Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle

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Jones, Diana Wynne - Howl's Moving Castle.txt

Howl's Moving Castle

By Diana Wynne Jones

1: in which Sophie talks to hats

In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility

really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who

will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.

Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor

woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success. Her parents were well to do and kept

a ladies' hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mother died when Sophie

was just two years old and her sister Lettie was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop

assistant, a pretty blonde girl called Fanny. Fanny shortly gave birth to the third sister, Martha. This

ought to have made Sophie and Lettie into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty

indeed, though Lettie was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Fanny treated all three girls with

the same kindness and did not favor Martha in the least.

Mr. Hatter was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town.

Sophie was the most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of

an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her

sisters and grooming Martha to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Fanny was always busy in

the shop, Sophie was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of

screaming and hair-pulling between those younger two. Lettie was by no means resigned to being the

one who, next to Sophie, was bound to be the least successful.

"It's not fair!" Lettie would shout. "Why should Martha have the best of it just because she

was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!"

To which Martha always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to

marry anybody.

Then Sophie would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with

her needle. As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she

made for Lettie, the May Day before this story really starts, which Fanny said looked as if it had come

from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.

About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again. It was said that the

Witch had threatened the life of the King's daughter and that the King had commanded his personal

magician, Wizard Suliman, to go into the Waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard

Suliman had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had got himself killed by her.

So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above

Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly

sure that the Witch had moved out of the Waste again and was about to terrorize the country the way

she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly, at night.

What made it all the scarier was that the castle did not stay in the same place. Sometimes it was a tall

black smudge on the moors to the northwest, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the east, and

sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last farm to the north. You

could see it actually moving sometimes, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty gray gusts. For

a while everyone was certain that the castle would come right down into the valley before long, and the

Mayor talked of sending to the King for help.

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Jones, Diana Wynne - Howl's Moving Castle.txt

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. Sophie, Lettie, and Martha, along with all the other

girls in Market Chipping, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them.

They wondered what use Wizard Howl found for all the souls he collected.

They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Hatter had died suddenly

just as Sophie was old enough to leave school for good. It then appeared that Mr. Hatter had been

altogether too proud of his daughters. The school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite

heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Fanny sat down in the parlor in the house next door to the

shop and explained the situation.

"You'll all have to leave that school, I'm afraid," she said. "I've been doing sums back and

front and sideways, and the only way I can see to keep the business going and take care of the three of

you is to see you all settled in a promising apprenticeship somewhere. It isn't practical to have you all in

the shop. I can't afford it. So this is what I've decided. Lettie first-"

Lettie looked up, glowing with health and beauty which even sorrow and black clothes could

not hide. "I want to go on learning," she said.

"So you shall, love," said Fanny. "I've arranged for you to be apprenticed to Cesari's, the

pastry cook in Market Square. They've a name for treating their learners like kings and queens, and you

should be very happy there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs.Cesari's a good customer and a good

friend, and she's agreed to squeeze you in as a favor."

Lettie laughed in a way that showed she was not at all pleased. "Well, thank you," she said.

"Isn't it lucky that I like cooking?"

Fanny looked relieved. Lettie could be awkwardly strong-minded at times. "Now Martha,"

she said. "I know you're full young to go out and work, so I've thought around for something that would

give you a long, quiet apprenticeship and go on being useful to you whatever you decide to do after

that. You know my old school friend Annabel Fairfax?"

Martha, who was slender and fair, fixed her big gray eyes on Fanny almost as

strong-mindedly as Lettie. "You mean the one who talks such a lot," she said. "Isn't she a witch?"

"Yes, with a lovely house and clients all over the Folding Valley," Fanny said eagerly. "She's

a good woman, Martha. She'll introduce you to grand people she knows in Kingsbury. You'll be all set

up in life when she's done with you."

"She's a nice lady," Martha conceded. "All right."

Sophie, listening, felt that Fanny had worked everything out just as it should be. Lettie, as

the second daughter, was never likely to come to much, so Fanny had put her where she might meet a

handsome young apprentice and live happily ever after. Martha, who was bound to strike out and make

her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to help her. As for Sophie herself, Sophie had no

doubt what was coming. It did not surprise her when Fanny said, "Now, Sophie dear, it seems only right

and just that you should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So I've decided to

take you on as an apprentice myself, to give you a chance to learn the trade. How do you feel about

that?"

Sophie could hardly say that she simple felt resigned to the hat trade. She thanked Fanny

gratefully.

"So that's settled then!" Fanny said.

