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Master Hawkeye had been gone for three whole days before Roy stopped waking up early, wolfing down two slices of toast, and hurtling into the study to recite last night’s lessons to the high-backed chair out of sheer habit. He wasn’t the only one; it took Riza five days to stop tiptoeing around the house for fear of disturbing her father. But it had been a week now since Master Hawkeye had left on a train for Central City to pick up his new antique parchments from Aerugo, and both of them had relaxed enough to have spent a morning teaching themselves how to make pancakes and succeeding, for the most part.
“We should probably get that off the ceiling,” Roy said, looking up and wrinkling his nose as another clump of batter fell into his tea.
“Mmm,” replied Riza. “Pass the butter, please?”
Roy supposed that was something of an improvement. Riza had spent the first three months since he’d arrived at the Hawkeye mansion looking at him as though she expected him to go into a towering rage at the slightest provocation, and the next three months as if she wasn’t entirely sure if he was sane or not. An actual sentence addressed to him, even if it was only to pass the butter, was nothing short of miraculous.
…And in the time it had taken him to come to that conclusion, Riza had leaned across the table and gotten the butter dish herself.
“Sorry,” began Roy, but Riza raised her hand abruptly to silence him.
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Roy asked, and just as the words were out of his mouth, he did: a man’s voice wafting through the open window.
“….miserable little world, but there’s no better place to master alchemy.”
“Alchemy?” A woman’s voice now, rather sharp. “You don’t mean those ridiculous chalk circles you draw all over our nice clean floor whenever you shift the moving castle?”
“I might have expected you’d bring that up. As a matter of fact, it is, and if you want me to be able to sort out that business with the King’s cursed weaponry, we’ll have to make a stop here so I can brush up on what that metalworking array actually meant in the first place.”
Riza was halfway out of the room by the time Roy realized it, and only the fact that he had longer legs allowed him to reach the entrance hall as Riza opened the front door and peered out suspiciously. Over her shoulder, he could barely make out two figures—one wearing a dress of brilliant blue, the other gesticulating wildly as his hair shone a ridiculous shade of pure gold in the morning sunlight.
“It so happens,” said the man, “that I was hoping to see Berthold Hawkeye. Would he still be here, by any chance?”
Roy opened his mouth, but it was Riza who spoke first, even though her voice shook. “Father’s not here right now. Who are you?”
“An old friend. And you, I presume, must be the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter.”
“My father isn’t mad,” Riza said, but her cheeks went bright red anyway. Roy frowned.
“Of course not,” the stranger soothed. “Berthold Hawkeye knows his business as well as I do,” said the golden-haired man, “ allowing for the fact that he has no sense of style. Pardon my turn of phrase, my dear, and allow me to introduce myself properly. Wizard Howl Pendragon of Ingary, at your service.” He added an elaborate bow as a flourish.
Roy wanted to point out that he’d never heard of Ingary in his life, unless it was one of those tiny Cretan provinces he could never keep straight, but Riza was nodding, if a little uncertainly. “I think I remember you. You wrote a letter to my father once, didn’t you?” At Howl’s toothy grin, she added, “Your handwriting was dreadful. Sir.”
“It probably was,” the red-haired, very pretty woman at Howl’s side cut in, grinning at the pout her companion now wore. “Penmanship isn’t one of Howl’s strong points, not to mention modesty. And manners.” She stuck out her free hand towards Riza and Roy. “I’m Sophie, Howl’s wife. So nice to meet you.”
It might have still been worth mentioning that neither Wizard Howl or his wife had actually apologized for interrupting breakfast or arriving so unexpectedly, but just as Roy could bring that up, a crackling voice hissed out of thin air: “What you mean to say is that Howl hasn’t got any strong points.”
The voice was coming from, of all things, a flame that was bobbing along in midair, his tiny face alight with mischief. A living flame, of all things; if only Master Hawkeye could see it, or if Roy could somehow work out how to create one himself, Master Hawkeye would have no choice but to go ahead and teach Roy the secrets of flame alchemy then and there. And even if he didn’t, it was a ball of fire that talked.
Roy sent Riza a pleading look. Surely it couldn’t do that much harm to let them in, only for an hour?
“My goodness,” Sophie said critically, looking at the kitchen. “I haven’t seen anything quite this bad since I first went into Howl’s bathroom.”
Riza blushed. It wasn’t that bad, she didn’t think. She had cleaned the room out only a month ago, on a winter day when school had been snowed out and she’d actually had the time, but Sophie's expression made it seem dreadful. “I’m sorry?”
“There’s not a lot sorry will do to fix this,” Sophie said frankly. “Let me see what I can. Broom!” And, to Riza’s amazement, the broom that usually sat unused in the corner sprang to life. “This is disgraceful! Clean up those cobwebs at once! And dishrags, wouldn’t you like to get all the gloop off the ceiling instead of just lying there?”
“Could you teach me how to do that?” Riza asked, once she could speak again.
Sophie smiled.
“I don’t know how you can be friends with someone who annoys you so much.” Roy wasn’t entirely sure if he was talking to Howl or Calcifer, and even less sure if it mattered.
“Calcifer,” said Howl firmly, “is not my friend.”
At the same time, Calcifer crackled with laughter. “Howl used to be my master,” he explained with a not insignificant amount of glee. “Bound me to his hearth to serve him in all his wicked deeds until Sophie set me free.”
“Well then,” Roy pointed out. “If you’re free, why don’t you just leave?”
Both Howl and Calcifer stared rather blankly at him. Roy stared just as blankly back.
