Alfred's Moving Castle: Chapter 1: In which Anne talks to hats
Title: Alfred's Moving Castle
Genre: Fantasy/ Crossover
Pairings: USxfem!UK; and in this chapter Spainxfem!Romano. There will be more later, but it would spoil a lot if I gave it away! (none of the other pairings are major, but I will be posting each additional pairing chapter by chapter.)
Rating/Warnings: G, human names are used exclusively, genderbending
Summary: Based off the book version of Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynn Jones. Everything belongs to their respective owners. There are some odd familial relationships in here, but please just go with them :)
Notes: This is not the movie, but there are somethings I've bridged. I loved the book, and I felt it deserves more credit.
For the fem!Human names...
Anne Kirkland = England
Yan Kirkland = China
Lovina Vargas = Romano
Bridgette = Belgium
Mei Kirkland = Taiwan
Elizaveta Kirkland = Hungary
Katayusha Braginskaya = Ukraine
Chapter 1: In which Anne talks to hats
In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you seek your fortunes.
Anne Kirkland was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success. Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies’ hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mother died when Anne was two years old and her sister Elizaveta was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant, a pretty oriental called Yan. Yan shortly gave birth to the third sister, Mei. This ought to have made Anne and Elizaveta into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Elizaveta was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Yan treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor Mei in the least.
Mr. Kirkland was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town. Anne was the most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her sisters and grooming Mei to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Yan was always busy in the shop, Anne was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of screaming and hairpulling between those younger two. Elizaveta was by no means resigned to being the one who, next to Anne, was bound to be the least successful.
“It’s not fair!” Elizaveta would shout. “Why should Mei have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!”
To which Mei always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.
Then Anne would drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with her needle. (Not as deft, persay, with the kitchen, but we won’t get into that.) As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she made for Elizaveta the May Day before this story really starts, which Yan said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.
About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again. It was said the Witch had threatened the life of the King’s daughter and that the King had commanded his personal magician, Wizard Edelstein, to go into the waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard Edelstein had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had gotten himself killed by her
So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly sure that the Witch had moved out of the Waste again and was about to terrorize the country the way she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly at night. What made it all the scarier was that the castle did not stay in the same place. Sometimes it was a tall black smudge on the moors to the northwest, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the east, and sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last farm to the north. You could see it actually moving sometimes, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty gray gusts. For a while everyone was certain that the castle would come right down into the valley before long, and the Mayor talked of sending to the King for help.
But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Jones. Wizard Jones was bad enough. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Anne, Elizaveta, and Mei, along with all the other girls in Market Chipping, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them. They wondered what use Wizard Jones found for all the souls he collected.
They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Kirkland died suddenly just as Anne was old enough to leave school for good. It then appeared that Mr. Kirkland had been altogether too proud of his daughters. The school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Yan sat down in the parlor in the house next door to the shop and explained the situation.
“I'm afraid you’ll all have to leave school,” she said. “I’ve been doing sums back and front and sideways, and the only way to keep the business going and take care of the three of you is to see you all settled in a promising apprenticeship. It isn’t practical to have you all in the shop. I can’t afford it. So this is what I’ve decided. Elizaveta first - “
Elizaveta looked up, glowing with health and beauty which even sorrow and black clothes could not hide. “I want to go on learning,” she said.
“So you shall, aru,” said Yan. “I’ve arranged for you to be apprenticed to Cesari’s, the pastry cook in Market Square. They’ve a name for treating their learners like kings and queens, and you should be very happy there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs. Cesari’s a good customer and a good friend, and she’s agreed to squeeze you in as a favor.”
Elizaveta laughed in a way that showed she was not at all pleased. “Well, thank you,” she said. “Isn’t it lucky that I like cooking?”
Yan looked relieved. Elizaveta could be awkwardly strong minded at times. “Now Mei,” she said. “I know you’re full young to go out to work, so I’ve thought round for something that would give you a long, quiet apprenticeship and go on being useful to you whatever you decide to do after that. You know my old school friend Katayusha Braginskaya?”
