Archive of Our Own

By the third time Howl circles the mounded remains of the castle, a pensive look on his face but not a word coming out of his mouth, Sophie is sure she should be concerned. The only time she’s ever seen him so quiet for so long, he’s been unconscious. Even then, Sophie’s caught him talking in his sleep more than once. 

She chews her lip, tracking Howl as he sets off on another circuit.

Is he upset? It seems unlikely; the few times she’s witnessed such a mood, he’d been more prone to sulky whining and fits of overwrought despair. Stewing in silence doesn't exactly seem like his style. 

There’s no sign of a sulk incoming now. He’s composed and thoughtful, more like the debonair, mystical stranger Sophie had first met than the drama-prone coward she's come to love. 

She rather doubts this is a good thing. 

Eventually, he stops, planting himself directly between the piled, abandoned ruins of his home and its miraculously still-ambulatory foundation. If a foundation for an enchanted, wandering castle can consist of just a flat platform swaying between angular, creaking haunches.

Sophie, Markl, the Witch, and Heen, legs dangling over the edge of that platform, observe him, waiting for his assessment. Some with more interest than others. Markl, at least, has partially woken from his doze, leaning groggily against the Witch of the Waste’s side. Heen, though he sighs and flicks an ear, keeps his eyes closed. It's Sophie who studies the wizard's frustratingly inexpressive back, surer with each passing moment that he must be furious.

Finally, Howl whirls on his audience, arms spread in an expansive flourish, reckless grin firmly in place. 

“I have no idea how to fix this,” he declares, sounding altogether cheerful for such an admission. 

“Oh, Howl,” Sophie immediately bursts, fat teardrops beginning to well up in her eyes, as inevitable as those she’d shed in the void between memory and the real world. “I’m so sorry!” Her fingers curl uselessly over the edge of the platform, the wood too worn to even threaten a splinter. Though she’d deserve it, and a thousand more.

She destroyed his home!

For an excellent cause, it was true, but with all the danger and fear of the night behind them, the absolute demolition of the castle feels all the more disastrous. 

He strides over to her in a flash, his hands falling to her knees as he stares up into her wretched expression. As they are, Howl on the ground and Sophie perched on the once-castle’s floor—though it now seems more like a particularly stiff, mechanical flying carpet—she isn’t very much taller than him. It is a novel experience being the one to look down for once.  

Not novel enough to completely dry her tears, but they do slow. 

“Sophie,” he swears, her name an oath and a prayer and a spell. She’s not sure what kind of magic he weaves with it, but his faith in her is bracing nonetheless. The hypnotic, lulling pull of his bright blue gaze is even better. “You saved me. Don’t apologize for that.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Calcifer mutters, descending from his own inspection of the highest points of the ruin. 

They both ignore him, too caught up in one another. 

It’s the Witch’s sly chuckle that bursts their rosy bubble, built upon the magic of young love. It’s good for them, though. Each time the bubble grows back, it’s a little sturdier than before. 

Flushed, Sophie’s gaze drops to Howl’s hands, still covering her knees. His grip shifts, and before she knows it, he’s stretching up to press his lips to hers. Just a brush, but one that lights Sophie up, bright as a falling star. 

He pulls away and smiles, contained but sincere. 

It’s difficult to reconcile this Howl, sweet and open and adoring, with the dashing enigma who’d come to her rescue in an unfamiliar alley. If the difference is something so fundamental as a beating heart, can she even think of them as the same man? 

But then he’s sweeping away with a familiar flourish, and Sophie realizes that “difficult” is a far cry from “impossible.”

“I built it once,” he declares, sweeping his arms to encompass the entirety of the mess Sophie had so spectacularly created. “I can do it again.”

His confidence is refreshing, unknotting a furl of dread in Sophie’s chest, even if it is undercut by a dose of cynicism.

“Oh, you built it, huh?” Calcifer mutters, turning a sulky blue.

“Well,” he allows, deflating not an inch, “I thought of it. I designed all the spells, the framework.” 

“Uh huh.”

Rather than let this escalate into Round 32 of Howl vs. Calcifer, Sophie asks, “Until it is rebuilt, what are we going to do? Is it even safe to stay out here?”

Even as she asks, she realizes it hardly matters. All the worst dangers of the Waste are already here. Even Madam Suliman would surely think twice before taking on the Wizard Howl and an unfettered fire demon. Surely.

Demon and wizard trade glances, however, and Sophie’s confidence wavers. If there are things prowling the Waste that make Howl and Calcifer pause, she finds that she doesn’t actually want to know. 

That puts an extended camping trip right out of the question.

As one, their gazes all shift downhill, to the still-smoldering sprawl of Sophie’s hometown. 

The pang through her chest at the thought of all the destruction wrought in one night makes her eyes sting. Though she knows there’s nothing she could have done to prevent it, part of her can’t help but think she should have tried harder. No, she could not have staved off an invasion, but her and Howl’s and Madam Suliman’s part in it…

It’s wildly unhelpful, this raw guilt, but Sophie would never forgive herself if she didn’t feel it. 

She’s still staring, imagining she can pick out the damage from all these leagues away, as Howl muses, “A responsible property owner would check in on his holdings, right?”

“Responsible? You?” Calcifer blows a raspberry, but only Markl lets out a sleepy chuckle. It’s quiet for a moment, and Sophie, gaze still fixed on the distant town, doesn’t notice the worried glances around her. “Well, I suppose it’s not your worst idea.”

“Thank you for the ringing endorsement, Cal,” replies Howl, dry but sincere anyway.

From a fire demon, it doesn’t get much better.

The familiar cobblestone lane is eerily empty. 

So empty, in fact, that Sophie struggles to find any familiarity in the place she’s lived her entire life. 

The fountain where she and Lettie had splashed as children is cracked, though water still trickles from the spout. On the corner, the greengrocer's awning had clearly caught fire, leaving the face of the store sooty and scorched. No slate signs sit on the walk, advertising daily specials. No children zig zag across the road, getting underfoot even as they leave their parents in peace. Neither business nor play is being conducted today, leaving the street still and silent. 

Empty. 

Which is not to say that it’s been deserted. In the buildings left standing, more than one curtain flickers as the haphazard conveyance and its array of unlikely passengers trundle down the road. 

Any hope, once the town is back on its feet and life has returned to its well-worn routines, of passing the shop off as just an ordinary florist recedes with each mechanical step. 

Well, Sophie’s had plenty of just ordinary. It’s high time she branches out.

By some miracle, the hat-slash-flower shop is still standing. Oh, it’s in absolute shambles—the big picture window at the front is only jagged shards, a maw of glinting fangs rather than the pristine sheet of glass that had so proudly borne her father’s name—but Sophie tries to be philosophical about the destruction. A bombardment on top of an invasion of magical henchmen is wont to wreak some havoc, and the wreck before her has nothing on the castle, parts of which are still strewn across the Waste. 

This is hardly the end of the world, even if part of her feels like it might be at the sight of the front doors hanging off their hinges. The shop still has four walls and most of a roof, as does the house beyond the soot-streaked courtyard.

Inside, only a few furnishings escaped unscathed, and even fewer are remotely near where they’d been left. All in all, the place gives off the distinct air of some particularly nasty wind demon’s dwelling. 

“Oh, you don’t wanna mess with wind demons, Sophie,” Calcifer warns when she voices the thought after finding yet another of Lettie’s—”It’s lost forever, Sophie, I swear! I need a new pair!”—errant gloves. “Just as soon suck all the breath from your body as offer you a bargain.”

Sophie can only return to sifting through the detritus, offering him a placid, “I’ll keep that in mind, Calcifer.”

In the end, between Sophie’s work ethic and Howl’s magical assistance, it isn’t too difficult to carve out some livable space. Before the week is out, there are bedrooms for them all and the common room has been set to some semblance of rights, if only because Sophie can’t stand to see the mess every time she crosses through. Howl and Markl might be content to live like pigs in a sty, but she refuses to let their sloppiness rub off on her. The Witch proves to be more fastidious, but, as she sniffs when Sophie inevitably loses her temper and tells her to lend a hand if she plans to continue complaining, she is best suited to a supervisory role.

At least Heen knows better than to offer unsolicited opinions. 

And so Sophie spends her days just as she had when she first came to the castle: cleaning with a single-minded intensity. At least this time, she can do it without a hunched back and creaking knees. 

She starts at the top and works her way down, beating dust and debris from the floorboards of the second floor down the stairs and out windows thrown wide to catch any gasp of fresh air. The whole place still smells alarmingly of smoke and whatever oily-viscous power had propelled Madam Suliman’s blob-men. She collects and hauls the splintered remains of furniture, smoke-stained hangings, and shattered crockery, dumping it all on the street for cleaning crews to take away. What might be salvaged goes to the courtyard to await someone with both the time and the talent to fix what needs mending. As soon as the hearth is returned to functionality, she uses every spare moment to cook. It is evidently not enough to feed her own household; Sophie also provides for those neighbors without the luck of magically preserved food stores.

Markl helps where he can, but Sophie suspects that so much time with Howl has rendered him a lost cause when it comes to neat and tidy living. Most days, she sets him up on the front step, a magical tome in his lap so he can at least get on with something productive. The Witch takes to keeping an eye on him, though this only means Sophie has to keep an eye on her, making sure she doesn’t corrupt the boy too much.

From morning to night, she’s on her feet, putting all her energy into rebuilding her home, brick by beam, paving stone by plank. 

