A Howl's Moving Castle Fic.

“The prince of peace embraced the gloom
and walked the night alone.
Oh, dance in the dark of night…
Oh, throw down your plow and hoe,
Rest not to lock your homes.
Side by side we wait the might
of the darkest of them all…
The apples turn to brown and black; the tyrant’s face is red.
Oh the war is common cry,
Pick up your swords and fly!” – Led Zeppelin, to Us

Like folklore, like the apotheosis of all wizards and magicians and magical folk, Howl Jenkins cleaved through the air before him, ground the fabric of it like an insolent spider’s web, and sped on quietly towards home. In the wet, reedy evening, birdsong echoed, old calling young, moon having retired behind the clouds, stars grazing sky o’er head like explosive winking lights; like cattle now they grazed. And as humans, as frail-foolish-vain-childish-inexperienced-wise-conscious men warred below, marred and dashed the lands below with their rude fires and cold steel, Howl could smell the unease and unrest that lay indomitable in the air like shadowy spite. Somewhere in the back of the man’s mind, piled in between the layers as dark as the coal colored night sky that were directing his hands and feet and maintaining his magic, was the clarion thought: humans were not built for this thing named war. Their bodies were soft and fleshy, and eviscerated like nothing, but perhaps a stark knife in solid butter. God knew how many men Howl had killed, forced that he was… had been, through the years, with an uttered spell, worded curse. Men that had a wife and a twelve-year-old daughter named Suzy that liked that boy, who lived next door, that loved her father and just wanted the world to be happy. The wizard scowled, hurtling through the air at the speed that birds flew, suddenly colder than he had been before.

Merely a month, or even less, after his and Sophie’s curses had been lifted, while their country was still conveniently occupied negotiating with Turnip-Head’s (Howl generally called the prince this, partially because of the prince’s attraction towards Sophie, and partially because the dolt had never given them his own name. So Turnip-Head he remained. Then and until the seas broke asunder, or Sophie visited the misplaced prince, which, if it was up to Howl, would be never.) country, another war-mongering nation had struck without warning. And people had died needlessly, despite pleas from individuals to stop the madness.

But what of a single person in the multitude of society and societies of the world, and what of a small boy that voiced the voice of reason in a confluence that was the collective cry of the beast, mindless and unmindful of consequences and circumstances…? Humans saw the dead snake pegged sagging to the rotting door that read: Intrusion!, but they like their inherent natures carelessly clubbed it aside and raked with their flashlights and their ignorant doom-seeking, the naked, blooming darkness beyond. Sometimes Howl wondered––half-voicing his thoughts to the creator that he thought might exist––why humans had waged war even with their moldable, paper bodies, favoring tools they made with their eruptive innovation. At the crux of human nature, Howl knew, like the blue flame in people’s bodies some had believed to burn, like the heart he hadn’t had but recently, beat the fluttering desire that he could not quite name.

Certainly, it was not just the wanton pursuit of power, for rarely did something tempt like lust; Howl had never seen men driven insane by power, though perhaps deflected from their original purposes. But wasn’t it known that dreams aged fast in the eyes of the young boy-turned-old man, and that cowardice and sloth and unwillingness to act, what some named contentedness seated themselves as the demagogue finally gained a turned ear, or a thousand?

And doubtless, not just the wish to protect turned awry; not the sailor lost at sea who roves the hilly waves for so long he does not remember what he is searching for. Howl had read of villains with veins of reasoning along that line in too many cheap novels with store-bought stories and easy justifications for people’s actions, hadn’t he?

In the telltale eyes of the men Howl had slaughtered effortlessly with a small offering of mana, he had seen drifting in those depths, tiny smithereens of some emotion that he had trouble identifying… Perhaps you had to die to empathize in such a way. Before those men’s possessions, live, worlds doubtless, became suddenly meaningless, he had seen two of himself ––jaws clenched and face passively wild, hand raised in a invocation, one in each eye–– as well as the look of mortal and fatalistic doom. Doom that screams, stricken, into a tyrant who has been forked between a rock and a hard place by his subjects, who have at last, belatedly, had enough. Perhaps the knowledge that another heartbeat, or two, and nothing much would matter anymore, at least where they were going.

Have no doubt it was something akin to this hopeless, dull thing, which Howl had trouble thinking of as other than Doom, have no doubt that it would encroach upon all of mankind, like a red dawn unbeknownst to all. And mankind there, perpetually fighting and talking of things that were meager, humble, in the looming shadows of what would happen if they did not stop. So, perhaps they did not see past certain wants, could not begin to imagine the danger that dogs immoderate success. Or maybe they knew, but did not care.

…Or maybe he was allowing his drained yet restless brain to roam, overanalyzing from the lack of anything endearing to do that inevitably came along with long-term spell maintenance. Or perhaps, he, Howl, who had until recently, no one to live for and therefore had no one whom he talked with, could not understand certain things in human nature. Ah, and perhaps he was just failing to convey his own dratted thoughts to himself… (Surely not.) Best not to think of those things when he was completing formal work. But Howl snickered, and it did not come out––he thought––entirely weary. After all, had he himself not gone to such great heights himself, all but to earn an admiring glance or two from the wayward female? Of course, but surely he ––

Then there was a biting pain (fire, thought Howl)working its way up both winged arms and his feet that doubled as a tail. And the air was suddenly wavering like summer heat, and hot and suffocating. Hails of flame singed his clothes as they sailed past, dragging a surprised protest from his leathery black hybrid body. The wizard erratically swerved, his mind already calling forth the necessary stuff to knot the air behind him and fly into a personal bit of pocket matter, so that all unpracticed observers would think he had become invisible. Already, he knew what was trailing him: those incredibly irksome and persistent little bird familiars that found employment only in skirmish and then subsequent carnage. He called them buggers. They called him… actually, they didn’t know his name, and couldn’t seem to pronounce consonants anyway, but seemed to shriek out a series of shrill cries whenever they flung themselves forward at him. Which was often. But they were always getting him relatively unawares, so he was usually on the receiving end of the hostility, and has thus far had no chance to give them a piece of his mind. Howl then he fastened his hand into a fist, finished the seal, waved it like a mundane orison, and there were suddenly no croaked squawks behind him. Across the threshold of his strange spell, Howl breathed easier. Howl always did his long-term travels via giant bird form. It was quite uplifting, really, and at least he could hold that above the commoners who used carriages’ heads.

