Howl's Moving Castle (Howl's Castle Book 1)

by Diana Wynne Jones

But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Howl. Wizard Howl was bad enough. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own.

“Lettie and I arranged it,” Martha said, twiddling her thumbs, “because Lettie wanted to learn witchcraft and I didn’t. Lettie’s got brains, and she wants a future where she can use them—only try telling that to Mother! Mother’s too jealous of Lettie even to admit she has brains!”

“She’s out doing the buying,” Sophie said. “Buying!” Martha cried. Her thumbs whirled. “That takes her half a morning. I’ve seen her, Sophie, and heard the talk. She’s off in a hired carriage and new clothes on your earnings, visiting all the mansions down the valley! They’re saying she’s going to buy that big place down at Vale End and set up in style. And where are you?”

Sophie put her hands to her face, wondering what the man had stared at. She felt soft, leathery wrinkles. She looked at her hands. They were wrinkled too, and skinny, with large veins in the back and knuckles like knobs. She pulled her gray skirt against her legs and looked down at skinny, decrepit ankles and feet which had made her shoes all knobbly. They were the legs of someone about ninety and they seemed to be real.

“I never realized before what old people had to put up with!” she panted as she labored uphill. “Still, I don’t think wolves will eat me. I must be far too dry and tough. That’s one comfort.”

“Don’t you want your heart eaten?” asked the fire. It was definitely the fire that spoke. Sophie saw its purple mouth move as the words came. Its voice was nearly as cracked as her own, full of the spitting and whining of burning wood.

It was odd. As a girl, Sophie would have shriveled with embarrassment at the way she was behaving. As an old woman, she did not mind what she did or said. She found that a great relief.

“Calcifer and I try to keep a store of money,” Michael said rather guiltily. “Howl spends every penny we’ve got if we don’t.” “Feckless spendthrift!” Calcifer crackled. “He’ll spend the King’s money faster than I burn a log. No sense.”

“Yes, you are nosy,” said Howl. “You’re a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You’re victimizing us all.”

There were horrendous, dramatic, violent quantities of green slime—oodles of it. It covered Howl completely. It draped his head and shoulders in sticky dollops, heaping on his knees and hands, trickling in glops down his legs, and dripping off the stool in sticky strands. It was in oozing ponds and crawling pools over most of the floor. Long fingers of it had crept into the hearth. It smelled vile.

Sophie’s sympathy went for good, with a sharp bang. A good deal of anxiety took its place. Oh, Martha! she thought. You have been busy! So it wasn’t anyone in Cesari’s you were talking about!

I knew he was going to drop this girl, just like all the others, as soon as he’d got her to love him.

Calcifer and Michael exchanged glances. “Did he forget to spend at least an hour in the bathroom this morning?” Michael asked. “He was in there two hours,” said Calcifer, “putting spells on his face. Vain fool!” “There you are, then,” said Michael. “The day Howl forgets to do that will be the day I believe he’s really in love, and not before.”

“You have an instinct, Sophie, that’s how,” said Howl. “Nothing is safe from you. If I were to court a girl who lived on an iceberg in the middle of an ocean, sooner or later—probably sooner—I’d look up to see you swooping overhead on a broomstick. In fact, by now I’d be disappointed in you if I didn’t see you.”

“Are you off to the iceberg today?” Sophie retorted. “From the look on Lettie’s face yesterday, there’s nothing that need keep you there!”

“Oh,” said Sophie, wondering why Mrs. Pentstemmon only said “going.” Howl had surely arrived at the bad long ago.

It seems as if those of high ability cannot resist some extra, dangerous stroke of cleverness, which results in a fatal flaw and begins a slow decline to evil. Do you, by any chance, have a clue what it might be?”

“No, but I was thinking that people who run away from everything deserve every cold they get,” Sophie said. “People who are appointed to do something by the King and go courting in the rain instead have only themselves to blame.” “You don’t know everything I do, Mrs. Moralizer,” Howl said. “Want me to write out a list before I go out another time? I have looked for Prince Justin. Courting isn’t the only thing I do when I go out.”

“I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.” He tottered piteously to the stairs. “Bury me beside Mrs. Pentstemmon,” he croaked as he went up them to bed.