If Sophie weren’t running off her feet every waking hour, she would feel guiltier about not helping to fix the mess she actually had a hand in: the castle.

As it is, she’s so occupied, there’s hardly time to think about it. Let alone to think about missing Howl and Calcifer, who have decamped back to the Waste to see what can be done about the husk of the castle still hunkered, unmoving and draped in shreds of fog, on a hillside just in view of town. 

Though, of course, she hardly has to think to miss them. It’s unconscious, foundational, as she sweeps away plaster dust and soot or fills yet another tub with water that will turn a muddy gray within minutes of soaking the laundry. Distant, periodic booms, rolling down from the hills on waves of energy still crackling with potent magic provide plenty of opportunity for the unconscious to rise up in Sophie’s thoughts and remind her just how absent Howl and Calcifer are. Usually, this just spurs an even greater frenzy of cleaning, but sometimes, she takes a moment to stare up at the foggy foothills and hope that they’ll be home soon.

It’s as she’s preparing for another day of searching out any remaining projects—most of what’s left being beyond her and Markl’s abilities to fix—that she discovers those hopes weren’t wasted at all. 

Washbasin on her hip, she’s navigated the steps from the house down to the courtyard and is reaching for the doorknob with the four-color dial set above when she freezes. 

Her entire childhood growing up in this house, there had never been so much as a lock above this doorknob, let alone a fantastical, portal-controlling dial. The scant weeks it had taken up residence there were so recent and so short, the sight of it should still be strange. And yet, every time Sophie has reached for the plain knob in the past days, she’s been hit by a nagging sense of wrongness. 

Now that it’s back, her eyes almost skidded right over it.

Shifting the washbasin, Sophie inspects the colors. Yellow for the courtyard, pink for the valley, green for the Waste. But no black. The mysterious, off-limits spot is now blank. 

Quite literally. It’s not white or unfinished wood, but a determined nothingness that would have disconcerted Sophie far more a few months ago. 

As it is, she dismisses the mystery to abandon the wash, spin the dial to green, and eagerly push the door open. 

Sophie spills out onto scrubby grass, the ground falling away from her feet in a tumble of hills. 

At the foot of those hills lies the town where Sophie had woken up and eaten a slightly burnt piece of toast this morning. Where she had been not even five seconds ago. 

Before she can lose herself in marveling yet again at the possibilities of wizardry, she hears, “Sophie!”

She turns, straight into a breeze that blows her hair across her face. As soon as it’s there, however, it’s being brushed from her eyes, tender fingertips tracing across her skin to tuck the lock behind her ear. 

“Howl,” she sighs, throwing her arms around his shoulders and tucking her face against his neck. As always, he smells like sparks and silk, but there’s sweat too now, the kind earned from honest work. 

Oh, she has missed him. 

It’s been little more than a week since she last saw him, and even when they were living together in the castle, she only saw him sporadically. But then, his very essence filled up the place. Even when he wasn’t nearby, he was, simply because the castle was as much him as it was Calcifer. These past days haven’t been the same at all.

However tempting it had been to suggest he stay with her, help her return the house and shop to order and leave the castle, for now or forever, Sophie wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if she had. Howl had gone to such lengths to maintain his freedom; he might have been able to settle into an ordinary life with her, but she doubted it would make him truly happy. 

Certainly not as happy as he seems now. 

Howl’s arms wrap around her waist, and he spins them around until she’s laughing into his chest, as bright as he is. Only then does he put her back on her feet. He doesn’t release her, though, fingertips warm through the back of her dress and attention even warmer. He ducks down to press a kiss to her cheek, which she hasn’t missed. But only because it’s so new she hadn’t realized it was hers to miss.

“I see you found my surprise.”

“It’s wonderful! How did you do it without the ritual?” 

“The house had maintained a sympathetic connection to my magic. Any idea why that might be?”

Sophie knows about as much about magic as she knows about the maintenance of steam engines. Which is to say, hardly anything at all. But the way Howl’s grinning at her, like she’s the source of it all, is answer enough. If he wants to be smug about how much she’s missed him, she’ll just have to let him. 

Instead, she says, “You work faster than I expected. I didn’t realize you’d made such headway with this mess.”

Frankly, she’s not sure that he has. Not if the remaining piles of scrap and salvage littering the hillside are any indicator. Mostly, it seems as though he and Calcifer have turned one mountain into several smaller mounds surrounding the spare framework sketching out what will be the castle's interior.

“You’re not the only one who can tidy up, Sophie.”

She’s not thinking as she replies, “You could have fooled me.”

Howl is hardly offended. He laughs with real amusement and ducks down to press another swift kiss to the corner of her mouth. 

It is wholly unfair that such a tactic can so completely and utterly render any further opposition on Sophie’s part useless. From their few tests, his lips on hers seem to melt any and all sauce and pertness straight from Sophie’s being, turning her perfectly agreeable. 

Fortunately, she’s learned Howl is just as easily disarmed. 

It’s not the only reason she snatches a fistful of his shirt and tugs him down to kiss her properly, but it is quite the perk.

He makes a protesting sound when she eventually pulls away, but Sophie was growing dizzy with the lack of oxygen. Or perhaps that’s just the effect Howl wreaks on her now. That could prove problematic in the long run, but she can hardly regret it in the short.

She leans her forehead against his chest, breathing in his warmth and his presence. Her fist remains curled in his shirt, right above his heart. 

“I’ve missed you,” she finally confesses, though she suspects he had gathered as much. 

He lifts her chin so she’s looking into those impossible blue eyes. Howl smiles, and she’s convinced he’s about to say something to make her swoon, to back up all those tales of Howl the Heartless, but what comes out of his mouth is: “Well, why wouldn’t you?”

Sophie scoffs and pushes him away, but his arm is still wound around her waist, and he just tugs her closer. 

“Ah, there’s the Sophie I missed. Always ready to put me in my place.”

“Only when you need it.” Which is approximately all the time, but that hardly needs saying.

Howl doesn’t say anything—which she’ll take as abject agreement—and instead takes her by the hand to show off what he’s accomplished so far. She listens as he explains how he and Calcifer have initiated a connection between the castle and the shop's house once more, this time without necessitating Calcifer’s constant presence to power the portal door. Sophie gets muddled up in the metamagics of it all, but Howl sounds quite pleased with himself, and for good reason this time. 

“Does this mean you’ll be able to join us for dinner?” 

“Dinner, breakfast, tea,” he assures her. “And a bath. Calcifer’s refusing to heat water out here, though I’m sure if you asked him…”

With the memory of him pressed against her so fresh in her mind, the last thing Sophie needs is to consider Howl in the bath, though it takes her a few moments to remember that. Once she dredges herself from imagination’s grip, cheeks flushed, Howl has already moved on. 

“So long as we’re still fixing up the castle, I’ll leave the connection to the shop. But, of, course,” he assures her, “I can always undo it.”

“Why would you ever do that?” demands Sophie, taking a step back. Her brows furrow in furious thought, but she can’t conjure a single good reason.

“We’ve fairly well established that the door is something of a security risk. Leaving it connected to the shop is just asking for trouble.”

“Do you expect us to be at the epicenter of another war while hiding from your former mentor and her own personal army again?”

“Expect? No. Though it’s never good to pin expectations on Madam Suliman.”

“No,” is more than enough for Sophie, who nods decisively. “Then we’ll leave the door.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, looking uncharacteristically uncertain, tentative. “After all, this is your home—”

“The castle is my home,” she corrects. “You are my home, Howl.”

His handsome face goes utterly still, a statue carved by the gods because mortal hands couldn’t achieve this sort of perfection. But then, slow and inevitable as the sunrise, a beaming smile blooms across his face. His sapphire eyes sparkle, and Sophie is reminded of how dazzled she’d been when he’d saved her from those soldiers.

When he kisses her this time, it’s a spell of its own, wrapping them up in a bubble of safety and love that doesn’t burst so much as dissolve away after a long, languid stretch wrapped up in only one another. 

Howl’s thumb brushes against her bottom lip as their surroundings filter back into their perception, and Sophie is sure she shivers from the reverence of the motion more than the brisk breeze cutting across the rise. With stunning clarity, she suddenly understands all the tales about Howl and his heart-eating ways. The way he’s looking at her, all thick lashes and glittering eyes, never mind her heart, she’d gladly let him devour her whole.

In the days following the shop’s reunification with the magical shell of the castle, Sophie finds herself perversely missing Howl more than ever. For all she sees him every morning at breakfast and every evening from dinner through to the moment he escorts her to her bedroom door, never crossing the threshold by more than a nose as she kisses him goodnight, each parting feels harder than the last. 

Perhaps it’s down to the fact that Sophie has finished scouring both the house and shop from top to bottom, ceiling to baseboards, and done it again when the gaping holes in each were finally filled in. They don’t quite shine, there are too many remaining cracks and broken pieces for that, but it’s clean at last. Furniture begins to find their homes again, most with a repaired leg or darned cushion, though there are still many empty spots whose former residents couldn't be salvaged. It's far from perfect, but it's starting to feel like home again.

So, with nothing else to do one morning, Sophie goes through the motions of collecting and arranging flowers from the valley and opening the shop. The particulars might be different, but Sophie has woken and gone about running a business since she was little more than a girl. It’s more a habit than anything else in her life, and habits can be soothing. Besides, arranging a bouquet isn’t so different from trimming a bonnet, though she sneezes rather more now than she ever used to. 

