Howl's Twisted Castle

2: The Romantic and the Realist

"Howl? You must be joking Sophie; no one even knows what the man looks like! How can you be certain?" She dragged the second stool over, waving away a group of men who had formed around us.

"I-I don't know, I just have a feeling that's all," I shook my head to clear it. Never has anyone made me feel like that before.

One of the women who I had eavesdropped on earlier leaned over the till to add her voice to the mix. "Without a doubt that was him, he changes his look every once and a while but did you notice how everyone stared at him? That's just his way; has a charm he casts on himself to win people over."

"A charm? That doesn't seem right, why would he want to do something like that?" I didn't want to believe her. If he was, in fact, using magic then what I was feeling just now was the effects of his spell. Fake feelings, not real.

Lettie fluffed her hair and tossed a wayward smile at the woman leaning over our conversation. "Oh, I honestly doubt that I greeted him first and I wasn't charmed! Yes, I thought he was good-looking, but he seemed more focused on Sophie, which is rare when I'm in the room." She wasn't boastful, we both knew that between the two of us, she was the reason we had such a high male clientele.

I looked down at the clothes I was wearing and examined them for the first time today. Plain white smock, threadbare grey dress and scuffed black boots, not to mention the mousy brown hair I had inherited from our father was piled on top of my head in a messy bun.

"I don't think he was that interested in me," I sighed to Lettie, "I'm rather plain, aren't I?"

She rolled her eyes in her usual Lettie fashion, the way she did before she spent an hour trying to fluff my ego about how beauty was only skin deep. Before she could begin her pep talk, she was interrupted by Gerta.

"Sophie's right, Lettie, the only thing that man was interested in was the merchandise," she stuck out her hand impatiently and nodded to the money in my hand. " If you want to eat tonight, you'll keep working instead of swooning over a man who's out of your league," without skipping a beat she turned to Lettie and said, "except for you dear, if he's rich go for it." She stuffed her pocket with the money she had filched from me and returned my look with a wrinkled upturned nose. We both knew very well that that money wasn't going to us.

Lettie untied her smock and threw it on the till. Turning to me, she offered me an apologetic look.

"I'm taking a break Sophie, the air in here is getting a little too stuffy for me." She was out before I could save the conversation. Not wanting to give Gerta the satisfaction of winning a fight, I offered up my smock to her.

"Here, feel free to do some work instead of leeching off us for once," I turned on my heel and followed Lettie out the door.

***

A sudden breeze kicked up, lapping around my legs and cooling my fevered skin. Sometimes I forgot just how stuffy it was working in that little building, especially now that it was the middle of spring.

Our town was the ideal little paradise for city folk who wanted to get out and experience country living first hand without actually living here. We loved the business; they loved the peace. It was a perfect trade-off.

Retying the thin black sash around my middle, I set out to find Lettie. It was one thing for me to get angry at our stepmother but Lettie was a sweet and gentle person, and I hated seeing her that way. It wasn't unexpected when our father died, he had been ill for over a year, and by the time the doctors realized what he had, it was too late. He put his affairs in order, giving the three of us, that is me, Lettie and Gerta, ownership of the hat shop. At the time we had accepted it without question after all Gerta was a different person when my father was alive. It's hard to imagine it, but Lettie and I might have even loved her as a mother once.