Chapter 9 Chapter Nine Mike encounters a difficult spell

The captain finally came to get his Wind Curse, and waited impatiently. "If I miss the tide, young man," he said to Mike, "I'll talk to the wizard about you. I don't like lazy young men." It seemed to Sophie that Mike had been too polite to him, but she was too frustrated to intervene.After the captain left, Mike returned to the workbench and began to frown and study the spell again, while Sophie sat quietly mending her socks.She only had one pair, and her protruding bones had worn holes in them.Her gray dress was torn and dirty by this time.It occurred to her that she could cut out the least-suffered part of Hal's ruined silver-blue suit and make a new dress for herself.But she dared not.

"Sophie." When Mike wrote the eleventh page of notes, he raised his head and asked, "How many grandnieces do you have?" Sophie was always worried about Mike asking questions. "When you get to my age, boy," she said, "you won't know anything. They all look so much alike. I think the two Letties might be twins." "Oh no, not really," said Mike, to Sophie's surprise. "The one on Fording isn't as pretty as my Letty." He tore up the eleventh page and started on the twelfth. . "I'm glad Hal didn't meet my Letty," he said.He started on page thirteen, then tore it all up. "When Mrs. Fairfax said she knew who Hal was, I wanted to laugh. Didn't you too?"

"No." Sophie replied.This had no effect on Letty's feelings.She thought of Letty's bright, loving face under the apple blossoms. "I guess this time," she asked unashamedly, "is Hal seriously in love?" Calcifer sent green sparks straight up the chimney. "I'm afraid you'll think so," said Mike, "but you're deceiving yourself, like Mrs. Fairfax." "How do you know?" Sophie asked. Calcifer and Mike exchanged glances. "Did he forget to spend at least an hour in the bathroom this morning?" Mike asked. "He stayed for two hours," said Calcifer, "putting all sorts of spells on his face. Vain fool!"

"I told you," Mike said, "I didn't believe Hal was really in love the day he forgot to do this set." Sophie thought of Howl kneeling on one knee in the orchard, trying to look as cool as possible, and she knew they were right.She thought about going to the bathroom and throwing all of Howl's beauty charms down the toilet.But she didn't dare to do so, but hobbled to fetch the silver-blue coat.For the rest of the day, she cut small triangles of blue fabric from the dress, trying to stitch them together into a dress. Mike patted Calcifer on the shoulder tenderly as he came over to toss his seventeen pages of notes. "Everybody gets over that eventually," he said.

Apparently Mike was having trouble with this spell.He dropped his notes and scraped the ashes from the chimney.Calcifer craned his neck and looked back at him blankly.Mike took a bunch of dead roots from a bag hanging from a beam and put them in the ash.After much consideration, he turned the doorknob so that the blue sign was down, and withdrew to Port Sanctuary for twenty minutes.He came back with a huge conch shell, along with the rhizome and soot.Then he tore up page after page and put the shreds in.He brought the pile up to the skulls and stood blowing on them, soot and scraps of paper swirling all over the workbench.

"What is he doing, do you think?" Calcifer asked Sophie. Mike stopped and started pounding confetti and all with his pestle and bowl, looking at the skull now and then.Nothing happened, so he tried different materials in different bags and jars. "Sneaking on Hal makes me sick," he said, pounding the third batch of ingredients in the bowl. "Although he is easy to change his mind about women, he is very kind to me. When I was an abandoned orphan sitting on the doorstep of his house in Port Sanctuary, he took me in." "What's going on here?" Sophie asked as she cut off a piece of blue triangle.

"My mother died and my father drowned in a storm," Mike said. "No one wants you after that kind of thing. I was forced out of our house because I couldn't pay the rent. I wanted to sleep on the street, but People kept kicking me down the doorstep and off the boat, and finally I thought the only place to go was where no one dared to interfere. Hal had just started out as the wizard Jenkins, and his reputation was not very big. But everyone Said there were demons in his house, so I slept by his door for several nights, until one morning when Hal opened the door to buy bread and I fell in. So he said I could be in the Waited in the house. I went in, saw Calcifer, and started talking to him, because I had never seen a fire demon before."

