Chapter 5

Which Involves A Good Deal Of Quarrel

Howl looked at Sophie. Sophie looked at Calcifer. Calcifer turned his bobbing, red head toward Markl, and Markl looked back at Howl. In the center of these glances sat Lettie, looking from Sophie to Howl to Markl to Calcifer frantically.

"Damnation." Howl hissed and turned on his long legs to lope around the room in a steady pacing. Sophie watched him from her perch on the Hearth and Calcifer flickered, popping in nervousness. The black-haired man walked quickly and had the room circled four times before Lettie let out a cry.

"Oh, dear, Sophie! What happened to your ankle?" she was blatently ignored as the rest of the castle's residents were busy watching Howl pace. His feet clacked the wooden floor with their heels. Both his hair and the sleeves of his shirt billowed around him somewhat as he made distance again and again between himself, the stairs to the door, and the nook under the staircase.

"What attacked you?" Howl asked her none too gently. Lettie blinked at him dumbly for a minute and then squeezed her sister's hand tightly.

"I don't know what it was." she mumbled and Sophie's mind turned back to that afternoon. To the creature that had attacked the castle and, in turn, her. She was beginning to wonder if it might have been the same beast when she heard Lettie say something about going to look for Ben. A big, red X came to the fore-front of Sophie's mind at her sister's words. There was no way any of them were going to go out right then to find him, especially not Lettie. She was in such a state of worry. besides, none of them had a clue where to start looking. Hungary was not a very small country, and if Wizard Sulliman was no longer in Hungary, then...

"We can't do anything tonight, can we?" Sophie asked, glancing out the window and noting how fast it had gotten so late. It seemed only moments ago that she had been outside, investigating that faceless creature. Howl glanced at her with his blue eyes.

"Don't be daft!" he laughed at her sarcastically. He was almost cruel. She scowled at him and stood, tenderly because of her ankle sending pin-pricks through her leg. Had she not been hurt, she probably would have stomped all the way up the stairs. Instead, she bipassed him and grabbed the banister to ascend to the room they shared.

Upon reaching the landing, she heard Howl excuse himself and his two-inch heels clopped up the stairs after her.

"You are doing something!" she hissed in exasperation as he reached her. She leaned back against the balcony door and stared at him as he crossed his arms.

"I am not! Something like this is far to scary." he insisted and she crossed her arms, cocking her head, decifering his antics as she had grown used to doing.

"Are you telling me this because you're lying to yourself so that you think you aren't going to do it when you really are. Or are you telling me this just to be an ass?" she asked very plainly. He smiled crookedly at her.

"What do you think?" he asked slyly, hoping to neutralize her temper. On the contrary, she crossed her arms ever tighter and glowered at him coldly.

"I think you're a stupid, old cad." she sniffed and he frowned.

"I am not old!" he insisted and rolled his eyes at her when she turned away and retreated into the bedroom.

Sophie was not in any better of a mood the next morning as Howl discovered when he awoke to find one of his favorite suits in pieces. All of the seams had been ripped out. Frowning at it, he sighed and ran his fingers along the seams, threading them back together with magic. True, he had told Sophie that he was giving it up, but with Sulliman gone, he was sure to be needing it if his pregnant, disagreeable wife expected him to have any chance of rescuing him.

Oh, how he missed the days of bachelorism. When he could go out and drink and avoid all of this danger business without so much as a care in the world. When it wasn't so easy for him to be pinned to something. With Sophie, though he loved her dearly, he found himself-very often-in a net.

"You're up." she said lightly, as if it were somewhat of a surprise to her. She was standing, injured ankle and all, over Calcifer, frying eggs in stern silence. Markl and Lettie were across the room, at the table, far from the older female's dark cloud of anger.

"Did you think you killed me?" Howl asked boredly, his own mood not being up to snuff, thanks to the harm she had done to his suit. At his words, she looked at him, her dark eyes fierce beneath her bangs. Had she the power, Howl had the feeling he would have been a frog thrice over and shoved into a bottle to suffocate. Of course, Sophie would never kill him. A good throttle might come his way now and again, but she would never do anything to seriously hurt her husband. She loved the vain-as-a-peacock man too much.

"If only it was as easy." she said sourly, her hand on her back as she swung the pan off of Calcifer and at Howl. He lurched back so that she passed him with it and wondered if that had been done on purpose as she dished breakfast onto plates. Lettie declined any sort of food and Howl noticed that she worried in a similar way as her sister. She sat and sat with nothing to do but bite her nails, until Sophie gave her a bit of mending to do. Turned out she was not as deft with a needle as her elder sister, and took almost an hour patching a pair of Markl's trousers.

Sophie gave Calcifer her breakfast which he enjoyed in a remarkably loud manner. Slurping and cracking and hissing in enjoyment at the bacon, eggs, and bread. Howl sat down in his usual place near the hearth so that he could slip Calcifer food when Sophie was not looking as always. She, in turn, set a plate down, hard, before him. The smack made by the glass on the wood resounded for what felt like a long time.

