that's right—wait! What did you just say?" Sophie stared at him.
"Demon thing. Don't worry, I don't do it all the time."
"Of course. What else?" Sophie said under her breath.
"I think you look gorgeous, too. Come on, let's go." Howl ignored the demon and the surprise on Sophie's face at the compliment.
Sophie had a moment of déjà vu as she remembered her sisters telling her the same thing not too long ago. Martha and Lettie had been fussing with their identical flawless blond hair, which had only made dark-haired Sophie feel even more dejected and overlooked next to her prettier sisters.
"Why did I have to get the boring looks?" she had sighed, apparently not as quietly as she had thought.
"Stop that," Lettie had scolded. "Give yourself some credit."
"You just don't use what you have!" Sixteen-year-old Martha added on.
"Which isn't much to speak of in the first place," Sophie pointed out.
"Is too!" her sisters had protested in unison. When Sophie gave them a look that dared them to name a few things, Martha continued. "You're prettier than you think, and I'm not just saying that because I'm your sister. If only you'd pay attention to how people look at you."
"Not to mention interpret the look correctly," Lettie said. She was seventeen. "And you know that your grades are better than both of ours combined, and, my god, girl, you can sure dance! You really are good, so I don't understand why you don't let anyone see you."
"Do something for yourself for once; it's your life, Sophie," said Martha.
Sophie had just sighed.
"I think you look gorgeous, too. Now let's go." Martha dragged her out the door with Lettie's help.
Sophie shook off the memory and gave an unladylike snort at Howl's opinion. "Right. I bet I was better-looking in my other lives. Anything's better than this," she murmured to herself, but Howl caught it anyway.
"Sophie, Sophie. When are you going to accept that you're beautiful?"
"Never. I can't accept something that isn't true." She responded matter-of-factly. He was just trying to get the moves on her, she knew it. Although she didn't understand why. Oh, wait—just kidding, she did understand. He was an unabashed and self-proclaimed womanizer.
"Hasn't anyone ever told you that before?"
"Yeah, my sisters and my parents. Family. Big deal." She shrugged. "And—" she bit her lip at the last second as her throat constricted.
Howl pried without meaning to, encouraging her to go on.
"No one. Nothing," she snapped suddenly. "Where did you want to take me? Let's go." She was desperate to forget about the memory of…him.
Howl let it go and brightened immediately. "Alright! Come on!" He was so impatient that he took her around the waist and immediately took off up the stairs, quite literally. Sophie was sure that neither of their feet ever touched the floor. He sped down the hallway and stopped at another narrow flight of stairs that Sophie hadn't noticed in the one or two times she'd been on the second floor of the castle. He motioned for her to go first and she was amused by the fact that she had a skirt to pick up to navigate the narrow, low-ceilinged stairwell. "Come on, Sophie, you can go faster than that," Howl teased her.
"You try doing this in a dress, see how you like it." She had a thought and spun suddenly to look at him. He quickly shifted his eyes to her face, but not quickly enough. Sophie sighed. "Were you staring at my ass?"
Predictably, he grinned insolently. "And why not?"
She rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips, and was about to continue her ascent in the near-darkness when a slight shudder shook the steps. She bit back a shriek of surprise when she lost her balance and was sure she'd go tumbling backwards, but Howl caught her in his arms. He planned that, the idiot, she thought. Even with him a step below her he was still taller, and it didn't seem like he was planning on letting go.
After a minute she said, "Howl?"
"Shh. I'm enjoying the moment. It's not all the time I could—can catch you like this," he murmured in her ear, making her shiver.
"And don't you forget it," she retorted swiftly. He smiled and unwrapped his arms from around her and continued to lead her upwards. A trapdoor at the top opened with a flick of his fingers and the two emerged onto a flat spot on top of the castle.
"Alright," he turned to her, his eyes sparkling like sapphires. "Now I need you to concentrate very hard on something. It might be a little weird to try, but focus on what it would feel like to be skydiving, free falling. Zero in on your emotions, on the slightest details. And yes, you'll want to close your eyes. Don't worry—you'll be doing the real magic, not me." He practically read her mind. "And no matter what, keep concentrating harder. You can't break it off until I say so, alright?"
Sophie nodded, exhaled, and then closed her eyes obediently, thinking about what she had wanted so badly for years but known to be impossible. The air would be rushing past her face and she wouldn't be thinking about the ground rushing up to meet her faster and faster. She would only have the feeling of exhilaration, of adrenaline, of utter freedom…
There was an aching, then tearing pain in her back near her shoulderblades. She gritted her teeth, remembering Howl's words, and made the image in her head more vivid.
Howl
God, but she was stubborn. Just like the last life. She was hanging on to the spell (even if she didn't recognize it as a spell yet) like her life depended on it. I would have liked to think that she was hanging on my every word, but she wasn't—she was just afraid of what would happen if her concentration broke. As I watched and did my own spell with much less effort, her jaw clenched and she looked like she wanted to scream. I didn't blame her one bit. The first time was always the hardest and the most painful. I hardly felt anything now and didn't like to remember my own first time. Her back arched and I thought the sun glinted off something shiny in the corner of her eye. A tear?