Hers is the only shop on the street open for regular business, and it shows. Sophie ends up giving away most of her stock that first day and many of the days that follow; there isn’t much demand for floral arrangements on the heels of war. Even if there were, there aren’t enough neighbors to account for the sheer volume of blooms that Sophie hauls out of the valley each morning, still dripping dew.

Still, the boutonnieres she presses on the few who pass and the poesies and daisy crowns she hands off to the children are bright, cheerful spots of kindness in a city still gathering its strength. A strength it can whole-heartedly devote to building a peaceful existence.

Between the joint-decree from the king and Prince Justin’s father in the neighboring kingdom and the skies clear of ponderous warships, the threat of further violence recedes. At least from the vicinity; war, as everyone knows, isn’t the kind of beast to be tamed so easily. 

As the days wear on to weeks, the neighborhood refills with old acquaintances who had evacuated and new, looking to build alongside the city itself. Rubble disappears from the streets—Sophie harbors suspicions that Howl is responsible for more of the vanishing scrap than municipal collectors, if only because he’d seemed entirely disappointed in the accumulated cast-offs from the shop and house—and soot-smudged walls are painted anew. Every day, shops reopen or new ones take the place of old. 

Life begins to move on. 

For all, it seems, but Hatter Florists.

Habit and routine certainly have their place, but Sophie is at risk of going stir-crazy. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but living in an ambulatory castle, in the company of wizards and demons and adventure, had evidently rubbed off on her. Going back to a quiet life, within the four walls where she’d grown up no less, is beginning to stifle. 

“How are repairs on the castle going?”

She’s managed to contain the question until the middle of dinner. Most days, when Howl and Calcifer come through the portal door, it’s the first thing she wants to ask. Wants to know how soon it will be complete and they can get back to their wandering ways. 

Howl finishes chewing his fish, perhaps more thoroughly than strictly necessary. But in the face of three inquisitive gazes—Sophie is hardly the only resident of the old hat shop looking forward to resuming their customary lifestyle—he can’t chew forever. 

Swallowing, he nods. “The runes on the tertiary steam engine were giving me some trouble, but I think I’ve cracked the problem. You see, one of the rotors was interfering with the propulsion enchantment on the axle of the windmill. Fourth Kingdom etchings have a tendency to do that with Lower Ingarric—”

Markl nods along enthusiastically. Lately, he’s been trailing after Howl and Calcifer most mornings, wringing what practical education he can get out of them. The Witch hardly reacts at all, though she has the advantage of likely understanding what on earth Howl is saying.

“Yes, yes,” Sophie cuts in, not remotely sorry for interrupting. She has accepted being the lone mundane creature in this household, and would normally let it pass right over her head, but she has little patience for the finer details of magic-casting at the moment. “But when will it be finished?”

“Well,” Howl says, giving off the impression that he rather regrets abandoning cowardice. If he could flee the dinner table with anything like dignity, she suspects he might. “There are a few questions of design—”

“Design? Won’t you just rebuild the castle as it was?”

He hums, evasive. “When you have an opportunity like this to improve—from the foundation up—why not take advantage?”

“Howl,” she bites out, “it was a wandering castle. How can you improve on that? Just rebuild it exactly as it was.”

”Who says it has to be the same?”

“Who says it doesn’t?” Sophie demands, a bubble of panic welling up her throat at the thought of the lumbering, cobbled-together castle truly being no more. She’s had quite enough upheaval for one year, one lifetime; her home suddenly changing form doesn’t need to join in.

A flash of concern passes over Howl’s face, less evident than the one on Markl’s. For her part, the Witch of the Waste merely observes. Of them all, she is the most content with the sudden turn to tension this dinner has taken, placidly slurping her soup but her eyes bright with interest at the prospect of a real argument. One needs a bit of drama in life, and things had been going along too smoothly for too long. 

“Well,” Howl says, clearly trying to inject some buoyancy into proceedings, “I thought a change might be diverting. We can’t let anyone say I’ve gotten complacent, can we? So what if the castle were a train? There could be a different car for every occasion!”

Sophie can already see Markl getting excited by this prospect, and she would hate for him to be disappointed later, when Howl inevitably decides a train-castle is an absurd idea. Because it is. Utterly ridiculous.

“You want to confine your life to tracks? Think how easy it would be for Madam Suliman to find you!”

Howl airily waves off her concern. “It’s so much more elegant than the castle was. More streamlined.”

If he wanted a streamlined life, Sophie rather thinks he wouldn’t have fed his heart to a fire demon. 

“Well, what about Heen?” she demands, grasping for straws, and the dog makes for a very convenient one, snoozing by the hearth in the basket she’d unearthed for him. 

“Heen?”

“He’s a dog. Where is he meant to take walks on a train? And Markl is a growing boy!”

“Growing wizard!” said boy protests, but Sophie’s gathering steam and rolls right on. 

“He needs to be able to play in, in dirt! And grass. And that’s another thing! We’re a family now, aren’t we?”

“Of course, Sophie,” says Howl, nodding along thoughtfully, as though Sophie isn’t throwing out objections at random. He’s some mixture of bemused and indulgent that should infuriate her—she suspects he’s just humoring her, except she knows that she’s hit on the truth of the matter. They are a family, and Howl knows it, too.

“We need to be able to put down roots, Howl,” she insists, voice a throb of earnest belief.

He’s quiet for a long moment before taking her hand in his. 

“Sophie, I have something to tell you,” he says, low and soothing and completely serious in a way he almost never is.

Dread wells up to fill her whole. If she were magically inclined like Howl, she’s sure it would begin to ooze from her very pores. This is where he tells her— Well, she’s not sure, but it will be awful. 

“The castle. It won’t move.”

Her brows draw down. That is hardly what she’d expected. “It what?”

“Won’t move. I can’t get it running again. Calcifer can’t.”

It takes a long moment for understanding to descend, nestling into Sophie’s bones. 

Howl’s moving castle doesn’t move. 

How preposterous! 

“Oh,” she says, turning back to her own dinner as she tries to come to terms with this fundamental shift in her vision of her future. 

So long as Howl is there, she will be happy. She doesn't need the wind in her still shorn hair or new horizons greeting her every morning. Not so long as the Wizard Howl is by her side.

And yet... The prospect of being stuck—whether here in town she'd accepted she would be when her father died and it became her duty to carry on his dream or out in the rocky hills leading to the Waste—simply feels wrong. 

He squeezes her hand and leaves her to it, turning to Markl to tease out his latest lesson. Sophie hardly attends, too lost in her own thoughts.

Later, once the Witch and Markl are abed and Howl and Sophie are heading there themselves, Sophie has internalized matters much better. 

Internalized, but not accepted. What is true now might not always be. As someone who has been young and old and young again, Sophie knows that better than anyone. 

So what if the castle is stuck? It will not always be. She believes that with all her heart.

At the foot of the stairs, just outside her bedroom door, she catches Howl’s hand in hers. She rises onto her toes and presses a lingering kiss to each of his cheeks before going for his lips. She tries to convey her faith and love for him, hoping that even a scrap comes through. 

He sighs into her mouth, gathering her against him until he’s drunk his fill and lingering to make sure she’s had hers. 

“You’ll figure it out, Howl,” she swears, as much to convince herself as him. 

His hand skims down her back as his lips press against her forehead. 

“As long as I have you. Just keep believing in me, Sophie.”

She nods. 

If belief is what he needs, she has that in spades.

Belief, as it turns out, is in no short supply. 

Patience, however, isn’t so abundant. 

Sophie had always considered herself the patient one in the family, steady against her mother’s flights of fancy and Lettie’s desire to grow out of the household, strike out on her own. To balance them, Sophie had been content to stay in the shop, to create hats she would never wear, and to tend the dream her father had fostered his whole life. 

A willingness to accept her perceived lot in life, however, has little relation to honest patience. 

Now that Sophie knows how much more the world has to offer her, restlessness tries to set in. 

If anything, in the time that Howl grapples with a stubbornly sedentary castle, Sophie discovers that she’s less patient than she is stubborn. 

And she will stubbornly keep faith in Howl until she is truly 90. If he still hasn’t managed to get the castle up and running by then, she can reassess. 

Besides, though her days may seem all too familiar on the surface, with a wizard, his apprentice, a former witch, another witch’s rogue familiar, and a fire demon for company, it’s hardly as if Sophie’s life is just as it used to be. 

For all her surroundings seem the same, too, she’s never far from the knowledge that the house where she’d taken her first steps has been merged with an actual, magical castle. Though the castle is unfortunately stationary at the moment, it’s still a wizard’s keep. Too much magic and power has coursed through its walls to leave it anything close to ordinary. 

Every day, she makes new discoveries.

Sophie has never quite understood how things work in the castle, particularly when it comes to food. It sits out, without the benefit of an ice chest, but never seems to go bad. It never gives off nose-curling scents or wilts or even attracts vermin. No one has ever gotten sick from it, either. Not even Markl, as he threatens whenever she insists he finish everything green on his plate. 

It defies expectation, but isn’t that the root of all magic?

After a lifetime of living with a mundane kitchen where food spoils if it’s not kept cold, however, it’s still hard for Sophie to trust. 

Which is why she’s delighted, one morning, to step into the common room and find a new icebox standing between the hearth and the sink. The last had rather unfortunately disappeared in the first move, the entire kitchen winking out of existence as the castle settled into and subsumed the framework of the Hatters’ house. 

Happily, she transfers all the perishable food in the castle into the wooden chest’s porcelain interior, which, somehow, comfortably fits it all. 

