Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle 2)

Dalzel grasped his chin again and looked uncertain. Abdullah felt much relieved. Dalzel was indeed a weak djinn—weak in character, anyway. “If I were to give him a chance—” he began.

“If you’ll take my advice, brother,” Hasruel cut in, “you won’t. He’s tricky, this one.”

At this Flower-in-the-Night raised another great wail and beat her breast. Abdullah cried out through the noise, “Let me try to guess where you hid your brother’s life, great Dalzel. If I fail to guess, kill me. If I guess right, let me depart in peace.”

This amused Dalzel highly. His mouth opened, showing pointed silvery teeth, and his laughter rang around the cloudy hall like a fanfare of trumpets. “But you’ll never guess, little mortal!” he said as he laughed. Then, as the princesses had repeatedly assured Abdullah, Dalzel was unable to resist giving hints. “I’ve hidden that life so cleverly,” he said gleefully, “that you can look at it and not see it. Hasruel can’t see it, and he is a djinn. So what hope have you? But I think for the fun of it I will give you three guesses before I kill you. Guess away. Where have I hidden my brother’s life?”

Abdullah shot a swift look at Hasruel in case Hasruel decided to interfere. But Hasruel was simply squatting there, looking inscrutable. So far the plan was succeeding. It was in Hasruel’s interest not to interfere. Abdullah had been counting on that. He took a firmer grip on the dog with his knees and hitched at the Paragon’s petticoat, while he pretended to think. What he was really doing was jogging the genie bottle. “For my first guess, great djinn…” he said, and stared at the floor as if the green porphyry might inspire him. Would the genie go back on his word? For one scared and miserable moment Abdullah thought that the genie had let him down as usual and that he was going to have to risk guessing on his own. Then, to his great relief, he saw a tiny tendril of purple smoke creep out from under the Paragon’s petticoat, where it lay, still and watchful, beside Abdullah’s bare foot. “My first guess is that you hid Hasruel’s life on the moon,” Abdullah said.

Dalzel laughed delightedly. “Wrong! He would have found it there! No, it’s much more obvious than that, and much less obvious. Consider the game of hunt the slipper, mortal!”

This told Abdullah that Hasruel’s life was here in the castle, as most of the princesses had thought it was. He made a great show of thinking hard. “My second guess is that you gave it to one of the guardian angels to keep,” he said.

“Wrong again!” said Dalzel, more delighted than ever. “The angels would have given it back straightaway. It’s much cleverer than that, little mortal. You’ll never guess. It’s amazing how no one can see what’s under his own nose!”

At this, in a burst of inspiration, Abdullah was sure he knew where Hasruel’s life really was. Flower-in-the-Night loved him. He was still walking on air. His mind was inspired, and he knew. But he was mortally afraid of making a mistake. When the time shortly came when he had to take hold of Hasruel’s life himself, he knew he would have to go straight to it because Dalzel would give him no second chance. That was why he needed the genie to confirm his guess. The tendril of smoke was still lying there, near invisible, and if Abdullah had guessed, surely the genie knew, too?

“Er…” Abdullah said. “Um…”

The tendril of smoke crept noiselessly back inside the Paragon’s petticoat and bellied up inside, where it must have tickled the nose of Jamal’s dog. The dog sneezed.

“Atishoo!” cried Abdullah, and almost drowned the thread of the genie’s voice whispering, “It’s the ring in Hasruel’s nose!”

“Atishoo!” said Abdullah, and pretended to guess wrong. This was where his plan was distinctly risky. “Your brother’s life is one of your teeth, great Dalzel.”

“Wrong!” trumpeted Dalzel. “Hasruel, roast him!”

“Spare him!” wailed Flower-in-the-Night as Hasruel, with disgust and disappointment written all over him, began to get up.

The princesses were ready for this moment. Ten royal hands instantly pushed Princess Valeria out of the crowd to the steps of the throne.