"What a foul mood you have today." he observed softly and she all but glared at him, taking back the plate and throwing it onto the hearth. Calcifer dodged it, though it would not hurt him if it hit, and ducked low under his logs at the argument that was brewing. Throwing down the rest of the plates in their respectful places on the table, Sophie tromped right around and headed for the bathroom. "Oh, no, you don't-" the wizard cried and was up out of his chair quickly.

If she made it to the bathroom, he would never get into it again, so long as her temperment kept up.

Sophie was already in a run for the staircase and Howl cussed as he darted after her. The two of them shoved and squabbled up the stairs like a set of children. Yelling, crying, pulling hair, biting, yanking pants, tugging skirts, pushing, shoving, elbowing, kneeing, tripping, and the like was the scene all the way up the stairs and onto the landing. Markl and Lettie watched the pair of them curiously as they did this. Calcifer called insults up at the two still racing dirty.

In the end, Howl shoved Sophie rather forcefully into the balcony door, across from the bathroom. She hit it with her back and gasped in, bending forward. This caused Howl to take into account what he had done and, kind-hearted as he was, went to her side.

"It's mine!" Sophie cried once she was sure he was beside her and shoved off of the wall. Vaulting across the hall, catching her husband off-guard, she turned and shut the door, locking it, verbally, behind her as she began to laugh.

"You're heartless! Do you hear?!" Howl barked through the door, hitting it with his hand. He couldn't undo Sophie's charm either, so he was forced to retreat to the bedroom until she came out, sick of his ignorance of her trick.

"You do mean to find Ben, don't you Howl?" Sophie asked at last when the ordeal was over and done with and the two were in their bedroom, Sophie cleaning while Howl fussed over his spiders. Howl frowned as he set his blue eyes on her. She looked at the broom in her hand then, unable to keep his glance.

"I don't." he said and she sighed at his game.

"If it were anyone but Lettie and Ben, then you could keep your tricks to yourself and I wouldn't open my mouth over it. But Howl," she lifted her head and the black-haired male flinched as he spied the tears in her brown eyes, "it's my sister." Howl sighed and reached for her. She came toward the desk and he stood, wiping at her eyes with his thumbs.

"Of course I mean to." he said softly. "It's not easy being a coward, you know." this last bit was a joke and Sophie laughed at it half-heartedly. Shaking her head, she pulled away from him, rubbing her eyes with her sleeves and muttering something about returning to her cleaning.

"You'll tell us how to get to wizard Howl." several small, imp-like creatures hissed in unison as they tugged on the binds that held Ben Sulliman. The red-headed man simply glared at them. imps were not particularly powerful creatures, but they were mischeivous and liked to cause harm, malicious and not, wherever they could. Therefore, when the elder wizard said nothing to them over their demand.

"Ignoring them will make angry them." a female voice said in a hiss and Ben's ragged eyes turned on the figure that was overseeing the whole ordeal. She sat in a high-backed chair, her long, pitch hair draping around her like a curtain against her back. She wore long, feathery robes of yellow that made her equally golden eyes very piercing. She was lithe and bent in such a way that the cat-like ears upon her head looked very seductive. "It's best you give them what they want."

Her voice was high and childish, but she was mature. At least to be the age of 18.

Sulliman just glared at her.

"Come now, what're you looking at me like that for?" she asked and shifted into a more cat-like position. "It isn't my fault you won't talk." she insisted and crawled from the chair, prancing toward him and bending over him. "Just tell them what they want, then Kiri's job will be done and Kiri can let you go, yes I will."

"Go to hell." Ben snapped at her and Kiri stood up as if appalled by the words. She covered her mouth.

"Such language. speaking to Kiri like that. Won't due, no it won't!" she insisted and turned as the heavy door of the cell opened and a figure stepped into the room. He was small, the size of a child, and wore a hood over his face.

"Has he said anything?" the boy's voice was low and fluid. Kiri shook her head.

"Wizard Sulliman will only curse at me." she insisted, her own childish voice ringing off of the walls of the stone cell. The figure nodded lightly and motioned for her to come to him.

"Let us go, then." he said and Kiri bounded to his side.

"What will we do?" she asked, glancing back at the older male on the floor across the room. The imps had retreated away from him, bowing in the dark recesses of the corners to the boy that had come in.

"You'll go this time." he said, causing her to blink. Pointing at herself as if she did not understand him, she cocked her head.

"Kiri will go?" she asked and the boy nodded.

"Use that woman if you have to, the one that Vanetha could not capture." Kiri blinked her honey-hue eyes and nodded after a second. Glancing back at the imps as they continued to recede further and further into the shadows, she turned one of her ears toward Sulliman again.

"What shall I do about him, then?" she asked curiously and the boy snickered, his mouth coming into light when the rest of his face did not.

"Leave him here. Without his magic, he's about as threatening as a wet kitten." Kiri giggled and nodded, shooting Wizard Sulliman a cool glance before following her master out and closing the door on him.