Howl’s Moving Castle

Howl and Michael paint symbols throughout the inside of the castle in preparation for the moving spells. Howl asks Sophie’s input for what they’ll sell in their new location at the hat shop, and she suggests flowers. To move Calcifer, Howl paints a large circle with a five-pointed star inside on the floor of the castle’s main room and picks Calcifer up from his embers with a shovel. Calcifer looks “terribly unsafe” and frightened on the shovel. Howl steps into the circle and makes one complete rotation holding Calcifer. The entire castle turns with them, then Howl returns Calcifer to the grate. The castle has successfully been moved.

Sophie notices changes coming over the inside of the castle that suggest it is squeezing into the hat shop “until the two melted together and became the castle room again” (319). The castle door now opens to Market Chipping, an empty mansion, and a house on the edge of the Waste with the flowers Sophie requested.

After seeing Calcifer’s shape better while he was held on the shovel, Sophie privately asks him if he was ever a fallen star. Calcifer explains that Howl caught him five years ago on the Porthaven Marshes. Calcifer was scared of dying and Howl, taking pity on him, “offered to keep me alive the way humans stay alive” (323).