Absently, she adds ordering a new block of ice to her perpetual to-do list, and merrily sets about making breakfast. 

No one comments on Sophie’s good mood as they eat their eggs and toast, though Howl’s eyebrows jump when she kisses him thoroughly just before he steps through the portal door to the mountainside. 

“What was that for?” 

“I can’t kiss you when you’ve been thoughtful?”

“Have I?” he asks, and it should be a joke, but there’s a genuine curiosity that gives Sophie pause. 

She peers up at him. “The icebox. You finally replaced it. Though I can’t even think where you found such a nice one.” Certainly nowhere in town could produce such a handsome specimen, and she rather doubts Howl’s shown his face in Kingsbury for something so mundane as a kitchen appliance.

A minute wrinkle forms between his brows. “The icebox. Right.” 

Distracted, he turns to the door and leaves for the day. 

On the scale of Howl’s oddest behaviors, this hardly even registers. Anyway, Sophie has flowers to cut and arrange, and the moment drifts from her mind. 

The moment keeps on drifting until a week has passed, and Sophie remembers with a start the ice she had never ordered. When she rips open the ice compartment’s door, though, she’s confronted by a shining, unmelted block. 

This, more than anything else, raises her suspicions. 

She wouldn’t put it past Howl to add a lovely piece of furniture to his dwelling—and with hand-carved scrolling and delicately painted blooms on each door, the icebox is undeniably lovely. Enchanting said furniture to perform a useful function, however…

Naturally, she interrogates him that evening. 

“Howl, where did the icebox come from?” she demands, pacing the stone porch before his secret cottage. They’ve taken to retreating to the valley some evenings, seeking out a bit of fresh air and privacy.

“I don’t know,” he answers easily from his spot on the bench beside the door. His eyes track her movements, heavy-lidded and content. It’s a look she’s learned up close, at the end of sweet, consuming kisses. Seeing it now, when she hasn’t done a thing to earn it, would give her pause in any other circumstance.

She stops, staring incredulously. “You don’t.”

“No, Sophie. Now, come sit by me.”

She does, because she wants to and not merely because she’s finding it increasingly difficult to deny him anything. Her shoulder settles familiarly against his side as his arm winds around her back. The tension in her body bleeds away as she leans against him, but her mind continues to race. 

“There’s something in our home that none of us have put there?”

“So it would seem,” he agrees, fingers winding into hers. 

“And that doesn’t concern you?”

“It did, at first. But Calcifer and I have both examined it. Whatever magic’s in it—”

“The ice doesn’t melt.”

“Nefarious,” he drawls, and she tenses until he laughs again, his lips brushing against her temple. “It’s not dangerous, Sophie. It’s not my magic, or Calcifer’s precisely, but it’s not meant to harm.”

Safe in the harbor of Howl’s arm, Sophie mulls this over. 

She trusts Howl when he says there’s no danger, but that doesn’t mean she’s entirely comfortable with it.

Most anomalies Sophie has discovered around the castle—which is just the generous name she’s given wreckage of some form or another—there’s no question in her mind as to who’s responsible. Not least because at least seven times out of ten, it’s all Howl. The eighth, it’s Howl trying to teach Markl a new enchantment; the ninth, Markl on his own, perhaps with an assist from the Witch; and the tenth, Calcifer, just to prove he’s no kept demon. Most times, they all try to blame it on Heen. Sophie knows better. Heen is possibly the best behaved resident of the castle; she’s inclined to believe it’s his refined background as a palace dweller. She rather doubts Madam Suliman is the type to put up with any mischief from her subordinates. 

It’s a wonder, then, she was so determined to have Howl back.

Anyway, as much as Sophie has accepted and welcomed magic’s prominent place in her life, she had not been prepared to accept magic out of the ether. It’s one thing when Howl or Markl or Calcifer do something fantastical and utterly impossible, quite likely leaving her to clean up the resulting mess. It’s entirely another when things just happen without rhyme or reason. 

Now, she supposes, she’ll have to adjust, never quite knowing whether it’s Howl or Calcifer or a magic entirely the castle’s own that’s to blame for the latest inexplicable to do.

“You listen here,” she says sternly the next morning, once she’s sure she’s completely alone. The Witch has gone off in search of handsome men about town to admire, taking Heen for company, and Howl, Calcifer, and Markl have left to continue trying to coax the castle into any kind of movement. It’s just Sophie, feet planted on the wooden boards of the kitchen, staring down the mysterious appliance. “I will have no funny business in this castle. We are full up with mischief-makers, and I won’t tolerate any more.” She glares at the cabinet for a moment until a flash of guilt eats at her hard line. “That is, I certainly appreciate the thought, but you have to understand that just appearing out of nowhere is rather rude. Perhaps wait until someone has asked for any additions before contributing one, all right?”

The guilt eases, and Sophie finds she can breathe a bit easier. She nods once, decisive, only to be immediately beset by the absurdity of the situation.

“Look at me,” she mutters, casting her eyes despairingly to the ceiling. “Talking to an icebox.”

Thankfully, the icebox doesn’t talk back.

The knock on the front door of the house—rather distinct from the portal-door which receives knocks at all hours; it gives Sophie a headache to think about the fact that the portal-door is in three places at once at all times but the castle is only ever in one, so she studiously does not—is out of the ordinary enough that Sophie feels a bit of trepidation as she goes to answer it. 

Which is for the best, considering who is standing on the other side. 

Sophie very nearly shrieks and slams the door in the face of a soldier wearing the personal insignia of the king. Instead she squeaks and draws back, putting more of the door between them. 

The soldier hardly blinks, merely inquiring, “Is this the residence of the Wizard Howl?”

She’s not sure how to reply. Madam Suliman clearly knows that the shop and attached house, in fact, are Howl’s residence, but she’s wary of volunteering that information. 

As it happens, the soldier doesn’t require her confirmation. Instead, he holds out an ornate envelope, the parchment thick and heavy between her fingers as she gingerly accepts it. “A message from the king,” he intones and promptly turns on his heel and marches off to the motorcar idling on the street. 

Sophie stares after it until all the exhaust it had belched out has dissipated in the afternoon air. Only then does she withdraw back into the house, closing the door and latching it with great care. 

Much as she wants to tear into the missive, she is not so nosy that she will open Howl’s mail without invitation. 

However, as she’s learned, she has little talent for patience. 

So, rather than waiting until supper, she packs up a picnic basket, the letter tucked in beside sandwiches and a flask of tea, and steps out into the Waste with a blanket draped over her arm. 

Though she brings lunch to the repair crew with some regularity, she has little interest in pretending her presence today is anything but fueled by burning curiosity.

“Howl, you have a letter,” she calls as Markl skips up to her side and throws his arms around her waist. She smooths his hair back from his forehead and passes off the blanket. He has distinct opinions on the best picnicking sites near the stalled-out castle. 

“Oh, really?” Howl says, straightening from his precarious perch around the midline of the growing facade of their home. No longer looking quite so skeletal, much of the savage Howl has spirited away from town, as well as cast-offs from the original castle, have found haphazard homes within the structure. Enough of the inner workings, however, are still open to the air and Sophie’s inexpert gaze, great gears and pistons that should shift the behemoth but simply don’t, to everyone’s continued frustration. 

Howl steps off the surface and floats down to the ground, graceful and light in spite of the smudge of oil staining his neck. 

Reflexively, Sophie reaches out to rub the smudge away, and it’s only when his skin is clean that she realizes she’s been caressing his throat. She flushes, which only makes Howl’s smile turn teasing as he leans down to kiss her hello.

It’s a good thing no one in this family she’s collected, save Sophie herself, is constitutionally inclined to give matters of decency even passing consideration. Howl can put up a good front when he feels like it, which is usually when calling on Kingsbury’s more discerning boutiques, but he doesn’t care for any of it. The Witch takes great pleasure in flouting any and all rules of respectability, particularly now that she’s showing her true age. Sophie rather doubts that Markl could even spell “propriety.” 

Which, from her perspective on the matter, is just fine. 

(Save Markl’s atrocious spelling skills. Howl might be a fine instructor when it comes to magical incantations and rituals, but he’s clearly neglecting the poor boy’s more mundane education. Someday, she will have to do something about that.)

Anyway, it’s a good thing, because if anyone cared a jot about respectability, Sophie wouldn’t be pressing herself against Howl’s lithe form, her lips opening for his, all in broad daylight. 

When Markl protests, “Blech!” it’s not proper etiquette that concerns him, just a juvenile distaste for all things romantic. 

Howl laughs into her mouth, and Sophie would drink that sound for the rest of her life and never thirst for anything else. He pulls back, but takes her hand and leads her to their charge, whose nose is wrinkled with continued disgust. Any offense they caused is fully forgiven by the contents of Sophie’s hamper, at least. He joyfully tucks into his feast, leaving the adults to discuss whatever they like, so long as they leave the kissing for when he’s out of sight. 

“So,” Howl says, reclining on the blanket and propping himself on one elbow so he can gaze up at her and the fathomless sky beyond. Sometimes, the way he gazes at the sky, nostalgic and hungry and resigned, Sophie’s heart breaks for him. To have all that at his fingertips, and she’d wrenched it away… “I have a letter?”

Sophie plucks it from the blanket and hands it over. As he fingers it, she tosses a few saved apple cores up into the air, where Calcifer swoops in to gobble them up greedily. His own lunch taken care of, he drifts down to peer at the envelope himself. 

He whistles. “From the king.”

