Chapter Text
Lovely, lovely Martha Hatter. Never in his young life had Michael ever loved anyone, or thought he could love anyone, as much as he loved Martha Hatter. Ever since he had seen her that first time at Cesari’s while on an errand for Howl, he had been unable to tear his thoughts away from her for long. She was that incredible, Martha Hatter.
Martha Hatter, whom he loved, and who loved him in return!
And yet, as there always was, there was a catch: Martha insisted that before they could think of being together in any capacity in the future, Michael would have to find some companion for her elder sister, Sophie.
“You see, she’s the eldest of three,” Martha had said one day behind Cesari’s, in the few stolen moments they had together. “And she thinks that because of that she’ll never amount to anything. I fear she will be shut up in her room sewing hats and doing my mother’s bidding until she’s old and gray if it’s left up to her. I simply can’t see that happen, you see?”
Michael had nodded, because that did sound like a dreadful way to live. Imagine being shut up in your room forever until you died, occupied with nothing but being miserable! It sounded like what Howl would do when he was in one of his moods, though even he left the house often enough. (Though it was usually to go gadding after girls, which hardly counted as a respectable pastime.)
“I love you, Michael,” Martha had continued, “I really, truly do. But I can’t leave my sister behind completely. You understand, don’t you?”
He did understand—in order to have the future life he envisioned with Martha, he would first have to find someone to make her sister happy.
(Of course, Martha hadn’t told him that she wanted him to, but it seemed like the best course of action. After all, Sophie didn’t really sound like the kind of person who went out and met people that might make her happy all too often.)
So now Michael was faced with a new problem: who would be bold, or stupid, enough to take a chance going after some girl who never left her house, and didn’t sound at all the kind of person to enjoy having a suitor?
For once, he was glad the walk home from Cesari’s was long, as it afforded him time to think. He didn’t really care to return to the moving castle soon anyhow—Howl had been in bad spirits recently, and that irritated Calcifer, which put the whole castle on edge, which made simply existing in their vicinity unpleasant all of a sudden. And since Howl was likely locked in his room, and Calcifer refused to bend his head to Michael regardless of the day, cold cheese and bread was the only sort of dinner he might look forward to, excluding the pork pie Martha had sent ahead with him—oh, how he loved her.
The wind had just begun to pick up when he spotted the uppermost towers of the moving castle, looming big and black above the hills. Relieved to be home, finally, Michael increased his pace, pulling his jacket tighter around him as he hurried towards home. The sun was just beginning to set, and Howl would be expecting him—if he was out of his room, that was—and the half a pie clutched in his hands reminded him of how long it had been since he’d last eaten. It would be delicious, Michael thought, even cold, since it had been Martha who had given it to him.
He was in front of the castle’s back door now, waiting for Calcifer to swing it open for him. “Calcifer, open the door, please!” he shouted again, reaching to rap insistently on the door for the third time. “I swear Calcifer, it’s not funny when you lock it, I don’t care about that time that Howl—“
“About that time I what?” Howl asked as he opened the door, keeping it open just wide enough for Michael to squeeze through before he slammed it shut again, as if the wind was the most offensive thing in the world. “That wind I swear—how can you bear to be outdoors on a day such as this one, Michael? I would’ve been positively cleaved in two had I been out in that…Say, why were you out there again? I thought we had all the supplies we needed, since you went to town last week…”
“I wanted to go to Cesari’s, since it’s my day off,” Michael replied patiently. “You said I could go, remember?”
“I did say that, now I remember—you brought something for me, right? I do love Cesari’s, especially their cakes…Did you happen to bring any cake?”
Michael shuffled further into the room, setting the pie down on the workbench before unwinding his scarf and hanging it next to his coat on the rack. “No, I didn’t bring any cake…I did bring this pie though, which is just as good, really.”
“Ah yes! Their pie is good! I always knew you had excellent taste, Michael,” Howl said before sitting himself down in front of the pie, leaning close to inspect it. Then he picked it up and rose in a hurry, leaping over to where Calcifer was sitting low on his logs in the fireplace. “Calcifer! You’ll have to bend your head down now, since we’re going to have warm pie tonight, as a celebration!”
“I don’t see why I’m always the one being exploited around here…How about you eat cold pie for once, instead of picking on your poor helpless fire demon?” Calcifer whined, before bowing his head down despite his complaints.
