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It was quite a good thing that Howl was a woman, Sophie thought. No matter how old she — Sophie — was, it would still be a little bit disreputable for a woman to live with a man. Michael didn’t count, being hardly more than a baby, of course. But Sophie could rest assured that there was no reputational risk in taking up a position in a woman’s household.
Well. Except that it might be seen as suspicious to work for a witch who was said to steal young girls’ hearts. That really wasn’t the thing.
For the first week of her residence in the castle, Sophie tried to find the hearts. Not that she knew what she ought to do with them once she found them — she wasn’t a witch herself — but even simply destroying them to teach Howl a lesson would be doing something to avenge the girls’ deaths. They deserved better than to be spell components for whatever nefarious purpose Howl put them to.
Eventually, she had to admit that there were no hearts hidden in the boxes and jars on Howl’s workbench, assuming that Michael’s identifications of the ingredients were correct. Then she began to be suspicious of the various cosmetics in Howl’s bathroom. Some of them had labels she recognized, but plenty were unmarked or completely foreign. It was also the sort of thing one heard of jealous witches doing —using parts of young and beautiful women to enhance themselves. She began to peer very closely at Howl whenever she came out for the day, thinking that if she scrutinized her makeup enough, she might be able to figure it out.
“Well, Mrs. Nose,” said Howl when she caught Sophie. “Is there a problem with my lipstick? You don’t approve of the color? Or is my eyeliner crooked? The wings are sharp enough to kill a man.” She chuckled at her own joke, even though Sophie couldn’t see how anyone could kill a man with thick black lines painted on their face.
“No,” said Sophie loftily. “I was only thinking how strange it is for a girl who dresses like a boy to wear so much makeup. My mother used to say that it wasn’t proper to wear rouge in any case.”
This only made Howl chuckle. “What a funny little backward place this is. You don’t like my clothes, Sophie?” She put one hand on the wall and leaned against it so that her trailing blue sleeve hung straight down; the body of the coat was pushed behind her, and Sophie could see the curve of her hip and waist in her extremely closely tailored trousers.
Sophie sputtered. “It’s just,” she said when she had control of her voice again, “it’s just odd, that’s all. Trousers look very uncomfortable to me. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to dress like that when I was your age.” This made Howl laugh for some reason, which sent Sophie into a boil.
“I think you’d have looked very nice in trousers at my age. Or any other age,” she said, and winked before sauntering off.
The way she normally looked made it especially strange when she finally descended the stairs in a dress one morning after spending even longer than usual in the bathroom. Sophie found herself completely speechless at the transformation. Howl was normally a very striking woman in a sort of gentlemanly way, but that day there was nothing at all gentlemanly about her. Her hair, apparently magically lengthened and even more blonde than usual, was put up in a towering mass with two long sausage curls over her shoulder, which was practically bare as the neckline on her gown was so wide and so deep, leaving an utterly indecent expanse of chest on full display. Said gown was a deep green silk shot with red and black, shining magnificently with every movement, and trimmed with black velvet ribbon around the bottom of the full skirt and on the short sleeves. All in all, the witch looked rather like a fashion plate.
“Oh, so you’re finally going back to talk to the king,” said Michael in a relieved tone. “Good! It’s always awkward talking to his messengers when you won’t.”
“Doing my duty as a good subject,” said Howl in her usual sardonic way, and then she pulled a fan out of a pocket and snapped it open, fluttering it in front of herself in a way that immediately drew the eye. “La, your majesty!” she exclaimed in a much higher pitch than she usually used. “I couldn’t possibly do such a thing! It wouldn’t be ladylike!”
“Excuse me?” said Sophie, suddenly deeply irritated. “What’s that?”
“That’s how I talk to the king,” Howl informed her, snapping the fan closed again and speaking in her normal voice. “He’s not a terrible man, but he can be made to think I’m a pretty airhead with a little pushing.”
“So you just play into stereotypes about women being stupid and incapable?”
“I let someone who already tends to think women who look like this aren’t very smart go on thinking that!” Howl retorted. “It isn’t a capital crime!”
Sophie sniffed haughtily and crossed her arms. “Well, I think it’s pathetic. And unkind to other women!”
When Howl opened her fan and began plying it again, there was no longer a flirtatious little flutter. “Nonsense! I’m just using the tools available to me!”
This was rubbish, and Sophie said as much. “And besides, you’ve more than enough ‘tools’! You have magic, for one thing!”
“I can’t go around enspelling random people, like — anyway, and I definitely can’t put an enchantment on the king! People get their heads cut off for things like that!” Huffing an enormous sigh, Howl tossed her head and started for the door. “Michael, don’t expect me home until at least dinnertime!”
After she’d gone, Sophie hmphed. “It’s disgusting,” she told Michael in a tone that said he’d better pay attention. “Not only is she a coward, she’s willing to make things harder for other women. Ha! I bet she does use the hearts of young girls to make her rouge.”
“I don’t … think so,” said Michael carefully, looking like he’d rather be somewhere else. “I think she gets it from a chemist’s in Porthaven.”
Sophie hmphed again, and began sweeping very vigorously.