She had refused to cry, ever, in the last life. Even when I had resorted to force to make her try to love me and completely torn her life apart in the last life, she had never shown her hurt much. I had thought she had had no emotions at all, but later realized that she was even more attentive to feelings than Calcifer was to me during the times that he had my heart, like right now. Then she had broken the curse that tied me to the fire demon and my heart was restored to me. But she had still refused to love me. I still admired her for that, I guessed. She had managed to reject me on first sight and never give up. She had also had an incredible temper for such a small girl. After a while, she cooled down, though, and resorted to sarcasm and nonviolence in response to my advances. What she hadn't known about that spell we were trying that cursed day was that there was an underlying layer that would put a powerful love spell on her. I had tried to tell myself that she wouldn't hate me for doing that to her, but something backfired anyway and my only problem was being both inadvertently and directly responsible for her death. What a way to pay. Even if I could never remember what I had done to actually kill her no matter how I tried, it still haunted me.
I watched her now, my own spell complete, and smiled as hers finished off and her pain visibly lessened.
"Okay. You're done now. You can open your eyes." I had forgotten how she somehow became even more beautiful sometimes.
Sophie
I let go of the vision and opened my eyes tentatively. The pain was gone, but now I just felt heavy, like my back was being weighed down. But the first thing I registered was Howl.
His hair had turned the color of a raven's wing, something that threw me for a loop right away. But that was nothing.
From his back protruded two gigantic, gorgeous raven-black wings that glared blue and purple in the setting sunlight. Smiling gently, he looked like a dark angel. "Look at yourself," he murmured to me.
I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned my head quickly, and just about passed out.
The weight on my back was two wings of my own. So he had gotten me to do a spell somehow. It was amazing. Had I really just worked magic to do that? I thought incredulously. I could definitely get used to this witch stuff. They were pure white, like snow, shining silver in the light. I found that I could move them, just as easily as if I were moving my arm.
As she gazed in wonder at what she had done, Howl grinned wickedly with an idea. Sophie's attention was immediately on him. "What," she asked warily.
"Let's go!" he shouted, grabbing her around the waist again and jumping off the edge of the castle.
It was the oddest sensation to not fall and go splat, Sophie thought absently, immediately viciously beating down the memory that came along with that notion. Howl held her to him tightly as his wings carried them through a space in the cloudbank that they were above, emerging in a sunny grassland with flowers everywhere and a lake. It was so pretty that Sophie asked where they were.
"My uncle, who was a wizard, gave me this place to be my private study when I was younger. I spent a lot of time here by myself." He suddenly laughed openly and took both her hands tight in his, letting her drop below him.
"HOWL!"
"Yes?"
"What are you doing?! I'm not exactly adapted to this yet!"
"Don't worry—you still have your instincts. Try to remember. Remember how it felt to fly." He pulled her back up to hold her in his arms again, partially to pacify her and partially to attempt to awaken some real emotion inside himself for her. Too bad he still had no heart to feel with
Sophie
I concentrated hard, closing my eyes against all my mind's protests. Racking my brain for memories of the past, I could catch glimpses of how I had loved to fly and had always wanted to keep flying, even when it became difficult to become fully human again. But Howl had been having much more trouble with that than I had. I soon knew about his curse and how his lack of a heart affected him, and somehow had restored his heart.
Lost in my thoughts of the past, I certainly remembered more than flying. I remembered helping Howl to cast that spell gone wrong. I had just sensed something was wrong. There was another spell concealed underneath this one and it was pretty strong. It had taken me a moment to figure out its nature: love. He wouldn't. That was just evil. I had thought, for a while by then, that the nature of Howl himself was evil. Once he had his heart back I had thought maybe he would be cured, but I knew at that moment that even I couldn't erase the past—what he'd done to me in every life. He realized that I knew what was going on in the same instant and both our concentrations broke, causing something to the equivalent of a bomb and sending us both spiraling into darkness. My last view of Ingary had been that field of flowers.
I barely stopped myself from screaming out loud again.
Howl
I looked down at her face and had a panic attack. She looked like she was watching someone being murdered, a shocked look on her pretty face.
"Sophie? Sophie. What's wrong?" When I got no response I quickly cast the walking-on-air spell and landed in midair with Sophie. She fell to her knees, looking like a stricken angel, her eyes blank and seeing nothing. Nothing here, at least. I feared the worst. Her memories… I thought. "Tell me what's wrong. Sophie, you're scaring me!" And she really was, despite my lack of feelings. Still no answer.
After a minute of me becoming increasingly agitated and Sophie looking increasingly horrified, her breath got shaky and she blinked a couple times. She probably noticed that we were kneeling in the middle of the air but decided that what she had to say was more important.
"You tricked me!" she suddenly screeched.
I fell backwards off my heels. "…What?"
"You didn't tell me the whole truth before! You put an extra spell in to make me love you! Like you thought I wouldn't notice? How could you even do that to me in the first place? Like you could force me? I thought I had gotten you your heart back! We were right here, and we fell into another world and to my death!"
