“Confound it!” said someone inside the rods. “I can’t smell you at all now!”

This made the wizard grin and Lettie laugh outright. Abdullah looked for the person who was amusing them so and was forced to look away almost at once. The young woman crouching inside the framework, understandably enough, had no clothes on at all. The glimpse he caught, told him that the young woman was as fair as Lettie was dark but otherwise quite like her. Lettie ran to the side of the room and came back with a wizardly green gown. When Abdullah dared to look, the young woman was wearing the gown like a dressing gown, and Lettie was trying to hug her and help her out of the framework at the same time.

“Oh, Sophie! What happened?” she kept saying.

“One moment,” gasped Sophie. She seemed to have difficulty balancing on two feet at first, but she hugged Lettie and then staggered to the wizard and hugged him, too. “It feels so odd without a tail!” she said. “But thanks awfully, Ben.” Then she advanced on Abdullah, walking rather more easily now. Abdullah backed against the wall, afraid she was going to hug him, too, but all Sophie said was “You must have wondered why I was following you. The truth is, I always get lost in Kingsbury.”

“I am happy to have been of service, most charming of changelings,” Abdullah said rather stiffly. He was not sure he was going to get on with Sophie any more than he had got on with Midnight. She struck him as uncomfortably strong-minded for a young woman—almost as bad as his father’s first wife’s sister, Fatima.

Lettie was still demanding to know what had turned Sophie into a cat, and Wizard Suliman was saying anxiously, “Sophie, does this mean that Howl’s wandering about as an animal, too?”

“No, no,” Sophie said, and suddenly looked desperately anxious. “I’ve no idea where Howl is. He was the one who turned me into a cat, you see.”

“What? Your own husband turned you into a cat!” Lettie exclaimed. “Is this another of your quarrels, then?”

“Yes, but it was all perfectly reasonable,” said Sophie. “It was when someone stole the moving castle, you see. We only had about half a day’s notice, and that was only because Howl happened to be working on a divining spell for the King. It showed something very powerful stealing the castle and then stealing Princess Valeria. Howl said he’d warn the King at once. Did he?”

“He certainly did,” said Wizard Suliman. “The Princess is guarded every second. I invoked demons and set up wards in the next room. Whatever being is threatening her has no chance of getting through.”

“Thank goodness!” said Sophie. “That’s a weight off my mind. It’s a djinn, did you know?”

“Even a djinn couldn’t get through,” said Wizard Suliman. “But what did Howl do?”