Something pinches off behind Howl’s gaze, and he opens the message, carelessly dropping the envelope to focus on the heavy parchment inside. He reads through the letter, face blank in a way that Sophie finds wholly unnerving. It has been a long time since Howl was the enigmatic, remote wizard of untold power she’d first met. She doubts he’s really ever been that cautionary tale, even if he does a good job at pulling the costume on every once in a while. 

“Well?” Calcifer prompts after a long silence, voicing everyone’s thoughts.

Howl’s throat works as he strings a response together. Sophie shouldn’t be so distracted by the shift of tendons and muscle beneath skin at this particular moment, but she can’t bring herself to feel much in the way of shame. 

“I’ve officially been pardoned.”

She— Well, she hadn’t known what to expect, which is why she’d brought the letter right away, but it wasn’t that. 

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” she ventures. 

Howl’s responding smile has a bitter edge. “For now. As the king—Suliman, more likely— was careful to remind me, the oath I took is still binding. I am still at his service.”

She can see why he’d find that so distasteful, but she’ll take the victory for now. If this means they don’t have to live in fear of another invasion of Suliman’s blob-men, it’s for the best. She’d only just scoured away the last of the sticky film they’d left behind in the courtyard. 

If she can cajole Howl away from this dark mood, then even better.

So, she grins and leans down. “Well, if you’re in the market for a new sovereign, I’m sure Prince Justin’s father would welcome a wizard of your talents.”

Howl’s eyes are sharp as they land on her, but they’ve left his pardon for the first time since he first read it, which is just what Sophie wanted in the first place. She sighs placidly, like she can’t see the rearing head of his jealousy. Howl might be a magnificent specimen of a man, mortal and wizard alike, but he is not a prince. 

His eyes narrow as he realizes she’s winding him up, but the knowledge can’t quite loosen envy’s hold all the way. He sits up with a growl that makes Sophie shiver and laugh.

“I’m sure I’m quite happy where I am, Sophie Hatter,” he rumbles as he crowds into her space, ignoring the disgusted sound Markl and Calcifer make as they abandon the picnic blanket. He bears her down to the ground. Though he looms over her, his touch wherever it trails, from her hip to her shoulder to her throat, is utterly tender. “Aren’t you?”

Sophie’s smile is brighter than a sunbeam, brilliant as a star. She tugs him close and kisses him as thoroughly and as indecently as she could want. 

Anywhere on earth, she couldn’t imagine being happier.

It is, unfortunately, impossible to remain always perfectly happy. Without moments of doubt or discontent, what would happiness be, anyway?

Sophie is experiencing one of those moments just now, in fact. 

She frowns at the bouquet she’s been constructing for what feels like an age. None of the flowers she’d brought in from the valley this morning have struck her as the proper combination, and she’s getting more and more frustrated the more and more stems she goes through. 

She’d had hats like this, too. None of the trims or ribbons or decorations seeming to fit on whatever cap she was meant to finish. 

Disgusted with herself, she abandons the flowers on the counter and prowls the shop. The more things change, the more they remain exactly the same.

And Sophie has changed plenty. Anyone who knew her as the Hatters’ eldest, dutiful daughter would certainly agree. But the changes that someone might notice first have been easiest for Sophie to accept. Her permanently gray hair might surprise her from time to time, but it’s hardly a burden, and her cohabitation with an eccentric, powerful wizard is one of her greatest joys. 

It’s the small things—thing, really—that are hard to take. 

Maybe because it’s highlighted by what’s missing. 

As has become habit, her left thumb worries over the base of her pointer finger, as bare as it has been since she returned from her foray into Howl’s childhood. She misses the ring, the first gift Howl ever gave her.

After their outing to the palace, she’d fully expected Howl to take it back. But when he hadn’t asked for it after her disastrous crash landing, Sophie had allowed herself to grow accustomed to its slight weight on her finger. After a fashion, she even began to think of it as hers.

In the end, it had been hers. To lose, at the very least. 

It wasn’t why she’d taken to burying her hands in her skirts or a sudsy sink or another attempt at the bread dough Markl liked best when they first reunited the house and the castle and Howl was suddenly around so much more often, but it was no coincidence that “out of sight, out of mind,” ruled Howl’s more than the average man’s.

Still, it only took him a few days to notice. 

They’d been on an evening stroll in the valley—which, as usual, had turned more into long kisses broken up by a short walk to yet another picturesque backdrop for yet more kissing. Howl had twined his fingers with hers, drawing them up to rest against the steady thump of his heart. 

Suddenly, he’d begun to frown into her lips, and Sophie had been so hazy, she couldn’t discern why until he pulled back and raised their hands to his eye line.

She realized then what had perturbed him: where a metal band should be, glinting in the moonlight, was just pale skin broken by a faint line.

Much as she’d tried to scrub it away, there was now a permanent mark scored around her finger, right where the ring Howl had promised would lead her back home had burnt away in the memory of his past.

Howl inspected the scar, frowning hard enough to form a dreaded wrinkle in his brow. “Scorchmarks,” he’d murmured, intent.

Sophie hardly noticed, however, too entranced by his slender fingers wrapped around hers, warm and callused in spite of all the lotions and potions strewn about the bathroom. He was close enough that his breath fanned across her skin. 

“I’m sorry I lost your ring,” she’d whispered, feeling the shame and loss all over again. It had been a necessary sacrifice, had gotten her here, in Howl’s embrace, but she’d still like his token back. 

He bestowed a tender kiss to her downturned lips, coaxing her to sigh and melt against him. 

Later, he murmured, “You didn’t lose it, Sophie. It’s still right here, where you can’t lose it.”

That wasn’t the last time Howl had showed a particular interest in the scattered marks ringing her finger, though he’s never explained what’s so fascinating about them. 

Sophie, not for the first time, examines the symbols herself. They never seem to stay in the place she last saw them, are always so much less tidy than the menacing message the Witch had burnt into the dining table with the note she'd stowed away in Sophie’s pocket. It’s just a scattering of scars, more like the remnants of common burns than the mystical scorchmarks Howl insists they are. 

This is how Howl finds her, ambling through the courtyard door into the shop. Immaculately arrayed in his fine silks and jewels, Sophie would be hard pressed to believe he’d been elbow-deep in a stubborn mechanical valve just this morning if she hadn’t witnessed it for herself. 

“Ah, are you finally coming around on your ring?” he asks, leaning against the counter to admire the etchings in her skin. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

Sophie frowns at him, though she has yet to come up with a way of dissuading him from his romantic view on the subject. 

“Are you done for the day?” she asks instead.

Howl hums, turning her hand this way and that, smiling with genuine pleasure at whatever he reads in the magical remnants on her finger.

“Did you at least tidy up the bathroom?”

Howl freezes for a moment, and goes evasive. Sophie doesn’t sigh, but if she did, it would at least be equal parts resigned and fond.

“That’s what the cabinet is for, Howl.”

“I know, I know,” he assures her. The kiss he presses first to her palm, and then her wrist, isn’t quite enough to make her forget that this is what he always says.

They’ve come to a kind of detente. So long as all his spells and powders are out of sight in the castle’s shared bathroom, Sophie won’t meddle with them. 

Hence, the cabinet. 

It’s another one of the mysterious additions that have popped up all over the castle in the past few weeks, a product of need more than conscious decision making. It’s also rather ingenious, always accommodating another bottle or vial no matter how full it had appeared when its doors first opened. 

Naturally, given Howl’s tendency towards disorder, all sorts of jars and pots are still left out, littering every horizontal surface—and quite a few of the vertical ones—available on a semi-regular basis. On a regular basis, Sophie is ruthless about depositing them back on the cabinet’s magically expansive shelves, heedless of their “rightful” places. If this someday results in a Howl with stripes in his hair or, heaven forbid, freckles dotting the delicate bridge of his nose, at least Sophie already knows all the tricks for cleaning green goo out of the hardwood.

“What have you done today?” he asks, clearly angling to distract her further. 

Sophie lets herself be distracted. She draws him to the shop’s doors and turns the lock and the hanging sign to “Closed.” She gives him a rundown of the customers of the day, describing any particularly flashy fashion she’d noted; Howl always appreciates her attention to detail. The conversation carries them back into the castle, and Sophie settles on the stool near his work table as Howl busies himself with the instruments of his profession.

“Oh, the new mayor’s wife came in to place an order. Arrangements for the whole house. I might actually sell all the flowers I cut.”

“The mayor gets a house?”

“Yes, it used to be just across from Town Hall, but they’ve turned it into extra offices for all the public works projects. The new house is out on the river.”

“Maybe I should be mayor,” Howl muses, rifling through his stack of spell books.

Calcifer’s not in the hearth, but Sophie is utterly certain that if he were, they would be trading horrified glances just now. Without him, she’s at something of a loss for how to best derail that train of thought on her own. 

Thankfully, Howl finds whatever tome he was looking for, and all thoughts of civic engagement—or, more likely, how fetching he’d look in the mayor’s ceremonial sash—flee his mind.

As much as Sophie loves and has faith in Howl, she can not allow him to ever run for public office. His ego would never recover.

And as lovely as the mayor’s wife had been this afternoon, Sophie can hardly imagine herself ever filling the role, not that Howl has asked her to fill the intermediary role as his wife, either. And why should he? The only ring he ever gave her, she promptly lost, whatever his nonsensical view on the matter. 

It hardly makes Sophie happy, but she can be content with this state of affairs. Weighed out against every other happiness in her life, and there are so many she can hardly account for them all, it hardly feels like a compromise. 

