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“You can’t keep doing this.”
In the dim firelight, her brown eyes have turned into a soft, liquid amber. Howl can only describe the dip of her chin and curve of her cheek, all culminating into a high forehead, as heart-shaped. When the flames reflect off that starlight hair, making her glow, Sophie is lovely; she is luminous.
It is all the more jarring seeing such a harsh glare in a face so sweet. Her eyes are as set and steady as jewels, and they stare back at Howl, undaunted.
In front of Calcifer’s fireplace, Howl and Sophie are two shadows blurred into one. Sophie, sitting in a low stool, looking down, and Howl, kneeling before her, reaching up to dab at the cut on her lip. Her face is stoic, refusing to wince, but Howl can feel the way she tenses under the cotton, no matter how gentle he tries to be.
There is three heartbeats worth of silence. She says, “I’m evening the odds.”
“No. You’re endangering yourself.”
“Sophie,” Howl says. He pauses for a moment then lifts one hand on her cheek, the other dipping the corner of a cloth into water. He traces the blood dripping down the side of her neck, erasing its evidence. Is this what it is like to be an ocean wave, sloughing away sand, footprints? “I’m serious. You cannot keep this up. You come home drained of magic, smelling of smoke, utterly exhausted. I’m worried.”
“Then don’t worry.” She catches the back of his hand with her palm. Howl marvels at the way her touch is always so warm. “I’m strong enough for the both of us these days, Howl. They’re never getting to you again.”
“They never had me in the first place.”
“No? Then what were you running from, Howl?”
“You’re missing the point .”
“The point,” she says, looking up at him sharply. “Isn’t a singular thing. It’s not just you. It’s for Markl, and Calcifier, and even the old witch.” She gestures at the house around them. “It’s for me.”
“You’re forgetting that I could have won the war all on my own if I put my heart into the task.”
“Well,” and here, she cracks a mischievous smile. “Your heart was certainly not in you . No wonder I have to take up the task now.”
“Hey,” he whines. “Uncalled for.”
“You must admit I have a point.”
Flakes of dried blood lace her collar like a rust-colored crust. There’s a wound under her ear that is still bleeding sluggishly, and Howl follows the trail—down that slender neck, over a collarbone, pooling at the base of her throat. He catches himself staring at Sophie’s bare skin, at the vulnerable pulse of her veins.
Howl’s young heart, so new it trembles like a newborn dear in his chest, jumps. The taste of emotions has changed the color of his every waking moment—right now, on his tongue, there is an intoxicating mix of fear for Sophie’s safety and revelry towards her beauty. There is something seductively sublime, near sumptuous, at the thought of running his finger through her hair and down her arms and between her fingers. Of following the path of her spine and navel, down, down, down. Of—
Focus, Howl.
She says, “I know what I’m doing.” Her gaze, those brown eyes that hold his entire promised world, do not falter. “And it’s still not enough. Not until every last bit of the war is gone.”
“That’s impossible. The war, as you call it, will never just be one battle; it’s all part of a chain reaction. It’s over here, yes, but stopping it everywhere is futile.”
“You can’t fault a girl for trying.”
“I find you absolutely faultless, Sophie, but I want—I need you alive . This mission is endless.”
“Well, there’s no such thing as faultless.”
“Out of everything,” he says, with a roll of his eyes. “That’s what you choose to focus on?”
She huffs out a laugh, and Howl can imagine it plume into the air, the sound climbing through the chimney, dispersing into the sky. If he could, Howl would bottle that laugh in a glass jar and charm it to last eternity.
Calcifer remains suspiciously silent; the fire that flickers in the hearth is faceless.
“Sophie,” he says, exasperated and tired. “Please, just listen to me. You come home and are sleepless every night.”
“I-”
“You cannot continue this.” He cups her face in his hands. There are dark circles under her eyes and a hunted, haunted expression that Howl sees far too often in the mirror already. “Please. I forbid it.”
Her hand is hot to the touch, near scalding. Sophie’s magic, as they have discovered, is unpredictable and instant. In this world of tame, traditional sorcery, her power is a shot of espresso—sharp, smoky, rich. She snorts. “We both know you cannot forbid me of anything, Howl.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “But it is killing me to see you get hurt.”
“Better that than for you to
be
hurt.”
“How can I get you to understand that maybe things in this world are deserved? Have you considered how many I’ve hurt in this war? That if they were to come knocking, maybe it’s justice?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“But I do. And I refuse to have you pay those costs for me if it comes to it.”
Silence settles on them like a shroud. It dampens the room’s warmth. Sophie looks into the fire, expression calculating and stony. Howl can practically see her brilliant mind at work, trying to add up his sins and cleanse them herself as an act of subtraction. There is a wetness clinging to her lashes.
Oh Sophie , Howl thinks. My serious, serious Sophie. He rises, bracing his arms against the table behind her so that now their places have reversed: her chin tilted up while his dips down. The faceless fire continues to flicker, and its light whips across the sheen of Sophie’s full lips like a comet. The cut on her lip has only just stopped bleeding. Howl cannot help the way his heart threatens to thunder itself into oblivion, so fast was it beating at the sight of his Sophie’s bravery and selflessness and beauty.
He leans down and kisses the corner of her mouth. He drops to his knees, and his mouth follows, tracing a hot path down her throat. He rests his forehead in the crook of her shoulder; and his eyes close; and he breathes in that familiar scent of coffee, sunlight, wool that is his Sophie.
“I don’t think I can bear to lose this,” Howl mutters. He knows they are at an impasse. For his sake, Sophie would never stop fighting until every threat has been scoured from the earth. But to Howl, she is everything good and warm and safe in his short life, and he can live off this peace, however long it lasts, into infinity. Gods. His surrender is all he has left in this war of attrition between them.
Slim fingers trace comforting circles on his back. A kiss is pressed on the top of his head (exactly in that one spot Howl suspects he is balding from, and Sophie is the only one in the world who he allows to see without casting on an enchantment or glamour).
Her voice is a soft rumble that he can feel through the bones in her shoulder. “I’m only trying to protect you, Howl. Your heart is so young still; I don’t think you’re ready to burden it just yet.”
“A heart’s a heavy burden. You said it yourself.”
She pauses. “I did, didn’t I?”
“And contrary to the size of this heart, I’m not a child.” He inhales again that coffee-bitter scent before leaning back to drink in the sight of her skin, hair, eyes awash with flamelight. “There are things I have done in this war that I have run from my entire life, and there may come a day of judgement or retribution for me and me alone. That isn’t something you can save me from. I don’t want that.”
He presses the back of her hand to his lips and closes his eyes. Love has always been nebulous to Howl. He feels affection and warmth and care towards many people in his lives: his uncle, Calcifer, Markl, even Madame Sullivan to some extent. It twists and flails as flame itself, never maintaining its shape.
With Sophie, his young heart can barely contain it all, this feeling so incendiary that Howl can feel himself dissolve at the edges thinking about her. Only her touch and hers alone could ground him again.
He says, “What I do want is to spend the rest of my life with you, Sophie Hatter.” There is only one truth he knows wholly, one person who he trusts with to hold his heart. Everything fits in a classic and timeless phrase. Still touching his lips to her skin, he says, “I love you.”