“Then go twice as fast and circle the hills twice. As long as you leave that horrible thing behind!” said Sophie.

“What a fuss!” Calcifer grumbled. But he increased the castle’s speed. Sophie could actually, for the first time, feel it rumbling around her as she sat huddled in her chair wondering if she was dying. She did not want to die yet, before she had talked to Martha.

As the day went on, everything in the castle began to jiggle with its speed. Bottles chinked. The skull clattered on the bench. Sophie could hear things falling off the shelf in the bathroom and splashing into the bath where Howl’s blue-and-silver suit was still soaking. She began to feel a little better. She dragged herself to the door again and looked out, with her hair flying in the wind. The ground was streaking past underneath. The hills seemed to be spinning slowly as the castle sped across them. The grinding and rumbling nearly deafened her, and smoke was puffing out behind in blasts. But the scarecrow was a tiny black dot on a distant slope by then. Next time she looked, it was out of sight entirely.

“Good. Then I shall stop for the night,” said Calcifer. “That was quite a strain.”

The rumbling died away. Things stopped jiggling. Calcifer went to sleep, in the way fires do, sinking among the logs until they were rosy cylinders plated with white ash, with only a hint of blue and green deep underneath.

Sophie felt quite spry again by then. She went and fished six packets and a bottle out of the slimy water in the bath. The packets were soaked. She did not dare leave them that way after yesterday, so she laid them on the floor and, very cautiously, sprinkled them with the stuff labeled DRYING POWER. They were dry almost instantly. This was encouraging. Sophie let the water out of the bath and tried the POWER on Howl’s suit. That dried too. It was still stained green and rather smaller than it had been, but it cheered Sophie up to find she could put at least something right.

She felt cheerful enough to busy herself getting supper. She bundled everything on the bench into a heap round the skull at one end and began chopping onions. “At least your eyes don’t water, my friend,” she told the skull. “Count your blessings.”

The door sprang open.

Sophie nearly cut herself in her fright, thinking it was the scarecrow again. But it was Michael. He burst jubilantly in. He dumped a loaf, a pie, and a pink-and-white-striped box on top of the onions. Then he seized Sophie round her skinny waist and danced her round the room.

“It’s all right! It’s all right!” he shouted joyfully.

Sophie hopped and stumbled to keep out of the way of Michael’s boots. “Steady, steady!” she gasped, giddily trying to hold the knife where it would not cut either of them. “What is all right?”