Looking at Howl, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he studies some ancient enchantment, Sophie realizes that it isn’t. All the most important things she could want, she already has.

Sophie dreams of feathers. 

Perhaps, more accurately, she should call them nightmares. Except, she’s never frightened when the ink dark plumage begins to swirl, Howl at the eye of the storm. She’s not scared when she reaches for him, or when her fingers finally connect, and his perfect, alabaster cheek crumbles to so much ash, the rest of his body following behind. Not even when his crystalline eyes are all that’s left of her impossible wizard, staring at her with such trust and confidence before they’re gone too. So much cinder in the wind.  

When she wakes, her own cheeks wet, it’s not fear she feels. It’s just heartbreak, pure and simple. 

She lies in bed until her breathing steadies, and then swings her legs over the side, feet sliding into slippers with the ease of practice. From past experience, she knows she won’t be getting back to sleep any time soon. 

So Sophie shuffles out into the common room and lights a candle. 

The soft blue glow from the hearth indicates Calcifer’s presence, but she can hear his snuffling breaths—having been informed quite sternly that demons do not, in fact, snore. He must be asleep, or whatever state of rest demons could enjoy. 

If he were awake, she would settle before him and let his warmth and light and company eventually lull her back to sleep, banishing the awful images that had chased her from it in the first place.

Without him, Sophie casts her gaze around the room, in need of a distraction.

Something must be in need of organization.

In the strictest terms, the shelves holding all of Howl’s and Markl’s magical instruments and ingredients might not need organizing, but it’s one of the few corners of the house she hasn’t gotten her hands on recently. Therefore, it makes for the perfect target. 

Sophie is less convinced of this when she’s ankle deep in the detritus of the shelves’ contents, a tide of alien and unidentifiable objects sweeping past her and nearly to the portal-door. Still, she attacks, cloth in one hand and dust pan in the other. How she is going to get all of this back on a shelf, orderly and neat, is a problem for later. All she needs to do now is clear and clean. Scour and scrub. And if she’s thorough enough about it, perhaps she’ll be able to wipe her own thoughts blank as well.

“Sophie,” comes a mumble from behind her. 

When she whirls, startled from her tidying jag, she finds Howl, who has chosen this moment to prove that he, vanity-fueled tantrums notwithstanding, is not pristine and polished in every waking moment of his life. 

His hair is a tousled mess, not the kind that he can spend hours perfecting at the mirror, and his eyelids are heavy, struggling not to glide shut. There’s a crease on his cheek from his pillowcase. Standing at the foot of the stairs, his silk pajamas are the most presentable thing about him. And Sophie knows that’s only because he’s charmed his entire wardrobe with wrinkle-repelling magic. (Which she knows from the number of times he’s complained about her scrubbing out the spells in the wash. Honestly. If a charm can’t stand up to a good soak and lather, what good is it?)  

Sophie will never lay eyes on a more handsome man.

“What are you doing up?” she half-demands against the overpowering flutter of fondness taking over her chest. When he’s not riding a wave of innovation and discovery, carrying him well beyond the time an ordinary man might drop from exhaustion, he’s rarely up before the sun. 

He blinks at her, smiling hazily. “Oh, Calcifer can be quite insistent when he wants.”

Her gaze darts to the hearth, but the blaze there is just the product of a mundane spark finding a home in tinder and dry wood. No secret worrywart of a fire demon to be found. 

Howl’s laugh floats closer, and Sophie abandons her suspicious inspection of the empty hearth to turn to him. Her breath catches at finding him so near, but she still resists the urge to reach out and touch him. She knows it’s silly, knows his curse has been broken, but she can’t shake the image of him fading away, drifts of ash and smoke. 

It’s Howl who reaches for her, and as soon as he makes contact, Sophie collapses into him with a half-sob. 

He’s startled by the sound, by the ferocity with which she clings to him, but he’s steady for her, a pillar of stone in a raging sea. He rubs her back, murmurs soothing nonsense in her ear, and eventually picks her up and removes her from yet another mess she’s so spectacularly created. He carries her to the sofa near the hearth and settles against the arm with Sophie nestled against his chest, their legs stretched out over the cushions, tangled together.

Sophie listens to the flutter of his heart, so much stronger than it had been when she urged it back into his chest, more hope and love than real belief it would work.

“Tell me you’re here,” she begs, voice cracking. 

His arms tighten around her, and his reply is a promise as much as it is an answer. “I’m here, Sophie. Right with you.”

His voice speaking those words fill up some part of her that had been harboring cracks for as long as those dreams have been coming. She has a feeling the cracks will keep on growing, but she’s just as sure Howl will be here, ready to patch them up again.

“I know I’m so wonderful it’s hard to believe I’m real,” he goes on, and Sofie burbles out a damp laugh. She’d kiss him to keep him from squandering her good will, but she’s all soggy. 

Howl sighs and winds a lock of her starlight hair between his fingers. “Until you tell me to go away, I’m right here. And even after that, probably, always hoping you’ll have me back.”

Her laugh doesn’t sound quite so wet this time, so she shifts in his hold. She’s in his lap, in her nightclothes, and part of her is aware that this is as far from proper as she’s ever been in her life, but it’s difficult to care when Howl’s looking at her like that. Even harder when his lips so sweetly brush away the remnants of her tears until her cheeks are dry and her eyes are clear.

There are plenty of things that Sophie’s wanted in her life, but none of them have been as tangible, as real, as immediate, as Howl. 

None of them had been hers as he so undeniably is.

His eyes flutter shut as her fingers glide past his ear to card through the ink-spill tendrils of his hair. He hums when her blunt nails skate across his scalp, his own hands tightening on her waist. 

Impossibly, Howl pulls her even closer, and Sophie is at risk of burning right to cinders herself.

She can’t explain it, but Howl is warmer now. Maybe it’s down to most of a life with his heart held in custody by a fire demon, magic sustaining him more than each echoing heartbeat, but he radiates heat now in a way Sophie is sure she never noticed before. 

At least, that’s why she tells herself her cheeks are always aflame any time he’s nearby. 

Currently, with his arms wrapped around her and his breath fanning against her face, it’s more than her cheeks that burn. 

He kisses her, and everything about her, all that carefully piled tinder gathered in her soul, goes up in smoke. 

Sophie can almost see why Howl so nearly lost himself to the curse. If it made him feel even a fraction as powerful as she does now, it might be worth it to give up her very being. She would be just fine melting into Howl for the rest of eternity.

She would be just fine with this, splayed out over the man she loves as he kisses her like he wants to taste her very soul, for the rest of eternity, too.
“Sophie,” he murmurs, and she’s ready to rush across every unsaid boundary they’ve set, forge ahead into some new territory she’s only caught glimpses of. Howl’s thumb traces a smooth arc across her cheekbone, scattering sparks in its wake. 

Sophie shudders. 

But then he’s shifting them, tucking her against his side. Still close, still twined together, but no longer stoking the fire that was building so steadily in her belly. He kisses the top of her head, and she cranes it back to peer up at him in silent question.

They’ve been arriving here more and more often, creeping right up to the line in the sand that Sophie understands more theoretically than practically. 

(There’d been a talking to, when she’d been a girl and it became clear that Lettie was going to be beautiful, with much in the way of flowery metaphors and delicate treading around the subject of the talking to at hand. Sophie, being ever practical, had turned to more forthright sources in the aftermath of that embarrassment, but it’s one thing to read a book and another to feel the rush of heat coursing through her body, urging her towards the end humans from the beginning of time have indulged and so thoroughly enjoyed.)

Just as often, they’ve done this, she and Howl pulling apart, one or the other or both of them. Soon, however, Sophie’s sure that he will be the only one left hesitating. She’s seeing less and less point in putting off what seems inevitable. 

(What seems, from everything she’s felt so far, like it will be completely wonderful.)

“We have time, Sophie,” he says. “Time that doesn’t include potentially scarring poor Markl for life if he stumbles down here for a glass of water.”

She flushes at the reminder that as much as the castle is theirs, it’s not only theirs. Still, it’s hard not to feel cheated, even if she’s got Howl’s heart thumping away under her ear and his palm cupping her hip through the thin fabric of her nightgown.

Drifting back to sleep tucked against the man she loves might be a consolation prize, but it’s not one that isn’t worth winning.

Howl has been hovering in her periphery for the past half hour, and if it weren’t for the constant glances he’s thrown her way, he might even have done an admirable job of selling that it was just a coincidence. 

As it is, Sophie finishes the last of her mending and catches him just as he’s staring, clearly awaiting her attention. 

“There are spells that can do that, you know.”

She arches a brow. “And do you know any of them?

Wisely, Howl changes the subject. Sweeping a flourishing bow, he offers her his hand. “Will you honor me with your company this evening, Miss Hatter?”

Sophie wants to laugh, but there are moments when he’s so sweetly earnest, and she suspects this is one of them, she won’t discourage the impulse. She lays her fingertips in his palm and lets him draw her to her feet. He gives her a twirl, and she does laugh, delight in his absurdity and spontaneity filling her to the brim. Her giggles linger even as he lifts her hand to his lips and leads her to the portal door. 

She doesn’t even need to check that the dial is turned to pink; the scent of the valley is so lush and ripe, she can smell it through the door. 

Together, they step out into the twilit fields, blooms nodding on slender stems in the evening breeze. The heady aroma should be overpowering, but Sophie can’t stop filling her lungs. The sun sinking behind the mountains lights them up in a glorious corona, all red and gold and pink bleeding into the descending night sky. 