"What did you all say?" Sophie wondered if Calcifer had also asked Mike to break the bond for him. "He told me about his predicament and wept like hell. Right?" Calcifer said. "It didn't seem to occur to him that I might have mine too." "I don't think you have. You just complain," Mike said. "You were so nice to me that morning, and I think Hal was touched. But you know his style. He didn't say I could stay. But he Didn’t let me go. So I started doing what I could, like keeping his money so that he didn’t squander it immediately when he got it, stuff like that.”

With the sound of "Woo", the spell exploded slightly.Mike brushes the black ash off the skull and tries out new materials.Sophie began to patchwork the blue gusset around her feet. "I did make a lot of stupid mistakes in the beginning," Mike continued, "and Hal is so picky. I'm past that stage now, and I can really help financially. Hal always buys Expensive clothes. He said no one would hire a wizard who didn't seem to be making money in the business." "That's just because he likes to dress up," Calcifer said.His orange eyes watched Sophie work meaningfully.

"The dress is ruined," said Sophie. "It's not just clothes," Mike said. "Remember last winter when you had only one firewood left and Hal went out and bought a skull and that rotten guitar? I really pissed him off. He said they looked fine." "What about the firewood?" Sophie asked. "Hal bewitched his creditor to get some," Mike said. "At least that's what he said, and I only hope he's telling the truth. We eat seaweed. Hal says it's good for you." "Good stuff," muttered Calcifer, "dry and brittle."