Mei, who was slender and dark haired, fixed her big brown eyes on Yan almost as strong-mindedly as Elizaveta. “You mean the one who talks such a lot,” she said. “Isn’t she a witch?”
“Yes, with a lovely house and clients all over the Folding Valley,” Yan said eagerly. “She’s a good woman, Mei. She’ll teach you all she knows and very likely introduce you to grand people she knows in Kingsbury. You’ll be all set up in life when she’s done with you.”
“She’s a nice lady,” Mei conceded. “All right.”
Anne, listening, felt that Yan had worked everything out just as it should be. Elizaveta, as the second daughter, was never likely to come to much, so Yan had put her where she might meet a handsome young apprentice and live happily ever after. Mei, who was bound to strike out and make her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to help her. As for Anne herself, Anne had no doubt what was coming. It did not surprise her when Yan said, “Now, Anne, it seems only right and just that you should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So I’ve decided to take you on as apprentice myself, to give you a chance to learn the trade. How do you feel about that?”
Anne could hardly say that she simply felt resigned to the hat trade. She thanked Yan gratefully.
“So that’s settled then!” Yan said.
The next day Anne helped Mei pack her clothes in a box, and the morning after that they all saw her off on the carrier’s cart, looking small and upright and nervous. For the way up to Upper Folding where Mrs. Braginskaya lived, lay over the hills past Wizard Jones’s moving castle. Mei was understandably scared.
“She’ll be all right,” said Elizaveta. Elizaveta refused all help with the packing. When the carrier’s car was out of sight, Elizaveta crammed all her possessions into a pillow case and paid the neighbor’s bootboy sixpence to wheel it in a wheelbarrow to Cesari’s in Market Square. Elizaveta marched behind the wheelbarrow looking much more cheerful than Anne expected. Indeed, she had the air of shaking the dust of the hat shop off her feet.
The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Elizaveta saying she had put her things in the girls’ dormitory and Cesari’s seemed great fun. A week later the carrier brought back a letter from Mei to say that Mei had arrived safely and that Mrs. Braginskaya was “a great dear and uses honey with everything. She keeps bees.” That was all Anne heard of her sisters for quite a while, because she started her own apprenticeship the day Mei and Elizaveta left.
Anne of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a tiny child she had run in and out of the big workshed across the yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowers and fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who worked there. Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Bridgette, the only remaining shop attendant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove the cart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you made felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Yan could teach her, except perhaps the best way to get a customer to buy a hat.
“You lead up to the right hat, aru,” Yan said. “Show them the ones that won’t quite do first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on.”
In fact, Anne did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing in the workshed, and another day going round the clothier and the silk merchant’s with Yan, Yan set her to trimming hats. Anne sat in a small alcove at the back of the shop, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to velours, lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outsides. She was good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt isolated and a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much fun and, besides, they treated her as someone who was going to inherit the business someday. Bridgette treated her the same way. Bridgette’s only talk anyway was about the farmer she was going to marry the week after May Day. Anne rather envied Yan, who could bustle off to bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted.
The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Anne sat in her alcove and stitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables, and that Wizard Jones’s castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper… The voices always dropped low then they talked of Wizard Jones, but Anne gathered that he had caught a girl down the valley last month. “Bluebeard!” said the whispers, and then became voices again to say that Lovina Vargas was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That was one who would never attract even Wizard Jones, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Anne began to feel that Wizard Jones and the Witch of the Waste should get together.
“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match,” she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.
But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all about Elizaveta. Cesari’s, it seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying large quantities of cakes and demanding to be served by Elizaveta. She had had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the Mayor’s son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she was too young to make up her mind yet.
“I call that sensible of her,” Anne said to a bonnet she was pleating silk into.
Yan was pleased with this news. “I knew she’d be all right!” she said happily. It occurred to Anne that Yan was glad Elizaveta was no longer around.
“Elizaveta’s bad for custom,” she told the bonnet, pleating away at mushroom-colored silk. “She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look at Elizaveta and despair.”
Anne talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was no one else much to talk to. Yan was out bargaining, or trying to whip up custom, much of the day, and Bridgette was busy serving and telling everyone her wedding plans. Anne got into the habit of putting each hat on its stand as she finished it, where it sat looking almost like a head without a body, and pausing while she told the hat what the body under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.