Howl leads her with purpose, pulling her towards the lake. He doesn’t even pause to kiss her on the way. Instead, he steps out onto the water, barely a ripple shimmering beneath his feet, and Sophie doesn’t think twice about following him. The water is strange and pliant beneath her boots, but she has no fear of dropping beneath its surface.

At the center of the lake, he pauses and turns to face her. 

Like they know each other’s minds as well as their own, they come together, a kiss lit up by the sun’s graceful ceding to night.

It’s still thrilling every time Howl wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her close. Though, now, there’s no fear in the jackrabbit rhythm of her heart. Even when he’s not about to send them rocketing into the sky for a stroll above the rooftops, for the pure fun of it most of the time, she’s filled with giddy excitement. 

This kiss, sweet as it is, doesn’t last long, and Howl tugs Sophie onwards once more. 

Eventually, she discovers their destination, a grassy little hill rising from the water, covered in tiny white flowers, stars in their own sky. A set of lanterns illuminate a blanket laid out with exacting care.

“Howl,” she croaks, and if she couldn’t see the smooth, unwrinkled skin of her hand, Sophie might be more concerned the curse is back. But it’s not an old lady’s creaking, hoarse voice, just hers, overcome.

He smiles, dazzling with every ounce of charm, and kisses her knuckles. 

“I have my own star to admire, but I thought you might like to enjoy a few of your own.”

She wants to roll her eyes at the obvious line, but she can’t bring herself to mar the romance of it all. She allows him to hand her down to the embroidered silk—because of course a plain, sturdy picnic blanket does not fit into Howl’s rigorous sense of aesthetics—though she insists on removing her boots herself for all he fusses. It gives her the opportunity to kiss the pout from his lips, so she supposes it all works out in the end. 

Eventually, they settle on their backs and gaze up at the sky, the last of the sun having faded behind the mountains as they were occupied and the stars already center stage. Tonight, it appears, they’re content to remain stuck in the firmament, twinkling down on them across the endless expanse. If Sophie hadn’t held one in her hands, she’d never guess how brilliantly they burn. 

She turns her face into Howl’s shoulder, winding an arm around his waist. However hot he runs, he will not leave her scorched or singed. 

He kisses the top of her head, and when she tips it back, lets her chin rest against him, his lips are right there, still pursed. Sophie’s grip on him tightens as she stretches up to capture them. 

She tastes his laugh, swallows it down and lets it coil around her heart. If he tried to draw it out of her, she’d give it to him gladly. 

Whatever designs Howl has on her heart, however, he’s happy to leave them for later, far more interested in drawing Sophie as close as he can get her. 

What satisfies Howl, though, isn’t enough for Sophie. With an impatient huff, she pushes herself up just enough to throw a leg over his hips and settle herself atop her prone wizard. There’s only a moment for him to blink up at her, surprised and delighted in equal measure, before she’s swooping down to kiss him once more. Sophie’s hands cup his jaw and sweep down his throat before reversing direction so she can bury her fingers in his hair. Howl doesn’t seem to mind her indecisiveness, arching into every touch. He pants into her mouth even as his own hands impatiently tug at her skirts until he can get at her legs, landing just on the sliver of skin between the tops of her stockings and the hem of her bloomers.  

It’s Sophie’s turn to gasp and tremble. As often as they’ve nearly lost themselves to their all too mutual passion, every time is a little different. However sure she is that each time is the best, brightest, most immediate, the next comes along to boost her to greater heights, a bigger, hotter explosion.

Sophie hovers on that edge of ignition for long moments as Howl’s hands explore what little of her flesh they can get at, but she can feel her frustration mounting. She presses closer to him, back arching, hips shifting, and Howl looses a strangled sound that probably shouldn’t stoke so much pride in her chest. Sophie does it again, he makes the noise, and she finds she can’t regret the bright spark of vanity it alights in her soul. 

“Sophie,” he gasps, as her lips wander to his jaw and neck. When her teeth scrape against a straining tendon in his throat, quickly soothed by the flat of her tongue, he shudders. She’s hardly paying attention to his voice, only catching the rise and fall and the way it twines into the rest of his reactions. If she were, she would have had a different answer to, “You don’t really care about these clothes, do you?” than a quick and hungry hum. 

So wrapped up in her own display of power, because how many could say they’d ever had the Wizard Howl flat on his back and at their mercy, Sophie hardly notices the building charge in the air. Doesn’t notice the way her hair stands up on her arms and the back of her neck or the strange, high keen that’s more of a smell than a sound, or the harsh syllables rattling between Howl’s teeth. 

It’s only when the night breeze curls intimately around Sophie’s shoulders and Howl’s palms glide across the bare skin of her hips that she realizes what’s happened. 

He’d magicked away their clothes.

This seems like the exact kind of profligate show of power that Sophie should really frown upon—if only because, old though it may be, she rather liked that dress and the price of ladies’ undergarments in town is really just unconscionable these days—but how can she disapprove when she’s bare in Howl’s lap and he’s surging up to cradle her in his arms? 

Her breasts rub against his chest, and they both groan with the delicious friction as Sophie twines her arms around his neck, clutching at his hair as he licks down her throat and collarbone. His face disappears into what would be Sophie’s décolletage if she were ever of a mind to put it on display, and she instinctively leans back to give him more room. 

The shift in her weight brings her attention from the pleasantly shivery sensations being worked up by Howl’s clever tongue to the deeper, more insistent thrum winding through her core. 

Oh! she manages to think, hazy and half-drunk on Howl. I recognize that. 

Though, of course, she’s never been so intimately acquainted with the stiff, hot appendage currently nestled between her thighs. Whenever she’s encountered it in the past, she and it have been regrettably clothed. Now that nothing stands between them, and Howl is so eagerly occupied, Sophie isn’t quite sure what to do with it.

Every time she shifts, spurred on by Howl eliciting some foreign but utterly delightful sensation from her body, it seems to twitch and move along with her. Swallowing down any apprehension, Sophie reaches between herself and Howl to give the shaft a firm stroke. 

Howl startles away from his exploration of her chest, blue eyes wide and lips slick. The breeze catches on the nipple he’d just been laving with devoted attention, and it, along with most of Sophie’s body, goes taut with anticipation. 

Slowly—though not at all tentative; she simply wants to catch each and every one of Howl’s reactions—Sophie wraps her fingers around Howl’s cock and drags her hand up in a long, smooth pull. He doesn’t disappoint, his dark eyelashes fluttering over high cheekbones and lips parting for a ragged sigh. When she falters, he murmurs encouragement and presses reverent kisses to every bit of her he can reach. When her own hips begin to shift, as though her body knows what it’s missing, he fits his hand between her thighs and proves his fingers are just as clever as his tongue. 

The first touch of his fingertips to her overheated core, slick and greedy for more of this touch it’s only just learned, has any hope of coherent thought fleeing into the night. Sophie doesn’t recognize her voice when it chokes out an approving sound or the instinct to roll her hips to chase the feeling that caused it. Maybe it’s magic, directing her body so greedily, demanding every caress and stroke that some part of her just knows will keep the pleasure coming. Maybe it’s just Howl, an unconscious and heightened reaction to him. 

All Sophie knows is that it can’t just be all her. 

But it is certainly Sophie that has her readjusting her grip on Howl’s briefly neglected erection with one hand and using the other to shoo his from between her twitching thighs. If he keeps it up, she’s sure something incredible is hovering just beyond the horizon of her experience. Sophie, however, wants that something to arrive when they’ve finally joined as one. She aims his tip right at the place where his fingers had just been, sure that this is right. 

Before she can take the plunge, however, Howl cups her cheek. 

Libertine that he is, Sophie hardly expects him to make a case for respectability—given their state of undress, it would be a mere gesture to the supposed existence of the concept—and she’s not disappointed. He simply looks her in the eyes and brushes a tender kiss across her lips. She sighs into his mouth and melts, a slow sinking that only ends when he’s rooted deep inside her.

It’s only when there’s nowhere left to go, her rear flush with his thighs and his arms banded about her back, that Sophie truly realizes the enormity of what she’s done. 

If only because it doesn’t, well, feel enormous.

(In one sense. In the other, the immediate stretch and ache of muscles she’s never put to much use attest that this is exactly as enormous as it had been in her palm.)

Her virginity had never been a matter of much concern to her, though Sophie knows that’s not a view shared by much of polite society. In the normal course of things, she supposes that the loss of it should have been accompanied by far more circumstance than a neglected picnic and stargazing with a wizard known for devouring the hearts of beautiful girls. 

And yet, as the throb deep in her body begins to overpower the slight discomfort accompanied by Howl’s residence between her legs, Sophie knows that no circumstance other than this would do. She cannot fathom doing away with her supposedly precious chastity with anyone other than this vain, flighty, incredible man. 

The enormity was in finding him in the first place. This is just a natural progression. 

Sophie beams to alleviate the slight wrinkle in his brow and rocks clumsily forward to kiss any other worry from his face.

That slight movement has her gasping as Howl shifts inside her, rubbing up against some place even more tender and sensitive than the rest of her. Just like that, it’s as if Sophie’s body knows exactly what to do—the exact rhythm and pitch and roll of her hips needed to attain something currently just out of her grasp. Just how to chase this feeling. Howl spurs her on, his hands reverent but eager and everywhere they can reach. Every touch sends her spiraling up, up, up. If Howl felt even half as wild or free when he flew, Sophie can’t blame him for missing it the way he does.