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Jones, Diana Wynne - Howl's Moving Castle.txt

The next day Sophie helped Martha pack her clothes in a box, and the morning after that

they all saw her off on the carrier's cart, looking small and upright and nervous. For the way to Upper

Folding, where Mrs. Fairfax lived, lay over the hills past Wizard Howl's moving castle. Martha was

understandably scared.

" She'll be all right," said Lettie. Lettie refused all help with the packing. When the carrier's

cart was out of sight, Lettie crammed all her possessions into a pillow case and paid the neighbor's

bootboy sixpence to wheel it in a wheelbarrow to Cesari's in Market Square. Lettie marched behind the

wheelbarrow looking much more cheerful than Sophie expected. Indeed. She had the air of shaking the

dust of the hat shop off her feet.

The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Lettie, saying she had put her things in the

girls' dormitory and Cesari's seemed great fun. A week later the carrier brought a letter from Martha to

say that Martha had arrived safely and that Mrs. Fairfax was "a great dear and used honey with

everything. She keeps bees." That was all Sophie heard of her sisters for quite a while because she

started her own apprenticeship the day Martha and Lettie left.

Sophie of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a tiny child she had

run in and out of the big workshed across the yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks,

and flowers and fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who

worked there. Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Bessie, the only

remaining shop assistant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove the cart

which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the

other suppliers and how you made felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Fanny could

teach her, except perhaps the best way to get a customer to buy a hat.

"You lead up to the right hat, love," Fanny said. "Show them the ones that won't quite do

first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on."

In fact, Sophie did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing in the workshed, and

another day going round the clothier and the silk merchant's with Fanny, Fanny set her to trimming

hats. Sophie sat in a small alcove at the back of the shop, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to

velours, lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outsides. She

was good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt so isolated and a little dull. The workshop people

were too old to be much fun and, besides, they treated her as someone apart who was going to inherit

the business someday. Bessie treated her the same way. Bessie's only talk anyway was about the farmer

she was going to marry the week after May Day. Sophie rather envied Fanny, who could bustle off to

bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted.

The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without

gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove and stitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green

vegetables, and that Wizard Howl's castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper,

whisper, whisper.... The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, but Sophie

gathered that he had caught a girl down the valley last month. "Bluebeard!" said the whispers, and then

became voices again to say that Jane Farrier was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That was

one who would never attract even Wizard Howl, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a

fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the

Witch of the Waste should get together.

"They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match," she remarked

to the hat she was trimming at that moment.

But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all about Lettie. Cesari's, it

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Jones, Diana Wynne - Howl's Moving Castle.txt

seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying quantities of cakes and

demanding to be served by Lettie. She had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the

Mayor's son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she was too young to

make up her mind yet.

"I call that sensible of her," Sophie said to the bonnet she was pleating silk into.

Fanny was pleased with this news. "I knew she'd be all right!" she said happily. It occurred

to Sophie that Fanny was glad Lettie was no longer around.

"Lettie's bad for custom," she told the bonnet, pleating away at the mushroom-colored silk.

"She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look at Lettie and

despair."

Sophie talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was no one else much to talk

to. Fanny was out bargaining, or trying to whip up custom, much of the day, and Bessie was busy

serving and telling everyone her wedding plans. Sophie got into the habit of putting each hat on the

stand as she finished it, where it sat almost looking like a head without a body, and pausing while she

told the hat what the body under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should

flatter customers.

"You have mysterious allure," she told one that was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a

wide, creamy hat with roses under the brim, she said, "You are going to have to marry money!" and to a

caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather she said, "You are young as a spring leaf." She told

pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed with velvet that they were witty. She told

the mushroom-pleated bonnet, "You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and

fall in love with you." This was because she was sorry for that particular bonnet. It looked so fussy and

plain.

Jane Farrier came into the shop next day and bought it. Her hair did look a little strange,

Sophie thought, peeping out of her alcove, as if Jane had wound it round a row of pokers. It seemed a

pity she had chosen that bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats and bonnets around then.

Maybe it was Fanny's sales talk or maybe it was spring coming on, but the hat trade was definitely

picking up. Fanny began to say, a little guiltily, "I think I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to get

Martha and Lettie placed out. At this rate we might have managed."

There was so much custom as April drew on towards May Day that Sophie had to put on a

demure gray dress and help in the shop too. But such was the demand that she was hard at trimming

hats in between customers, and every evening she took them next door to the house, where she worked

by lamplight far into the night in order to have hats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green hats like the

one the Mayor's wife had were much called for, and so were pink bonnets. Then, the week before May

Day, someone came in and asked for one with mushroom pleats like the one Jane Farrier had been

wearing when she ran off with the Count of Catterack.

