Here the dog-man put his glossy red snout round the door to the yard and whined. Sophie sighed. Never an hour passed without the creature checking up on her. “Yes, I’m still here,” she said. “Where did you expect me to be?”
The dog came inside the shop. He sat up and stretched his paws out stiffly in front of him. Sophie realized he was trying to turn into a man. Poor creature. She tried to be nice to him because he was, after all, worse off than she was.
“Try harder,” she said. “Put your back into it. You can be a man if you want.”
The dog stretched and straightened his back, and strained and strained. And just as Sophie was sure he was going to have to give up or topple over backward, he managed to rise to his hind legs and heave himself up into a distraught, ginger-haired man.
“I envy—Howl,” he panted. “Does that—so easily. I was—dog in the hedge—you helped. Told Lettie—I knew you—I’d keep watch. I was—here before in—” He began to double up again into a dog and howled with annoyance. “With Witch in shop!” he wailed, and fell forward onto his hands, growing a great deal of gray and white hair as he did so.
Sophie stared at the large, shaggy dog that now stood there. “You were with the Witch!” she said. She remembered now. The anxious ginger-haired man who had stared at her in horror. “Then you know who I am and you know I’m under a spell. Does Lettie know too?”
The huge, shaggy head nodded.
“And she called you Gaston,” Sophie remembered. “Oh, my friend, she has made it hard for you! Fancy having all that hair in this weather! You’d better go somewhere cool.”
The dog nodded again and shambled miserably into the yard.
“But why did Lettie send you?” Sophie wondered. She felt thoroughly put out and disturbed by this discovery. She went up the stairs and through the broom cupboard to talk to Calcifer.
Calcifer was not much help. “It doesn’t make any difference how many people know you’re under a spell,” he said. “It hasn’t helped the dog much, has it?”
“No, but—” Sophie began, but, just then, the castle door clicked and opened. Sophie and Calcifer looked. They saw the doorknob was still set to black-down, and they expected Howl to come through it. It was hard to say which of them was more astonished when the person who slid rather cautiously round the door turned out to be Miss Angorian.
Miss Angorian was equally astonished. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” she said. “I thought Mr. Jenkins might be here.”
“He’s out,” Sophie said stiffly, and she wondered where Howl had gone, if not to see Miss Angorian.
Miss Angorian let go of the door, which she had been clutching in her surprise. She left it swinging open on nothing and came pleadingly toward Sophie. Sophie found she had got up herself and come across the room. It seemed as if she was trying to block Miss Angorian off. “Please,” said Miss Angorian, “don’t tell Mr. Jenkins I was here. To tell you the truth, I only encouraged him in hope of getting news of my fiancé—Ben Sullivan, you know. I’m positive Ben disappeared to the same place Mr. Jenkins keeps disappearing to. Only Ben didn’t come back.”
“There’s no Mr. Sullivan here,” Sophie said. And she thought, That’s Wizard Suliman’s name! I don’t believe a word of it!
“Oh, I know that,” Miss Angorian said. “But this feels like the right place. Do you mind if I just look round a little to give myself some idea of the sort of life Ben’s leading now?” She hooked her sheet of black hair behind one ear and tried to walk further into the room. Sophie stood in the way. This forced Miss Angorian to tiptoe pleadingly away sideways toward the workbench. “How very quaint!” she said, looking at the bottles and the jars. “What a quaint little town!” she said, looking out of the window.
“It’s called Market Chipping,” Sophie said, and she moved round and herded Miss Angorian backward toward the door.
“And what’s up those stairs?” Miss Angorian asked, pointing to the open door to the stairs.
“Howl’s private room,” Sophie said firmly, walking Miss Angorian away backward.
“And what’s through that other open door?” Miss Angorian asked.
“A flower shop,” said Sophie. Nosy Parker! she thought.
By this time Miss Angorian either had to back into the chair or out through the door again. She stared at Calcifer in a vague, frowning way, as if she was not sure what she was seeing, and Calcifer simply stared back without saying a word. This made Sophie feel better about being so very unfriendly. Only people who understood Calcifer were really welcome in Howl’s house.