Better this way, he knew –no possibility of being chance-singed in such an undignified manner, and then losing the use of a wing and then plummeting to his unlikely and needle-filled death (lots of pine trees still below). And a glance back –no one. Practicality over gaudiness anytime in magic, though it had taken Howl the loss and reclamation of a soul to take that lesson to heart. Invisibility was more of a parlor trick than anything was, once you thought above aforementioned chance-singing. Glad to be rid of the familiars, Howl nevertheless would look back every now and then, for caution and formality, and flew on, eventually stopping even the cursory glances back. The remote trees that jutted up at him below were succumbing to more and more boggy patches, ugly shreds of pus yellow in the vegetation, and the trees broke up in little frowns of green. He had purposely mapped out this outlandish, unsettled path of land to avoid any complications. No point in giving Suliman the chance to penalize him in some way for accidentally teleporting a wayward airship. Anonymity was indeed a blessing when speed was essential. The only thing left to attend to, the wizard put a cursory scan of his injuries. At this height, even though breathing was laborious, there were no natural obstacles except for the lingering behemoth land structures, like mountains. Nothing serious, of course: Howl always applied warding charms before long journeys, and this was nothing of an exception. Putting on speed, shedding feathers that trailed and billowed behind like a slipstream, the wizard continued swathing his way to his castle. Morning already and still he had long ways to travel.

A while later found the wizard still gliding his way home (he didn’t actually flap his wings, favoring magic to propel). Why, oh why, had this mission had been specified for he, Howl? A meager topside scouting scan of enemy lands should have been easy enough for a novice. Argh, stupid war! He positively thought-roared. Suliman had said quite eloquently, a few weeks ago as an address to the country, how she considered the war to be foolish and vain. And then she had agreed to personally hand pick a thousand mages to battle, while she remained perched in her chair in her palace, and did nothing at all. Well, Howl thought her insufferable, and a bit hypocritical, but he was sure that she would sooner kill him than admit to her flaws. But, oh well, she’d been trying to do him in for a while now, after that whole swallowing-falling-star-giving-up-heart deal. Though, he supposed she’d let up when he agreed to work for the Crown. And her words were, of course, true, disregarding certain ironic events after. Foolish was an adequate thing to describe this tale of the clash of wills and swords, eternally retold, all for land that was being rewritten in the process, all just a burning map that exhausted itself as fast as unlikely dreams in the mind of the dreamer.

“May our fields of green be sheathed in blood! A quick and devastating victory, and may we hear the cries of the defeated!” one of the over-fervent generals of the king that Howl adored had shouted as a sort of battle cry, near the end of the whole “To War” speeches made exclusively outside the King’s palace. Suliman had made her adress there. And so the general had ended, to cheers from his kindred, at-the-time-drunken spirits. Howl, safely veiled amongst the crowd, had shook his head, disgusted. It was one thing to be a naïve villager with an uneventful life who romanticized things that they had not witnessed, but to be a veteran of said things and act like the villager was idiocy.

Tired eyes on the sun, one of the things more constant than boundaries and strife, Howl closed his eyes and flew towards the eastern glow. How sad, that I should meet my neighbors and would-be friends only in the field of battle, he thought.

Ah, and then he was going to have to attend that council meeting on Thursday, and of course he couldn’t forget to buy some more eggs and get Markl a new pair of shoes because he was growing and needed some, and––

Drat that. His brain hurt. His feathers were being ruffled something awful in this present state; Sophie would worry.

Suddenly, heart lighter and thoughts much less weighted down; Howl was looking beyond the fickle sun rising in the east, east that was in front of him. He saw not the flyaway strands of hair that inked their way across his face. His form was waning along with the night, but he would be at the castle by then. The significance of his last thoughts and how high he was up here where primordial origin had sprouted was lost, for he saw only silver sleek hair, like merry starlight; was suddenly staring into deep brown eyes like early autumn, in the distance. He smiled at the thought of how his eccentric family would chide him when he returned, and wondered what they were having for breakfast.

His last thought before he resigned himself to making a doubly speedy return, was to wonder idly.

After all, what was desire?…

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And now to arms again, town bells tolling, now the new recruits shining with their enthusiasm, the seasoned veterans shaking their grizzled heads. Now the old dooms drawing closer, now the desires of mankind making themselves clear and grim, and grim and clearer. And now, everything changing with the times, every single body under the sky. Like a skeleton ship in the mortal fog, like butterfly wings in a young child’s hands, all changing.
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I saw Howl's Moving Castle, my first Hayao Miyazaki movie, and I thought it was marvelous. This one was done stream of conscious at first (which is why it sounds better in the first and last paragraphs -rearranged the last one), and now I have a headache.

Anyway, i'm aware of how much everyone disreguards most fics not about GW, but if any people read it and find any typos, contradictary sentances, or hitches in the flow of the narration that you feel could be patched up, please say so.