“Beautiful Sophie,” he sighs, nose drawing across her cheek as she shudders and rocks and strives for something she can’t name because she never knew it existed. 

Her breath hitches, and she needs to kiss him again. Immediately. 

He correctly interprets the demanding noise that escapes Sophie’s mouth and captures her lips with his.

They’re still kissing when the ever-coiling tension in the pit of Sophie’s stomach reaches its limit and bursts, a summer squall, a whistling tea kettle, a sudden bloom. It takes over her body, her mind, all-consuming. It’s sparks and fire and pleasure and absolute magic. 

And then it’s dark. 

Who could say how long Sophie floats along, swathed in oblivion and the gears of her mind stuffed with cotton. All that she knows is her first coherent thought is this: Mother was right.

It’s no wonder Mother told her and Lettie to keep boys out of their skirts. If they’d known this was what resulted—pleasure beyond their wildest imaginations—nothing else would ever get done. 

Howl chuckles, and it’s only then that Sophie realizes she’s been talking aloud, her cheek pressed to his shoulder and her nose buried in his neck. She’d be embarrassed, but with pleasure still curling through her limbs, Sophie finds she has to stand behind the sentiment. 

If only in the figurative sense. In the literal, she’s fairly sure it will be some time before her legs are steady enough to keep her standing.

Howl laughs again. Sophie is really going to need her mouth to quit speaking words she doesn’t mean to say. He kisses her hair, her forehead, whatever he can reach. “I can always carry you to the cottage.”

“Not the castle?” she murmurs, eyes growing heavy. 

“I thought some assured privacy might suit.”

Sophie makes a considering noise, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. She likes Howl’s little cottage, surrounded by more flowers than she knew existed in the world, and privacy does sound like it would suit, particularly if they’re going to have another go at this before the night is out. But it’s not the castle. It’s not home. 

More importantly, for the moment, rumpled silk against her skin and a cool breeze drying the sweat she’d expended, she can’t imagine going anywhere. 

So Sophie nestles closer to Howl, luxuriating in the heat of his body against hers. The steady beat of his heart beneath her palm is even better.

“I’ll stay right here.”

She can feel his lips curl into a smile. “So long as I can stay too.”

So long as he keeps making her feel this way, he’d better stay forever.

Howl doesn’t laugh this time, but he does tip her chin up and kiss Sophie absolutely breathless. At least there are a few perks to this business of letting her mouth race ahead of her mind. 

“Sophie!”

Markl’s shout, at once giddy and terrified, pierces all the way from the portal door and into the flower shop, as Sophie discovers when she skids out of a dead run at the top of the entry’s steps. Her heart is a hammer against the anvil of her ribs, but only if the blacksmith had taken a large draft of Hop-To Potion. 

Her eyes scan over the wizard-in-training, but the lack of apparent injury does nothing to steady her nerves. If Markl isn’t hurt, then who is?

“What happened?” she demands right away, trying to keep panic at bay, but Markl’s already spinning the dial back to green and wrenching the door open. 

“Come on!” he cries, dashing out onto the foothills of the Wastes. 

Sophie has no choice but to follow.

She clatters down the steps and darts into the open air, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the unusually brilliant gleam of the sun. Not a scrap of fog is to be found in the hills today, and it takes a long moment for Sophie’s eyes to adjust. She stumbles after Markl, tracking him more by sound than anything. Behind her, she can hear Heen wheezing, his little paws scrabbling in the scree, but she doesn’t go back for him. Something tells her there’s no time to waste

Markl leads her on a quick trot around a stony outcrop and up a steep rise. Sophie loses her footing more than once, but presses on, heart in her throat. 

Finally, though, Howl comes into view, standing straight and proud and backlit against the brilliant blue sky. 

She’s still scanning him head to toe when he turns toward her, smile as blinding as all the stars in the sky.

It seems no harm has befallen either of her wizards, and as much of a relief as it is, it takes a moment for her mind to shift away from the emergency she’d expected. 

The way Howl takes her hand and draws her in for a kiss, his lips warm and smooth and tasting faintly of the ash she’s come to associate with his magic, at least helps to ease the way. 

When he draws back, Sophie’s in a good enough humor to observe, “That can’t be what had Markl dragging me here at a run.”

“It’s not,” the boy grouses as Howl throws his head back and laughs, unrestrained. Sophie very nearly reels him down to kiss him again, but just manages to restrain herself. She hasn’t seen him this carefree in months and months.

“As usual, you’re right. We’re finished.”

“With what?” she asks. They’ve had so many celebratory dinners, commemorating the completion of so many esoteric rituals and subprojects, that Sophie hardly blinks at Howl’s pronouncement. It’s only when his brows rise and he looks at her expectantly that she frowns. He can’t mean—

“The castle.”

He pivots and her field of vision opens up to reveal craggy mountains clad in dry grass and capped by brilliant sky. But more importantly, as strange and incredible as she’s ever seen it for all Sophie’s never seen it quite like this, is the castle. 

Whole. 

New. 

Her feet take her right up to the edge of the overhang, too wonderstruck to tear her eyes away.

There’s no mistaking the impossible mish mash of material into one, cohesive whole as anything other than Howl’s castle. And yet, Sophie hardly recognizes it. Mechanical legs and smokestacks intermingle with the whitewashed facades and tiled roofs of a rowhouse. The mammoth iron dome with its two portholes, which Sophie has come to think of as the castle’s face, looms steadfastly over it all. Only a shining crows nest on a spindly leg rises higher. 

What is most different, however, are the appendages jutting out from the underbelly of the castle. Where there had only been legs before, unmistakable for all they’re of a more motley design than the sleekly undulating limbs that power the kingdom’s warships, now there are wings. 

Sophie turns wide eyes up to Howl, who’s appeared right at her shoulder just when she needs him. He wraps one arm around her waist and grandly gestures to the castle with the other. 

“Shall we?”

She nods faintly and doesn’t even think twice as she steps forward, foot landing in open air. Howl’s magic buoys them up and out, drawing them closer to the castle so Sophie can admire it in all its glory. 

She makes appropriately awed noises, but can’t help but slant a coy look up at Howl. “I suppose putting it back the way it was was simply out of the question.”

“Well, it didn’t quite want to go back to the way it was,” he admits, and if he were capable of it, Sophie might say he’s even chagrined. “Once we got that sorted out, the major workings went along without a hitch.”

From the small clifftop where they’d left him and Heen, Markl’s voice floats out, “Well…” When Sophie turns back over her shoulder, his nose is crinkled as he considers the past few months of his life. 

Howl, as if he hadn’t heard his young apprentice, smoothly continues, “Not a hitch.” 

She laughs but doesn’t protest as he draws her in a wide circle around the castle, further and further away from the sharp ears of pert apprentices. Soon enough, she is entirely enthralled by the feat of magical engineering before her once more.

“Are those real trees?” she asks, though there’s no mistaking the arching limbs draping their verdant foliage along the sides of the castle for anything manmade. Even a man as impossible as Howl. 

“And a whole garden,” he says, and when she whirls to face him, delight catching fire in her breast, his eyes twinkle with complete sincerity. “You said you wanted to put down roots.”

Sophie can’t help it. She flings herself at Howl, who catches her up and swings her around with that musical laugh of his. It’s only cut short by her lips finding his, but even then, the vibration rumbles through their chests. She’s still wrapped around him when her feet touch down on soft grass. It takes her a moment to let go. 

“I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

“Didn’t you believe in me, Sophie?” His grin is all devastating charm, but Sophie can still read the doubt lurking beneath the surface. 

Rather than let it take hold, she gives him as stern a look as she can manage. “None of that, now. I’ve always believed in you, Howl. And I always will.” 

“I’m going to hold you to that, Sophie Hatter,” he says, and though a smirk is playing on his lips, his words ring with the weight of a solemn vow.

Sophie is just fine with that. She could promise him this and more, should he ever get around to asking her. Part of her rather doubts that he will.

And she is just fine with that, too. 

Howl needn’t make promises to her at an altar, or put a new ring on her finger, for her to know that as wholly and unregrettably as she is his, he’s just as much hers. He makes his vows in other ways, in magic and devotion and care. 

In an entire castle. 

But Sophie can stand to uphold a few traditions. 

So, to seal their fate, twine them up in one another until the horizon comes or the sun doesn’t rise, she rises onto her toes and kisses Howl. 

There are no church bells to chime or adoring crowds to cheer. Just the lonely wind of the Wastes whistling through the distant peaks. 

It’s fitting.

“Calcifer,” Howl calls once he’s gotten his breath back. Heen and Markl’s arrival, tumbling awkward and ungainly through the air, had burst the moment, but Sophie hardly minds. There will be many moments to come. And probably just as many interruptions. It’s good practice to take them in stride now. “I think it’s about time to stretch our wings!”

In response, a rush of blue smoke floods from the smokestacks, sparks of flame and magic crackling in the haze.

Beneath their feet, the castle shudders to life. 

It’s some strange cross between the slow build of thumping gears and motors and the shaking off of a too-long sleep by a slumbering giant. The castle seems to shiver in anticipation as it gets its legs beneath it and takes a few, tottering steps. At its sides, the great fan of wings begins to pump as speed gathers. 

With a rush of wind, the castle hurls itself away from the ground, wings beating furiously.

Sophie clings to Howl, her heart in her throat and freedom singing almost within reach.

For the first time, Howl’s magical, moving castle takes flight.