But now Miss Angorian made a dive round the chair and noticed Howl’s guitar leaning in its corner. She snatched it up with a gasp and turned round, holding it to her chest possessively. “Where did you get this?” she demanded in a low, emotional voice. “Ben had a guitar like this! It could be Ben’s!”
“I heard Howl bought it last winter,” Sophie said. And she walked forward again, trying to scoop Miss Angorian out of her corner and through the door.
“Something’s happened to Ben!” Miss Angorian said throbbingly. “He would never have parted from his guitar! Where is he? I know he can’t be dead. I’d know in my heart if he were!”
Sophie wondered whether to tell Miss Angorian that the Witch had caught Wizard Suliman. She looked across to see where the human skull was. She had half a mind to wave it in Miss Angorian’s face and say it was Wizard Suliman’s. But the skull was in the sink, hidden behind a bucket of spare ferns and lilies, and she knew that if she went over there, Miss Angorian would ooze out into the room again. Besides, it would be unkind.
“May I take this guitar?” Miss Angorian said huskily, clutching it to her. “To remind me of Ben.”
The throb in Miss Angorian’s voice annoyed Sophie. “No,” she said. “There’s no need to be so intense about it. You’ve no proof it was his.” She hobbled close to Miss Angorian and seized the guitar by its neck. Miss Angorian stared at her over it with wide, anguished eyes. Sophie dragged. Miss Angorian hung on. The guitar gave out horrible, out-of-tune jangles. Sophie jerked it out of Miss Angorian’s arms. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’ve no right to walk into people’s castles and take their guitars. I’ve told you Mr. Sullivan’s not here. Now go back to Wales. Go on.” And she used the guitar to push Miss Angorian backward through the open door.
Miss Angorian backed into the nothingness until half of her vanished. “You’re hard,” she said reproachfully.
“Yes, I am!” said Sophie and slammed the door on her. She turned the knob to orange-down to prevent Miss Angorian coming back and dumped the guitar back in its corner with a firm twang. “And don’t you dare tell Howl she was here!” she said unreasonably to Calcifer. “I bet she came to see Howl. The rest was just a pack of lies. Wizard Suliman was settled here, years ago. He probably came to get away from her beastly throbbing voice!”
Calcifer chuckled. “I’ve never seen anyone got rid of so fast!” he said.
This made Sophie feel both unkind and guilty. After all, she herself had walked into the castle in much the same way, and she had been twice as nosy as Miss Angorian. “Gah!” she said. She stumped into the bathroom and stared at her withered old face in the mirrors. She picked up one of the packets labeled SKIN and then tossed it down again. Even young and fresh, she did not think her face compared particularly well with Miss Angorian’s. “Gah!” she said. “Doh!” She hobbled rapidly back and seized ferns and lilies from the sink. She hobbled them, dripping, to the shop, where she rammed them into a bucket of nutrition spell. “Be daffodils!” she told them in a mad, angry, croaking voice. “Be daffodils in June, you beastly things!”
The dog-man put his shaggy face round the yard door. When he saw the mood Sophie was in, he backed out again hurriedly. When Michael came merrily in with a large pie a minute later, Sophie gave him such a glare that Michael instantly remembered a spell Howl had asked him to make up and fled away through the broom cupboard.
“Gah!” Sophie sn
arled after him. She bent over her bucket again. “Be daffodils! Be daffodils!” she croaked. It did not make her feel any better that she knew it was a silly way to behave.
Chapter 19: In which Sophie expresses her feelings with weed-killer
Howl opened the shop door toward the end of the afternoon and sauntered in, whistling. He seemed to have got over the mandrake root. It did not make Sophie feel any better to find he had not gone to Wales after all. She gave him her very fiercest glare.
“Merciful heavens!” Howl said. “I think that turned me to stone! What’s the matter?”
Sophie only snarled, “What suit are you wearing?”
Howl looked down at his black garments. “Does it matter?”
“Yes!” growled Sophie. “And don’t give me that about being in mourning! Which one is it really?”
Howl shrugged and held up one trailing sleeve as if he were not sure which it was. He stared at it, looking puzzled. The black color of it ran downward from his shoulder into the pointed, hanging tip. His shoulder and the top of his sleeve grew brown, then gray, while the pointed tip turned inkier and inkier, until Howl was wearing a black suit with one blue-and-silver sleeve whose end seemed to have been dipped in tar. “That one,” he said, and let the black spread back up to his shoulder again.
