“You see,” said Howl. He swung out an arm and his black sleeve disturbed several hundred blue butterflies feasting on a bush of yellow roses. “We can cut flowers by the armload every morning and sell them in Market Chipping with the dew still on them.”

At the end of that green lane the grass became squashy. Vast orchids sprouted under the bushes. Howl and Sophie came suddenly to a steaming pool crowded with water lilies. The castle veered off sideways round the pool and drifted down another avenue lined with different flowers.

“If you come out here alone, bring your stick to test the ground with,” Howl said. “It’s full of springs and bogs. And don’t go any further that way.”

He pointed southeast, where the sun was a fierce white disk in the misty air. “That’s the Waste over there—very hot and barren and full of Witch.”

“Who made these flowers, right on the edge of the Waste?” Sophie said.

“Wizard Suliman started it a year ago,” Howl said, turning toward the castle. “I think his notion was to make the Waste flower and abolish the Witch that way. He brought hot springs to the surface and got it growing. He was doing very nicely until the Witch caught him.”

“Mrs. Pentstemmon said some other name,” Sophie said. “He came from the same place as you, didn’t he?”

“More or less,” said Howl. “I never met him, though. I came and had another go at the place a few months later. It seemed a good idea. That’s how I came to meet the Witch. She objected to it.”

“Why?” said Sophie.

The castle was waiting for them. “She likes to think of herself as a flower,” Howl said, opening the door. “A solitary orchid, blooming in the Waste. Pathetic, really.”

Sophie took another look at the crowded flowers as she followed Howl inside. There were roses, thousands of them. “Won’t the Witch know you’re here?”

“I tried to do the thing she’d least expect,” Howl said.

“And are you trying to find Prince Justin?” Sophie asked. But Howl slithered out of answering by racing through the broom cupboard, shouting for Michael.

Chapter Eighteen

IN WHICH THE SCARECROW AND MISS ANGORIAN REAPPEAR

They opened the flower shop the next day. As Howl had pointed out, it could not have been simpler. Every early morning, all they had to do was to open the door with the knob purple-down and go out into the swimming green haze to gather flowers. It soon became a routine. Sophie took her stick and her scissors and stumped about, chatting to her stick, using it to test the squashy ground or hook down sprays of high-up choice roses. Michael took an invention of his own which he was very proud of. It was a large tin tub with water in it, which floated in the air and followed Michael wherever he went among the bushes. The dog-man went too. He had a wonderful time rushing about the wet green lanes, chasing butterflies or trying to catch the tiny, bright birds that fed on the flowers. While he dashed about, Sophie cut armloads of long irises, or lilies, or frondy orange flowers, or branches of blue hibiscus, and Michael loaded the bath with orchids, roses, starry white flowers, shiny vermilion ones, or anything that caught his fancy. They all enjoyed this time.