“Calcifer,” Howl repeated at last, “is not my friend.”
“They won’t listen to me,” Riza complained, nibbling at her third cookie. Sophie had produced these, seemingly from thin air, when Riza had put on some more tea. “I’ve tried and tried, and Father just ignores me when I tell him I’d take care of it if we could have a puppy around the house. He wouldn’t eat that much, and, and I could train him to do helpful things, like guard the house when Father’s away and fetch the newspaper, and things like that. I even have a name picked out.”
Sophie smiled. “I had a pet dog once. It was rather nice, having him around the castle. I wish he could have stayed longer, actually.”
“Oh, did he…did you have to put him to sleep?”
“No, he married my sister instead.” At Riza’s bemused stare, she added, “It’s rather a long story. But you know, it doesn’t hurt to give people a piece of your mind sometimes. I don’t suppose you’re used to that?”
“Not really,” said Riza. “Father doesn’t like it when I shout.”
This did not seem to do much to convince Sophie. “Humph. I’ll bet he doesn’t.” She muttered something darkly under her breath, and all Riza could make out were the words unfair and exploitation.
“That’s just the way Father is. There’s really nothing I can do.”
“Nonsense,” Sophie said, very kindly. “It’s just that you let everyone walk over you. I know, you see. I’ve experience in being a little gray mouse.” She gave Riza a very grave look over her teacup.
“I could try to speak up more?” Riza offered uncertainly.
“Good enough. Now,” said Sophie, setting her teacup down and giving the untidy hallway a critical stare, “let’s see what we can do about the rest of the house, shall we?”
“Whatever you do,” said Howl, now lounging on a stack of books, his eyes shut, “don’t let them get the best of you.”
Roy, who’d spent the last few minutes ineffectually trying to tug The Complete Works of Paracelsus away from Howl’s boots without the wizard noticing, turned around. “What?”
“I said, don’t let them talk you into slaving away for them. The more they expect, they more they’ll have you work, and you’ll never be free of them. It’s good advice. Wish someone had told me that before I found myself the King of Ingary’s Royal Wizard.”
“Royal Wizard?”
Howl waved his hand around dismissively. “Your State Alchemy program should be the closest equivalent, I think.”
Roy frowned. “But I want to be a State Alchemist someday. I want to help people.”
“I never said you shouldn’t.” Howl flicked open one eye. “All I’m saying is that if you make a production of it, you’ll never be free to do what you really want to do, when you want to do it.”
“So you’re saying that if I laze around like you are right now, I’ll be able to help more people in the end?”
“Try it and see, if you don’t believe me.”
“Don’t listen to Howl,” added Calcifer, not very helpfully. “He’s a fool.”
“How did Howl make you, anyway?” Roy asked.
“He didn’t make me.” Calcifer sounded as offended as a fire could be. “He caught me.”
“And gambled my heart away in the bargain,” finished Howl dolefully.
It all sounded far too similar to human transmutation, Roy decided. Probably not worth the trouble, no matter how impressed Master Hawkeye might be. It was really too bad.
Some hours later, Howl decided he’d found out what he came to find. Riza wasn’t entirely sure how he’d managed it; from everything she’d seen, and what Roy had confirmed, he’d seemed to have spent most of his time asleep in Father’s study.
When it came time for them to leave, neither Howl nor Sophie seemed to feel they had to go very far to return home. In fact, to hear Sophie describe the process, it was only a matter of taking a half-dozen steps.
“But it’s the garden shed,” Roy said, for the tenth time, sounding even more confused and frustrated than he had the first nine.
“And now it’s tied to our moving castle,” said Sophie patiently. “Howl will have to shift the doorway so it isn’t tied to your garden shed anymore, but don’t worry, I’ll make sure he gets around to it by the end of the week.” She sent a glare in Howl’s direction that seemed rather to guarantee this.
Calcifer laughed.
Riza watched the three of them go, not without a sense of loss. They had been by far the most interesting visitors who’d come to her sleepy little house in ages--but be that as it may, there was still work to be done.
She took a deep breath and said, “I’ve been thinking. Sophie and I found some old silk dresses in the wardrobe upstairs, and I think I could sell them to Mr. Thomas at the pawn shop for a good price.” And the fact that Sophie had instructed them to be irresistible to anyone who saw them probably wouldn’t hurt, she added silently.
To her surprise and relief, Roy grinned. “That’s not a bad idea. I’ll help you carry them to town when we go shopping next week.”
“We’ll have to air them out,” Riza thought aloud, “and make sure there aren’t any rips or stains. Do you think you could come up with an array to clean them up?”
“That can wait,” said Roy, suddenly looking alarmed. Then he yawned—yawned! Riza hadn’t even known he could yawn, since whenever Father was around, he acted as though he’d rather die than betray anything less than absolute enthusiasm for learning all he could.
Maybe Roy was right. Getting the dresses in order could wait, of course— but by then, Father would be back, monopolizing all of Roy’s time with lessons, and Riza would have to do it all by herself, just like she did everything else. If she wanted to do anything about it, she’d have to act now.
“I think we should air them out now,” said Riza, and focused on producing her best imitation of Sophie’s piercing stare. She might not be able to do alchemy, like Roy could, or magic, like Howl, but she was determined to get her way through Sophie's sheer force of will, if it took her the rest of her life to master it.
Roy gulped. “All right,” he said, staring at her rather as though he’d never seen her before as he scrambled back up the stairs.
Riza watched him go, not without a sense of satisfaction. It seemed there was something to this bullying business after all.