“What a stupid way to treat a building!” she panted asshe threw herself inside it. She had to drop her stick and hang on tothe open door in order not to be jolted straight out again.

When she began to get her breath, she realized there was a personstanding in front of her, holding the door too. He was a head tallerthan Sophie, but she could see he was the merest child, only a littleolder than Martha. And he seemed to be trying to shut the door on herand push her out of the warm, lamplit, low-beamed room beyond him,into the night again.

“Don’t you have the impudence to shut the door on me,my boy!” she said.

“I wasn’t going to, but you’re keeping the dooropen,” he protested. “What do you want?”

Sophie looked round at what she could see beyond the boy. Therewere a number of probably wizardly things hanging from the beams—strings of onions, bunches of herbs, and bundles of strange roots.There were also definitely wizardly things, like leather books,crooked bottles, and an old, brown, grinning human skull. On theother side of the boy was a fireplace with a small fire burning inthe grate. It was a much smaller fire than all the smoke outsidesuggested, but then this was obviously only a back room in thecastle. Much more important to Sophie, this fire had reached theglowing rosy stage, with little blue flames dancing on the logs, andplaced beside it in the warmest position was a low chair with acushion on it.

Sophie pushed the boy aside and dived for that chair. “Ah!My fortune!” she said, settling herself comfortably into it. Itwas bliss. The fire warmed her aches and the chair supported her backand she knew that if anyone wanted to turn her out now, they weregoing to have to use extreme and violent magic to do it.

The boy shut the door. Then he picked up Sophie’s stick andpolitely leaned it against the chair for her. Sophie realized thatthere was now no sign at all that the castle was moving across thehillside: not even the ghost of a rumble or the tiniest shaking. Howodd! “Tell Wizard Howl,” she said to the boy, “thatthis castle’s going to come apart round his ears if it travelsmuch further.”

“The castle’s bespelled to hold together,” theboy said. “But I’m afraid Howl’s not here just atthe moment.”

This was good news to Sophie. “When will he be back?”she asked a little nervously.

“Probably not till tomorrow now,” the boy said.“What do you want? Can I help you instead? I’mHowl’s apprentice, Michael.”

This was better news than ever. “I’m afraid only theWizard can possibly help me,” Sophie said quickly and firmly.It was probably true too. “I’ll wait, if you don’tmind.” It was clear Michael did mind. He hovered overher a little helplessly. To make it plain to him that she had nointention of being turned out by a mere boy apprentice, Sophie closedher eyes and pretended to go to sleep. “Tell him thename’s Sophie,” she murmured. “OldSophie,” she added, to be on the safe side.

“That will probably mean waiting all night,” Michaelsaid. Since this was exactly what Sophie wanted, she pretended not tohear. In fact, she almost certainly fell into a swift doze. She wasso tired from all that walking. After a moment Michael gave her upand went back to the work he was doing at the workbench where thelamp stood.

So she would have a whole night’s shelter, even if it was onslightly false pretenses, Sophie thought drowsily. Since Howl wassuch a wicked man, it probably served him right to be imposed upon.But she intended to be well away from here by the time Howl came backand raised objections. She looked sleepily and slyly across at theapprentice. It rather surprised her to find him such a nice, politeboy. After all, she had forced her way in quite rudely and Michaelhad not complained at all. Perhaps Howl kept him in abject servility.But Michael did not look servile. He was a tall, dark boy with apleasant, open sort of face, and he was most respectably dressed. Infact, if Sophie had not seen him at that moment carefully pouringgreen fluid out of a crooked flask onto black powder in a bent glassjar, she would have taken him for the son of a prosperous farmer. Howodd!

Still, things were bound to be odd where wizards were concerned,Sophie thought. And this kitchen, or workshop, was beautifully cozyand very peaceful. Sophie went properly to sleep and snored. She didnot wake up when there came a flash and a muted bang form theworkbench, followed by a hurriedly bitten-off swear word fromMichael. She did not wake when Michael, sucking his burned fingers,put the spell aside for the night and fetched bread and cheese out ofthe closet. She did not stir when Michael knocked her stick down witha clatter, reaching over her for a log to put on the fire, or whenMichael, looking down into Sophie’s open mouth, remarked to thefireplace, “She’s got all her teeth. She’s not theWitch of the Waste, is she?”

“I wouldn’t have let her come in if she was,”the fireplace retorted.

Michael shrugged and picked Sophie’s stick politely upagain.

Then he put a log on the fire with equal politeness and went awayto bed somewhere overhead.

In the middle of the night Sophie was woken by someone snoring.She jumped upright, rather irritated to discover that she was the onewho had been snoring. It seemed to her that she had only dropped offfor a second or so, but Michael seemed to have vanished in thoseseconds, taking the light with him. No doubt a wizard’sapprentice learned to do that kind of thing in his first week. And hehad left the fire very low. It was giving out irritating hissings andpoppings. A cold draft blew on Sophie’s back. Sophie recalledthat she was in a wizard’s castle, and also, with unpleasantdistinctness, that there was a human skull on a workbench somewherebehind her.

She shivered and cranked her stiff old neck around, but there wasonly darkness behind her. “Let’s have a bit more light,shall we?” she said. Her cracked voice seemed to make no morenoise than the crackling of the fire. Sophie was surprised. She hadexpected it to echo through the vaults of the castle. Still, therewas a basket of logs beside her. She stretched out a creaking arm andheaved a log on the fire, which sent a spray of green and blue sparksflying through the chimney. She heaved on a second log and sat back,not without a nervous look or so behind her, where the blue-purplelight from the fire was dancing over the polished brown bone of theskull. The room was quite small. There was no one in it but Sophieand the skull.

“He’s got both feet in the grave and I’ve onlygot one,” she consoled herself. She turned back to the fire,which was now flaring up into blue and green flames. “Must besalt in that wood,” Sophie murmured. She settled herself morecomfortably, putting her knobby feet on the fender and her head intoa corner of the chair, where she could stare into the colored flames,and began dreamily considering what she ought to do in the morning.But she was sidetracked a little by imagining a face in the flames.“It would be a thin blue face,” she murmured, “verylong and thin, with a thin blue nose. But those curly green flames ontop are most definitely your hair. Suppose I didn’t go untilHowl gets back? Wizards can lift spells, I suppose. And those purpleflames near the bottom make the mouth— you have savage teeth, myfriend. You have two green tufts of flame for eyebrows…”Curiously enough, the only orange flames in the fire were under thegreen eyebrow flames, just like eyes, and they each had a littlepurple glint in the middle that Sophie could almost imagine waslooking at her, like the pupil of an eye. “On the otherhand,” Sophie continued, looking into the orange flames,“if the spell was off, I’d have my heart eaten before Icould turn around.”

“Don’t you want your heart eaten?” asked thefire.