Sophie was somehow more annoyed than ever. She gave a wordless grump of rage.
“Sophie!” Howl said in his most laughing, pleading way.
The dog-man pushed open the yard door and shambled in. He never would let Howl talk to Sophie for long.
Howl stared at it. “You’ve got an Old English sheepdog now,” he said, as if he was glad of the distraction. “Two dogs are going to take a lot of feeding.”
“There’s only one dog,” Sophie said crossly. “He’s under a spell.”
“He is?” said Howl, and he set off toward the dog with a speed that showed he was quite glad to get away from Sophie. This of course was the last thing the dog-man wanted. He backed away. Howl pounced, and caught him by two handfuls of shaggy hair before he could reach the door. “So he is!” he said, and knelt down to look into what could be seen of the sheepdog’s eyes. “Sophie,” he said, “what do you mean by not telling me about this? This dog is a man! And he’s in a terrible state!” Howl whirled round on one knee, still holding the dog. Sophie looked into Howl’s glass-marble glare and realized that Howl was angry now, really angry.
Good. Sophie felt like a fight. “You could have noticed for yourself,” she said, glaring back, daring Howl to do his worst with green slime. “Anyway, the dog didn’t want—”
Howl was too angry to listen. He jumped up and hauled the dog across the tiles. “And so I would have done, if I hadn’t had things on my mind,” he said. “Come on. I want you in front of Calcifer.” The dog braced all four shaggy feet. Howl lugged at it, braced and sliding. “Michael!” he yelled.
There was a particular sound to that yell which brought Michael running.
“And did you know this dog was really a man?” Howl asked as he and Michael dragged the reluctant mountain of dog up the stairs.
“He’s not, is he?” Michael asked, shocked and surprised.
“Then I let you off and just blame Sophie,” Howl said, hauling the dog through the broom cupboard. “Anything like this is always Sophie! But you knew, didn’t you, Calcifer?” he said as the two of them dragged the dog in front of the hearth.
Calcifer retreated until he was bent backward against the chimney. “You never asked,” he said.
“Do I have to ask you?” Howl said. “All right, I should have noticed myself! But you disgust me, Calcifer! Compared with the way the Witch treats her demon, you live a revoltingly easy life, and all I ask in return is that you tell me things I need to know. This is twice you’ve let me down! Now help me get this creature to its own shape this minute!”
Calcifer was an unusually sickly shade of blue. “All right,” he said sulkily.
The dog-man tried to get away, but Howl got his shoulder under its chest and shoved, so that it went up onto its hind legs, willy-nilly. Then he and Michael held it there. “What’s the silly creature holding out for?” Howl panted. “This feels like one of the Witch of the Waste’s again, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. There are several layers of it,” said Calcifer.
“Let’s get the dog part off anyway,” said Howl.
Calcifer surged to a deep, roaring blue. Sophie, watching prudently from the door of the broom cupboard, saw the shaggy dog shape fade away inside the man shape. It faded to dog again, then back to man, blurred, then hardened. Finally, Howl and Michael were each holding the arm of a ginger-haired man in a crumpled brown suit. Sophie was not surprised she had not recognized him. Apart from his anxious look, his face was almost totally lacking in personality.
“Now, who are you, my friend?” Howl asked him.
The man put his hands up and shakily felt his face. “I–I’m not sure.”
Calcifer said, “The most recent name he answered to was Percival.”
The man looked at Calcifer as if he wished Calcifer did not know this. “Did I?” he said.
“Then we’ll call you Percival for now,” Howl said. He turned the ex-dog round and sat him in the chair. “Sit there and take it easy, and tell us what you do remember. By the feel of you, the Witch had you for some time.”
“Yes,” said Percival, rubbing his face again. “She took my head off. I–I remember being on a shelf, looking at the rest of me.”
Michael was astonished. “But you’d be dead!” he protested.
“Not necessarily,” said Howl. “You haven’t got to that sort of witchcraft yet, but I could take any piece of you I wanted and leave the rest of you alive, if I went about it the right way.” He frowned at the ex-dog. “But I’m not sure the Witch put this one back together properly.”