“I want my doggy!” Valeria announced. This was her big moment. As Sophie had pointed out to her, she had found thirty new aunties and three new uncles and all of them had begged her to scream as hard as she could. No one had ever wanted her to scream before. In addition, all the new aunties had promised her a box of sweets if she made this a really good tantrum. Thirty boxes. It was worth the best she could do. She made her mouth square. She expanded her chest. She gave it everything she had. “I WANT MY DOGGY! I DON’T WANT ABDULLAH! I WANT MY DOGGY BACK!” She hurled herself at the throne steps, fell over Jamal, threw herself to her feet again, and flung herself at the throne. Dalzel hastily jumped onto the throne seat to get out of her way. “GIVE ME MY DOGGY!” Valeria bellowed.

At the same moment the tiny yellow Princess of Tsapfan gave Morgan a shrewd nip, just in the right place. Morgan had been asleep in her tiny arms, dreaming he was a kitten again. He woke with a jump and found he was still a helpless baby. His fury knew no bounds. He opened his mouth, and he roared. His feet pedaled with anger. His hands pumped. And his roars were so lusty that had it been a competition between himself and Valeria, Morgan might have won. As it was, the noise was unspeakable. The echoes in the hall pick

ed it up, doubled the screams, and rolled it all back at the throne.

“Echo at those djinns,” Sophie was saying in her conversational magical way. “Don’t just double it. Treble it.”

The hall was a madhouse. Both djinns clapped their hands over their pointed ears. Dalzel hooted, “Stop it! Stop them! Where did that baby come from?”

To which Hasruel howled, “Women have babies, fool of a djinn! What did you expect?”

“I WANT MY DOGGY BACK!” stated Valeria, beating the seat of the throne with her fists.

Dalzel’s trumpet voice fought to be heard. “Give her a doggy. Hasruel, or I’ll kill you!”

At this stage in Abdullah’s plans he had confidently expected—if he had not been killed by then—to be turned into a dog. It was what he had been leading up to. This, he had calculated, would also have released Jamal’s dog. He had counted on the sight of not one dog but two, dashing from beneath the Paragon’s petticoat, to add to the confusion. But Hasruel was as distracted by the screams, and the triple echoes of screams, as his brother was. He turned this way and that, clutching his ears and yelling with pain, the picture of a djinn at his wits’ end. Finally he folded his great wings and became a dog himself.

He was a very huge dog, something between a donkey and a bulldog, brown and gray in patches, with a golden ring in his snub nose. This huge dog put its gigantic forepaws on the arm of the throne and stretched an enormous slavering tongue out toward Valeria’s face. Hasruel was trying to seem friendly. But at the sight of something so big and so ugly, Valeria, not unnaturally, screamed harder than ever. The noise frightened Morgan. He screamed harder, too.

Abdullah had a moment when he was quite at a loss what to do, and then another moment when he was sure no one would hear him shout. “Soldier!”he roared. “Hold Hasruel! Someone hold Dalzel!”

Luckily the soldier was alert. He was good at that. The Jharine of Jham vanished in a flurry of old clothes, and the soldier leaped up the steps of the throne. Sophie rushed after him, beckoning to the princesses. She threw her arms around Dalzel’s slender white knees, while the soldier wrapped his brawny arms around the neck of the dog. The princesses stampeded up the steps behind them, and most of them threw themselves on Dalzel, too, with the air of princesses badly in need of revenge—all except Princess Beatrice, who dragged Valeria out of the brawl and began the difficult task of shutting her up. The tiny Princess of Tsapfan meanwhile sat calmly on the porphyry floor, rocking Morgan back to sleep.

Abdullah tried to run toward Hasruel. But no sooner did he move than Jamal’s dog seized its chance and got away. It burst out from under the Paragon’s petticoat to see a fight in progress. It loved fights. It also saw another dog. If anything, it hated dogs even more than djinns or the human race. No matter what size the dog was. It sped, snarling, to the attack. While Abdullah was still trying to kick his way out of the Paragon’s petticoat, Jamal’s dog sprang for Hasruel’s throat.

This was too much for Hasruel, already beset by the soldier. He became a djinn again. He made an angry gesture. And the dog went sailing away, end over end, to land with a yelp on the other side of the hall. After that Hasruel tried to stand up, but the soldier was on his back by then, preventing him spreading his leathery wings. Hasruel heaved and surged.