"I hate it," Mike said, staring absently at the bowl of smashed things, "I don't understand—should be seven ingredients, unless you mean seven processes, but try it in a pentagram Try it." He put the bowl on the ground and drew a five-pointed star on the outside of the bowl with chalk. The force of the powder explosion shook Sophie's gore into the fireplace.Mike hastily erased the chalk marks while cursing. "Sophie," he said, "I'm stuck with this spell. Can you help me?" It's like a child asking his grandmother for help with his homework, Sophie thought, gathering up the triangles and patiently spreading them out. "Just take a look," she said cautiously. "I don't know anything about magic." Mike eagerly pushed her a strange piece of paper with a little bit of glitter.Even though it was a spell, it looked unusual.The lettering was printed in bold, but somewhat smudged gray, and the edges of the paper were smeared with gray, like bowl-shaped storm clouds. "See what you think," Mike said. Sophie read: Sophie was baffled.This spell was nothing like the ones Sophie had peeked at before.She struggled to read it twice, and Mike eagerly explained, but to no avail. "You know how Hal said there was a puzzle in the higher spells, right? I thought every line was a puzzle at first. I used soot sputtering sparks for shooting stars and seashells to sing for mermaids. It occurred to me that I might be a Boy, so get the datura root, I copied the past few years from the yearbook, but I'm not sure about this - maybe that's where I went wrong - would the thing to prevent the sting be the sardine leaf? I've been I didn’t expect—in short, none of it worked!” "No surprise," Sophie said, "I looked like a bunch of impossible things." But Mike didn't accept that statement.He makes a good point, if it's impossible, then no one can make the spell. "And," he added, "stalking Hal made me feel ashamed, and I want to make up this spell to make up for it." "Fine then," said Sophie, "we'll start with 'think about what this is'. That should be the opening, assuming the riddle is part of the spell." But Mike didn't agree. "No," he said, "it's one of those spells that reveal themselves when they're made. That's what the last line means. When you write the second half and say what the spell means, it's going to be a big deal. It's a big deal." The advanced kind. We have to crack it bit by bit from the ground up." Sophie gathered up her blue triangle again. "Let's ask Calcifer," she suggested. "Calcifer, who—" But Mike won't let her do it either. "No, lightly. I think Calcifer is part of the spell. Judging by the way it says 'tell me' and 'teach me'. I thought it meant teaching the skull at first, but it didn't work, so it must mean Calcifer." "You can do it yourself, if you object to anything I say!" said Sophie. "Anyway, Calcifer must know who split his foot!" Hearing this, Calcifer jumped up a little. "I have no feet. I'm an imp, not a devil." With that, he shrank back under the logs.Sophie and Mike continued to murmur "Nonsense!" as Sophie talked to Mike, and Sophie was completely absorbed in the spell.She put away the blue triangles, fetched pen and paper, and began to write long notes like Mike did.She and Mike spend the day staring into the distance, nibbling quills, and throwing opinions at each other now and then. A page of Sophie's notes reads: As Sophie wrote it, Mike asked desperately at the same time, "Does 'wind' mean a pulley? Hang an honest man? But that's black magic." "Let's have dinner," Sophie said. They were eating bread and cheese, their eyes still staring into the distance.Finally Sophie said, "Okay, Mike, let's stop doing riddles and just do what it says. Where's the best place to catch the falling star? On the hills?" "Port Shelter Swamp is flat," Mike said. "Can we do it? Meteors go fast." "We can, too, with seven-mile boots," Sophie reminded. Mike jumped to his feet, full of relief and joy. "You're right!" he said, hurrying to get his boots. "Let's go out and try." This time Sophie took her cane and cloak cautiously, for it was getting late.When Mike turned the blue label on the doorknob, two strange things happened.The teeth of the skull on the workbench rattled.And Calcifer jumped up the chimney. "I don't want you to go!" he said. "We'll be back soon." Mike reassured him. They came to the streets of Port Shelter.It was a clear and mild night.However, when they had just reached the end of the street, Mike remembered that Sophie had been sick that morning and worried that the night air would be bad for her.Sophie told him not to be stupid.She shuffled resolutely on crutches, gradually leaving behind the brightly lit windows into the damp and cold night.The marshes are salty and earthy.The sea water was glowing, gently surging backward.Sophie could feel—not see—the endless stretch of flat land ahead.What she saw were low-hanging blue mist clusters and shimmering marsh ponds, one after another, stretching to the intersection of heaven and earth.Everywhere else is a larger sky.The Milky Way is like a mist rising from a swamp, through which bright stars twinkle. Mike and Sophie stood, each with a boot in front of them, waiting for a star to start moving. After about an hour, Sophie had to pretend she wasn't shaking, lest Mike worry. Half an hour later Mike said, "Maybe maybe not the right season. August or November would be best." After another half an hour, he said worriedly, "What shall we do with the Datura root?" "Let's do what we have to do before we move on," Sophie said, clenching her teeth for fear they would click. After a while, Mike said, "You go back, Sophie. It's my spell after all." Just as Sophie opened her mouth to say that this is a good idea, a star fell from the sky and dragged its white tail across the sky. "There's one!" Sophie screamed instead. Mike stepped into his boot and flew over.Sophie followed with the help of crutches.Whoosh!Slap.Down in the swampy depths of mist, emptiness, and glimmering pools.Sophie dug her cane into the ground to steady herself.Mike's black boots lay beside her.Only the plop of Mike running wildly came from the front. The falling star is there.Sophie could see it, a small, descending white flame a few yards in front of Mike's moving shadow.The bright object slowed down now, and it looked like Mike could catch it. Sophie pulled the shoe out of the boot. "Come on, crutches!" she called, "Take me there!" She struggled to stagger forward, jumping over the grass and across the pond, her eyes locked on the white starlight. When she catches up, Mike is trailing lightly behind the star, arms outstretched for capture.Sophie saw his silhouette against the starlight.The stars floated at the same height as his hands, just a step away.It looked back at him nervously.really weird!thought Sophie.It was full of light, illuminating a circle of grass and reeds and black pools around Mike, and it had big anxious eyes peering back at Mike, and a small pointed face. It is startled by Sophie's arrival.It swooped down erratically, screaming in a sharp voice, "What? What are you doing?" Sophie wanted to tell Mike to stop -- it was terrified!But she was too out of breath to speak. "I just want to catch you," Mike explained, "I'm not going to hurt you." "No! No!" the star crackled in despair. "It's a mistake! I should die!" "But I can save you if you let me catch you," Mike said softly. "No!" Star shouted, "I'd rather die!" It ducked away from Mike's fingers.Mike rushed over, but it was too late.It rushed to the nearest swamp pool, and the black water instantly burst into a cloud of white light.Then came a faint, dying hiss.When Sophie arrived, Mike was watching the last gleam of light disappear from the dark bottom of the water. "Too bad," said Sophie. Mike sighed. "Yeah. My heart almost skipped a beat. Go back. I'm sick of this curse." It took them twenty minutes to find the boots.Sophie thought it was a miracle to find them all. As they shuffled down Port Shelter Street in frustration, Mike said, "I know I'll never do this spell. It's too hard for me. I'm going to ask Hal. I hate to throw in the towel, but since Letty Heyt was captured by him, he should be more sober." This did not comfort Sophie in the slightest.