Howl came out of the bathroom just then in a waft of steamyperfume. He looked marvelously spruce. Even the silver inlets andembroidery on his suit seemed to have become brighter. He took onelook and backed into the bathroom again with a blue-and-silver sleeveprotecting his head.

“Stop it, woman!” he said. “Leave those poorspiders alone!”

“These cobwebs are a disgrace!” Sophie declared,fetching them down in bundles.

“Then get them down and leave the spiders,” saidHowl.

Probably he had a wicked affinity with spiders, Sophie thought.“They’ll only make more webs,” she said.

“And kill flies, which is very useful,” said Howl.“Keep that broom still while I cross my own room,please.”

Sophie leaned on the broom and watched Howl cross the room andpick up his guitar. As he put his hand on the door latch, she said,“If the red blob leads to Kingsbury and the blue blob goes toPorthaven, where does the black blob take you?”

“What a nosy old woman you are!” said Howl.“That leads to my private bolt hole and you are not being toldwhere it is.” He opened the door onto the wide, moving moorlandand the hills.

“When will you be back, Howl?” Michael asked a littledespairingly.

Howl pretended not to hear. He said to Sophie, “You’renot to kill a single spider while I’m away.” And the doorslammed behind him. Michael looked meaningly at Calcifer, and sighed.Calcifer crackled with malicious laughter.

Since nobody explained where Howl had gone, Sophie conceded he wasoff to hunt young girls again and got down to work with morerighteous vigor than ever. She did not dare harm any spiders afterwhat Howl had said. So she banged at the beams with the broom,screaming, “Out, spiders! Out of my way!” Spidersscrambled for their lives every which way, and webs fell in swathes.Then of course she had to sweep the floor yet again. After that, shegot down on her knees and scrubbed it.

“I wish you’d stop!” Michael said, sitting onthe stairs out of her way.

Calcifer, cowering at the back of the grate, muttered, “Iwish I’d never made that bargain with you now!”

Sophie scrubbed on vigorously. “You’ll be much happierwhen it’s all nice and clean,” she said.

“But I’m miserable now!” Michaelprotested.

Howl did not come back again until late that night. By that timeSophie had swept and scrubbed herself into a state when she couldhardly move. She was sitting hunched up in the chair, aching allover. Michael took hold of Howl by a trailing sleeve and towed himover to the bathroom, where Sophie could hear him pouring outcomplaints in a passionate mutter. Phrases like “terrible oldbiddy” and “won’t listen to a word!”were quite easy to hear, even though Calcifer was roaring,“Howl, stop her! She’s killing us both!”

But all Howl said, when Michael let go of him, was “Did youkill any spiders?”

“Of course not!” Sophie snapped. He aches made herirritable. “They look at me and run for their lives. What arethey? All the girls whose hearts you ate?”

Howl laughed. “No. Just simple spiders,” he said andwent dreamily away upstairs.

Michael sighed. He went into the broom cupboard and hunted untilhe found an old folding bed, a straw mattress, and some rugs, whichhe put into the arched space under the stairs. “You’dbetter sleep here tonight,” he told Sophie.

“Does that mean Howl’s going to let me stay?”Sophie asked.

“I don’t know!” Michael said irritably.“Howl never commits himself to anything. I was here six monthsbefore he seemed to notice I was living here and made me hisapprentice. I just thought a bed would be better than thechair.”

“Then thank you very much,” Sophie said gratefully.The bed was indeed more comfortable than a chair and when Calcifercomplained he was hungry in the night, it was an easy matter forSophie to creak her way out and give him another log.

In the days that followed, Sophie cleaned her way remorselesslythrough the castle. She really enjoyed herself. Telling herself shewas looking for clues, she washed the window, she cleaned out theoozing sink, and she made Michael clear everything off the workbenchand the shelves so that she could scrub them. She had everything outof the cupboards and down from the beams and cleaned those too. Thehuman skull, she fancied, began to look as long suffering as Michael.It had been moved so often. Then she tacked an old sheet to the beamsnearest the fireplace and forced Calcifer to bend his head down whileshe swept the chimney. Calcifer hated that. He crackled with meanlaughter when Sophie discovered that soot had got all over the roomand she had to clean it all again. That was Sophie’s trouble.She was remorseless, but she lacked method. But there was a method toher remorselessness: she calculated that she could not clean thisthoroughly without sooner or later coming across Howl’s hiddenhoard of girls’ souls, or chewed up hearts—or else somethingthat explained Calcifer’s contract. Up the chimney, guarded byCalcifer, had struck her as a good hiding place. But there wasnothing there but quantities of soot, which Sophie stored in bags inthe yard. The yard was high on her list of hiding places.

Every time Howl came in, Michael and Calcifer complained loudlyabout Sophie. But Howl did not seem to attend. Not did he seem tonotice the cleanliness. And nor did he notice that the food closetbecame very well stocked with cakes and jam and the occasionallettuce.

For, as Michael had prophesied, word had gone round Porthaven.People came to the door to look at Sophie. They called her Mrs. Witchin Porthaven and Madam Sorceress in Kingsbury. Though the people whocame to the Kingsbury door were better dressed than those inPorthaven, no one in either place liked to call on someone sopowerful without an excuse. So Sophie was always having to pause inher work to nod and smile and take in a gift, or to get Michael toput up a quick spell for someone. Some of the gifts were nicethings—pictures, strings of shells, and useful aprons. Sophie usedthe aprons daily and hung the shells and pictures round her cubbyholeunder the stairs, which soon began to look very homelike indeed.

Sophie knew she would miss this when Howl turned her out. Shebecame more and more afraid that he would. She knew he could not goon ignoring her forever.

She cleaned the bathroom next. That took her days, because Howlspent so long in it every day before he went out. As soon as he went,leaving it full of steam and scented spells, Sophie moved in.“Now we’ll see about that contract!” she mutteredat the bath, but her main target was of course the shelf of packets,jars, and tubes. She took every one of them down, on the pretext ofscrubbing the shelf, and spent most of the day carefully goingthrough them to see if the ones labeled SKIN, EYES, and HAIR were infact pieces of girl. As far as she could tell, they were all justcreams and powders and paint. If they had once been girls, thenSophie thought Howl had used the tube FOR DECAY on them and rottedthem down the washbasin too thoroughly to recall. But she hoped theywere only cosmetics in the packets.

She put the things back on the shelf and scrubbed. That night, asshe sat aching in the chair, Calcifer grumbled that he had drainedone hot spring dry for her.

“Where are these hot springs?” Sophie asked. She wascurious about everything these days.

“Under the Porthaven Marshes mostly,” Calcifer said.“But if you go on like this, I’ll have to fetch waterfrom the Waste. When are you going to stop cleaning and find out howto break my contract?”

“In good time,” said Sophie. “How can I get theterms out of Howl if he’s never in? Is he always away thismuch?”

“Only when he’s after a lady,” Calcifersaid.

When the bathroom was clean and gleaming, Sophie scrubbed thestairs and the landing upstairs. Then she moved into Michael’ssmall front room. Michael, who by this time seemed to be acceptingSophie gloomily as a sort of natural disaster, gave a yell of dismayand pounded upstairs to rescue his most treasured possessions. Theywere in an old box under his worm-eaten little bed. As he hurried thebox protectively away, Sophie glimpsed a blue ribbon and a spun-sugarrose in it, on top of what seemed to be letters.