"Sophie," I choked. "How could I have told you? You hardly knew me a few hours ago. And that was several lifetimes ago for me. You did change me, after that. And I was having doubts about doing it anyway. But it was still all my fault! Do you understand now why I came to say I was sorry?"
"I don't know what to believe anymore!" she cried, and with that, she unknowingly broke the spell holding her up and she began to plummet towards the earth.
I was about to take off after her, because in this state no way would she be able to use her wings. Then I saw the dark mass shooting toward her from the west, much too fast for me to even register before she was enveloped in what looked like a stormcloud and whisked back in the direction the cloud had come from. I realized what it was all too late. Oh, shit. How could I have been so stupid to forget? Of all times? Or maybe because of the time. Either way: shit.
Without hesitation I took off back towards my castle, not even bothering to use the door but crashing through a window before rolling and standing up again in front of Calcifer. His eyes widened to the size of saucers.
"Due west! Now! And don't let Markl outside." I sounded panicked, even to my own ears.
"How far? Where's Sophie?" Calcifer looked uncharacteristically scared out of his wits, possibly taking his lead from me.
"Trust me, you'll know when to stop. Sophie is where we're going. Think about that, Calcifer. What's in the west?" I said hurriedly when the demon looked even more confused.
"Oh, no. Just out of nowhere? No warning whatsoever?"
I confirmed his fears. "It came up so fast I didn't even have time to process that it was there before it…took her…" I choked on my words.
"She's getting stronger, then," he hissed. "Curse the Witch of the Waste!"
"I only wish I could."
Sophie was being carried through the air by what resembled the interior of a stormcloud. It seemed like she shouldn't have been able to breathe, but she could. Something inside her tingled as she sensed a presence. Not in the cloud—more like the essence of the cloud itself. And it was without a doubt evil.
In a matter of mere seconds she was suddenly just inside the heavy iron doors of a great hall. It was expensive-looking and might have been beautiful, except that it was so…so…dark. There was light, all right, but the feel of the room was sending Sophie a clear message: this is not a good place to be. The foreboding feeling of evil was emanating from everything around her, particularly from the end of the hall, although the cloud had suddenly disappeared.
A woman sat on what might have been a kind of throne at the far end of the hall, but she was so ridiculously overweight that Sophie couldn't tell what it was she sat on. The woman was dressed all in purple, complete with an elaborate hat, and her hair was a tangle of red curls. She looked like someone who might have been very beautiful in her day, but was now past her time. And she was unmistakably corrupted by evil. Yet somehow, Sophie felt that she knew the woman. She was vaguely familiar but it was not at all a friendly feeling that she got. Someone from a past life, perhaps? Maybe she was the one to accuse me of witchcraft, Sophie thought grimly. That would certainly be appropriate. She didn't really know what to do, so she began the walk down the hall at a brisk but not too fast pace to confront the woman. As she got closer, the feeling of recognition deepened and the woman looked slightly amused at the look of defiance on the girl's face. Sophie stopped a bit in front of her and attempted to bob an awkward curtsy out of instinct, not quite sure what to expect.
When the woman said nothing Sophie spoke. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't believe I know you. Can you tell me where this is, please?"
After another moment of looking amused, the woman replied. "So this is your latest form. Always so close to the original. Did Howl tell you that yet? Or has he been hiding everything from you?"
Sophie stiffened at Howl's name and at what this woman seemed to know about her. "I beg your pardon?"
"You know perfectly well of what and whom I speak."
She gritted her teeth. "I'm sorry, but I would like to know where I am, and why I am here. And who exactly you are, if you please."
"Standing up to the Witch of the Waste—that's plucky." The woman's—the witch's—mocking smile widened.
"Witch…of the Waste?" Sophie muttered in confusion. The witch part was obvious enough, but the Wastes? Wasn't that where the green portal went in—she forced herself to think the name—Howl's castle?
"So he has been keeping things from you. Quite necessary information, if you ask me. Allow me to fill in the blanks." She paused for effect. "I was very much in love with Howl, and I found out that his heart had been stolen by a demon. I wanted him to have it back, and I thought he would love me after he could feel again. But you: you came along. And he said that he saw me for what I was: not beautiful, but twisted and evil. As if! And he left and you were the one to give his heart back instead! It was supposed to be me! He was mine!" She snarled.
Sophie exhaled in confusion, trying to make the pieces fit together. "Look, I don't remember any of this, and how are you so sure it was me—"
"Silence!"
Sophie's body was shaken with pain at the same time as the screech. Against all her will and instinct, she nearly doubled over, clutching at her torso and biting back a pathetic whimper.
"You will pay for what you did to me!"
The pain got worse. Sophie now clamped down on a scream, feeling like she would break, no, be ripped apart at the seams if she didn't physically hold herself together. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her slightly blurry vision, looked back up at the Witch, and became sure that she was hallucinating. Because standing by the Witch…was him.
A/N: Sorry, I just had to leave you with a cliffhanger :P This was a longer chapter, which I personally like better. So now I'm curious to know: who do you think is this guy that Sophie keeps referring to in her thoughts only with pronouns, and refuses to think about? Keep in mind the "past issues" that she vented to Calcifer in Chapter 3. Comment and tell me your ideas!