“Why did you make me like this?” she demanded as they went up a grand thoroughfare with a fountain at the top of it.

“You were preventing me getting some information I needed,” the Witch said. “I got it in the end, of course.” Sophie was quite mystified by this. She was wondering whether it would do any good to say there must be some mistake, when the Witch added, “Though I daresay you had no idea you were,” and laughed, as if that was the funniest part of it. “Have you heard of a land called Wales?” she asked.

“No,” said Sophie. “Is it under the sea?”

The Witch found this funnier than ever. “Not at the moment,” she said. “It’s where Wizard Howl comes from. You know Wizard Howl, don’t you?”

“Only by hearsay,” Sophie lied. “He eats girls. He’s as wicked as you.” But she felt rather cold. It did not seem to be due to the fountain they were passing at that moment. Beyond the fountain, across a pink marble plaza, were the stone stairs with the Palace at the top.

“There you are. There’s the Palace,” said the Witch. “Are you sure you can manage all those stairs?”

“None the better for you,” said Sophie. “Make me young again and I’ll run up them, even in this heat.”

“That wouldn’t be half so funny,” said the Witch. “Up you go. And if you do persuade the King to see you, remind him that his grandfather sent me to the Waste and I bear him a grudge for that.”

Sophie looked hopelessly up the long flight of stairs. At least there was nobody but soldiers on them. With the luck she was having today, it would not have surprised her to find Michael and Howl on their way down. Since the Witch was obviously going to stand there and make sure she went up, Sophie had no choice but to climb them. Up she hobbled, past the sweating soldiers, all the way to the Palace entrance again, hating the Witch more with every step. She turned round, panting, at the top. The Witch was still there, a floating russet shape at the foot, with two small orange figures beside her, waiting to see her thrown out of the Palace.

“Drat her!” said Sophie. She hobbled over to the guards at the archway. Her bad luck still held. There was no sign of Michael or Howl in the reaches beyond. She was forced to say to the guards, “There was something I forgot to tell the King.”

They remembered her. They let her inside, to be received by a personage in white gloves. And before Sophie had collected her wits, the Palace machinery was in motion again and she was being handed from person to person, just like the first time, until she arrived at the same double doors and the same person in blue was announcing, “Mrs. Pendragon to see you again, Your Majesty.”

It was like a bad dream, Sophie thought as she went into the same large room. She seemed to have no choice but to blacken Howl’s name again. The trouble was, what with all that had happened, and stage fright again into the bargain, her mind was blanker than ever. The King, this time, was standing at a large desk in one corner, rather anxiously moving flags about on a map. He looked up and said pleasantly, “They tell me there was something you forgot to say.”