“Calcifer, the both of us know that you’re anything but helpless. Now come along and cooperate, or it’ll only take longer,” Howl said as he prepared the pie to cook. Pulling up the sleeves of his silver suit, he bent down, placing the pan down over the small green flames at the crown of Calcifer’s head carefully.
“Wait, Howl—what do you mean as a celebration? As a celebration of what?” Michael asked, altogether puzzled by the sudden change in Howl’s behavior. It was almost as if some switch had been flipped in Howl’s brain, recalibrating his mood back to normal.
As if to show just how much better Howl was from that morning and the rest of the week, he jumped up again and turned to Michael with his arms outstretched. “Why a celebration of my discovery today, of course! I have finally learned a great secret—“ he paused for dramatic effect, his floppy silver sleeves sliding down to his elbows as he held his hands up. “Did you know…that…the women of Market Chipping are some of the most hard-hearted, devastatingly cruel women that I have ever had the pleasure to meet?”
Michael exchanged a worried glance with the skull atop the workbench next to him as the room went silent.
“You see,” Howl began again, “Samantha Lopper is apparently…engaged. And she refrained to tell me so, until last night. Now I won’t give you all the details, though I know you’d love to hear them—the moral of this story is that I am officially done with women. I, Howl Jenkins Pendragon, swear it upon—“
Something was burning, Michael could smell it. Dragging his eyes away from the spectacle Howl was making in the center of the room, he looked down towards Calcifer, and the pie still balanced precariously on the top of his head. The pie looked alright but—
“Howl, Howl! Your suit, it’s—“
His speech interrupted, Howl looked down at his suit, just in time to see his second silver coattail go up in flames.
“Good lord Michael! I’m on fire! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Hastily, he shrugged off the silver suit jacket and threw it onto the floor a little ways away from him, so that it sat in a smoldering pile not much bigger than Calcifer. Then he said something Michael couldn’t quite catch, and the remains of the suit jacket stopped burning, and instead sat quietly in the middle of the floor.
Howl moved closer to the pile of smoldering fabric slowly, and Michael followed after him. With a single finger, Howl prodded at it once, twice, three times, as if it were a dead animal. Once he was sure the fire was extinguished, he picked the ruined suit jacket up miserably, holding it up to see the full extent of the damage. The twin coattails on the back had been completely burned off, save for a little scrap of the second one hanging down forlornly, and the left sleeve had been rather thoroughly blackened, with a few small holes near the cuff of the sleeve. Other than that, however, it was mostly intact.
“And to think, this was my favorite suit…”
Michael leaned close over Howl’s shoulder to see the ruined suit better, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Howl before he remembered something. “Wait, Howl—can’t you just fix it with magic?”
Howl only shook his head sadly, making his fluffy blonde hair flop over his shoulders and into Michael’s face. “I could, yes, but that wouldn’t give the suit the respect it deserved. What happened here,” he said, standing from his crouching position on the floor, “was a great tragedy, and deserves to be treated as such. Perhaps I’ll mend it eventually, but until then, it shall hang here, in remembrance of this great loss.”
As he finished speaking, Howl hung the suit up on the coat rack, where it looked out into the room forlornly, as if it really had suffered some great injustice that could never be righted. There was a moment of silence, as everyone in the room stared at the suit hanging limply on the wall.
Then there was a sort of muffled groaning audible throughout the room, and Michael nearly thought that the suit had managed to vocalize its pain through some new form of magic. Luckily, that was not the case, and the murmuring was only Calcifer babbling angrily about the pan still balancing itself upon his head.
After that excitement, the evening went smoothly, and Michael felt like things were finally back to normal again. Save for Howl’s occasional lapses into silence, of course. It seemed that he really was heartbroken over Samantha Whatsername, if it was even possible for Howl to have a broken heart. Usually he got over things very quickly, especially after he had gotten a girl to finally fall in love with him.
Now that he thought about it, Michael realized that Howl was really very lonely, even when sitting around the fire with him and Calcifer. Times like these were wonderful, yes, all of them crowded around Calcifer and Howl in good spirits again, telling stories that Michael never really did understand the point of, but when the night was over Howl always seemed to draw in on himself. Unlike Michael, Howl didn’t have any friends his own age. Yes, in hindsight, he really was a very lonely man, even when it seemed otherwise.
And Michael had just the thing to solve that, and his problem with Martha’s sister too. If Howl rarely went out and knew no one his own age well, and Sophie never went out and seemed to know no one besides her sisters, then really the two of them were perfect for each other.