Calcifer, who was obviously trying to prove that he was working hard for Howl, said, “This man is incomplete, and he has parts from some other man too.”
Percival looked more distraught than ever.
“Don’t alarm him, Calcifer,” Howl said, “He must feel bad enough anyway. Do you know why the Witch took your head off, my friend?” he asked Percival.
“No,” said Percival. “I don’t remember anything.”
Sophie knew that could not be true. She snorted rather.
Michael was suddenly seized with the most exciting idea. He leaned over Percival and asked, “Did you ever answer to the name of Justin—or Your Royal Highness?”
Sophie snorted again. She knew this was ridiculous even before Percival said, “No. The Witch called me Gaston, but that isn’t my name.”
“Don’t crowd him, Michael,” said Howl. “And don’t make Sophie snort again. The mood she’s in, she’ll bring down the castle next time.”
Though that seemed to mean Howl was no longer angry, Sophie found she was angrier than ever. She stumped off into the shop, where she banged about, shutting the shop and putting things away for the night. She went to look at her daffodils. Something had gone horribly wrong with them. They were wet brown things trailing out of a bucket full of the most poisonous-smelling liquid she had ever come across.
“Oh, confound it all!” Sophie yelled.
“What’s all this, now?” said Howl, arriving in the shop. He bent over the bucket and sniffed. “You seem to have some rather efficient weed-killer here. How about trying it on those weeds on the drive of the mansion?”
“I will,” said Sophie. “I feel like killing something!” She slammed around until she had found a watering can, and stumped through into the castle with the can and the bucket, where she hurled open the door, orange-down, onto the mansion drive. Percival looked up anxiously. They had given him the guitar, rather as you gave a baby a rattle, and he was sitting making horrible twangings.
“You go with her, Percival,” Howl said. “The mood she’s in, she’ll be killing all the trees too.”
So Percival laid down the guitar an
d took the bucket carefully out of Sophie’s hand. Sophie stumped out into a golden summer evening at the end of the valley. Everyone had been too busy up to now to pay much attention to the mansion. It was much grander than Sophie had realized. It had a weedy terrace with statues along the edge, and steps down to the drive. When Sophie looked back—on the pretext of telling Percival to hurry up—she saw the house was very big, with more statues along the roof, and rows of windows. But it was derelict. Green mildew ran down the peeling wall from every window. Many of the windows were broken, and the shutters that should have folded against the wall beside them were gray and blistered and hanging sideways.
“Huh!” said Sophie. “I think the least Howl could do is to make the place look a bit more lived in. But no! He’s far too busy gadding off to Wales! Don’t just stand there, Percival! Pour some of that stuff into the can and then come along behind me.”
Percival meekly did as she said. He was no fun at all to bully. Sophie suspected that was why Howl had sent him with her. She snorted, and took her anger out on the weeds. Whatever the stuff was that had killed the daffodils, it was strong. The weeds in the drive died as soon as it touched them. So did the grass at the sides of the drive, until Sophie calmed down a little. The evening calmed her. The fresh air was blowing off the distant hills, and clumps of trees planted at the sides of the drive rustled majestically in it.
Sophie weed-killed her way down a quarter of the drive. “You remember a great deal more than you let on,” she accused Percival while he refilled her can. “What did the Witch really want with you? Why did she bring you into the shop with her that time?”
“She wanted to find out about Howl,” Percival said.
“Howl?” said Sophie. “But you didn’t know him, did you?”
“No, but I must have known something. It had to do with the curse she’d put on him,” Percival explained, “but I’ve no idea what it was. She took it, you see, after we came to the shop. I feel bad about that. I was trying to stop her knowing, because a curse is an evil thing, and I did it by thinking about Lettie. Lettie was just in my head. I don’t know how I knew her, because Lettie said she’d never seen me when I went to Upper Folding. But I knew all about her—enough so that when the Witch made me tell her about Lettie, I said she kept a hat shop in Market Chipping. So the Witch went there to teach us both a lesson. And you were there. She thought you were Lettie. I was horrified, because I didn’t know Lettie had a sister.”
Wizard's Castle: Omnibus Page 19