That night, as she sewed, Sophie admitted to herself that her life was rather dull. Instead of

talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake.

The staid gray dress did not suit Sophie, particularly when her eyes were red-rimmed with sewing, and,

since her hair was a reddish straw color, neither did caterpillar-green nor pink. The one with the

mushroom pleats simply made her look dreary. "Like an old maid!" said Sophie. Not that she wanted to

race off with counts, like Jane Farrier, or even fancied half the town offering her marriage, like Lettie.

But she wanted to do something-she was not sure what- that had a bit more interest to it than simply

trimming hats. She thought she would find time next day to go and talk to Lettie.

But she did not go. Either she could not find the time, or she could not find the energy, or it

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Jones, Diana Wynne - Howl's Moving Castle.txt

seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she remembered that on her own she was in danger from

Wizard Howl- anyway, every day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister. It was very odd.

Sophie had always thought she was nearly as strong-minded as Lettie. Now she was finding that there

were some things she could only do when there were no excuses left. "This is absurd!" Sophie said.

"Market Square is only two streets away. If I run-" And she swore to herself she would go round to

Cesari's when the hat shop was closed for May Day.

Meanwhile a new piece of gossip came into the shop. The King had quarreled with his own

brother, Prince Justin, it was said, and the Prince had gone into exile. Nobody quite knew the reason for

the quarrel, but the Prince had actually come through Market Chipping in disguise a couple of months

back, and nobody had known. The Count of Catterack had been sent by the King to look for the Prince,

when he happened to meet Jane Farrier instead. Sophie listened and felt sad. Interesting things did seem

to happen, but always to somebody else. Still, it would be nice to see Lettie.

May Day came. Merrymaking filled the streets from dawn onward. Fanny went out early,

but Sophie had a couple of hats to finish first. Sophie sang as she worked. After all, Lettie was working

too. Cesari's was open till midnight on holidays. "I shall buy one of their cream cakes," Sophie decided.

"I haven't had one for ages." She watched people crowding past the window in all kinds of bright

clothes, people selling souvenirs, people walking on stilts, and felt really excited.

But when she at last put a gray shawl over her gray dress and went out into the street, Sophie

did not feel excited. She felt overwhelmed. There were too many people rushing past, laughing and

shouting, far too much noise and jostling. Sophie felt as if the past months of sitting and sewing had

turned her into an old woman or a semi-invalid. She gathered her shawl around her and crept along

close to the houses, trying to avoid being trodden on my people's best shoes or being jabbed by elbows

in trailing silk sleeves. When there came a sudden volley of bangs from overhead somewhere, Sophie

thought she was going to faint. She looked up and saw Wizard Howl's castle right down on the hillside

above the town, so near it seemed to be sitting on the chimneys. Blue flames were shooting out of all

four of the castle's turrets, bringing balls of blue fire with them that exploded high in the sky, quite

horrendously. Wizard Howl seemed to be offended by May Day. Or maybe he was trying to join in, in

his own fashion. Sophie was too terrified to care. She would have gone home, except that she was

halfway to Cesari's by then. So she ran.

"What made me think I wanted life to be interesting?" she asked as she ran. "I'd be far too

scared. It comes of being the eldest of three."

When she reached Market Square, it was worse, if possible. most of the inns were in the

Square. Crowds of young men swaggered beerily to and fro, trailing cloaks and long sleeves and

stamping buckled boots they would never have dreamed of wearing on a working day, calling loud

remarks and accosting girls. The girls strolled in fine pairs, ready to be accosted. It was perfectly

normal for May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical

blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop

doorway and tried to hide.

The young man looked at her in surprise. "It's all right, you little gray mouse," he said,

laughing rather pityingly. "I only want to buy you a drink. Don't look so scared."

The pitying look made Sophie utterly ashamed. He was such a dashing specimen too, with a

bony, sophisticated face-really quite old, well into his twenties- and elaborate blonde hair. His sleeves

trailed longer than any in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. "Oh, no thank you, if you

please, sir," Sophie stammered. "I- I'm on my way to see my sister."

"Then by all means do so," laughed this advanced young man. "Who am I to keep a pretty

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Jones,DianaWynne-Howl'sMovingCastle.txtHowl'sMovingCastleByDianaWynneJones1:inwhichSophietalkstohatsInthelandofIngary,wheresuchthingsasseven-leaguebootsandcloaksofinvisibilityreallyexist,itisquiteamisfortunetobeborntheeldestofthree.Everyoneknowsyouaretheonewhowillfailfirst,andworst,ifthethreeofyouse...

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