“You have a mysterious allure,” she told one that was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide, creamy hat with roses under the brim she said, “You are going to have to marry money!” and to a caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather she said, “You are young as a spring leaf.” She told pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed with velvet that they were witty. She told the mushroom pleated bonnet, “You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall in love with you.” This was because she felt sorry for that particular bonnet. It looked so fussy and plain.
Lovina Vargas came into the shop the next day and bought it. Her hair did look a little strange, Anne thought, peeping out of her alcove, as if Lovina had wound it round a row of pokers. It seemed a pity she had chosen that bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats and bonnets around then. Maybe it was Yan’s sales talk or maybe it was spring coming on, but the hat trade was definitely picking up. Yan began to say, a little guiltily, “I think I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get Mei and Elizaveta placed out, aru. At this rate we might have managed.”
There was so much custom as April drew on toward May Day that Anne had to put on a demure gray dress and help in the shop too. But such was the demand that she was hard at trimming hats in between customers, and every evening she took them next door to the house, where she worked by lamplight far into the night in order to have hats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green hats like the one the Mayor’s wife had were much called for, and so were pink bonnets. Then, the week before May Day, someone came in and asked for one with mushroom pleats like the one Lovina Vargas had been wearing when she ran off with the Count Carriedo.
That night, as she sewed, Anne admitted to herself that her life was rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake. The staid gray dress did not suit Anne, particularly when her green eyes were red-rimmed with sewing, and since her hair was a dirty blonde color, neither did autumn orange nor black. They also served to emphasize her larger than normal set of eyebrows, which she wished would go away. And the one with mushroom pleats simply made her look dreary. “Like an old maid!” said Anne. Not that she wanted to race off with counts like Lovina Vargas, or even fancied half the town offering her marriage, like Elizaveta. But she wanted to do something - she was not sure what - that had a bit more interest to it than simply trimming hats. She thought she would find time next day to go and talk to Elizaveta.
But she did not go. Either she could not find the time, or she could not find the energy, or it seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she remembered that on her own she was in danger from Wizard Jones - anyway, every day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister. It was very odd. Anne had always thought she was nearly as strong-minded as Elizaveta. Now she was finding that there were some things she could only do when there were no excuses left. “This is absurd!” Anne said. “Market Square is only two streets away. If I run - “ And she swore to herself she would go round to Cesari’s when the hat shop was closed for May Day.
Meanwhile a new piece of gossip came into the shop. The King had quarreled with his own brother, Prince Matthias, it was said, and the Prince had gone into exile. Nobody knew the reason for the quarrel, but the Prince had actually come through Market Chipping in disguise a couple of months back, and nobody had known. Count Carriedo had been sent by the King to look for the Prince when he happened to meet Lovina Vargas instead. Anne listened and felt sad. Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to someone else. Still, it would be nice to see Elizaveta.
May Day came. Merrymaking filled the streets from dawn onward. Yan went out early, but Anne had a couple of hats to finish first. Anne sang as she worked. After all, Elizaveta was working too. Cesari’s was open till midnight on the holidays. “I shall buy one of their cream cakes,” Anne decided. “I haven’t had one for ages.” She watched people crowding past the window in all kinds of bright clothes, people selling souvenirs, people walking on stilts, and felt really excited.
But when she at last put a gray shawl over her gray dress, straightened her glasses, and went out into the street, Anne did not feel excited. She felt overwhelmed. There were too many people rushing past, laughing and shouting, far too much noise and jostling. Anne felt as if the past months of sitting and sewing had turned her into an old woman or a semi-invalid. She gathered her shawl round her and crept along close to the houses, trying to avoid being trodden on by people’s best shoes or being jabbed by elbows in trailing silk sleeves. When there came a sudden volley of bangs from overhead somewhere, Anne thought she was going to faint. She looked up and saw Wizard Jones’s castles right down on the hillside above the town, so near it seemed to be sitting on the chimneys. Blue flames were shooting out of all four of the castle’s turrets, bringing balls of blue fire with them that exploded high in the sky, quite horrendously. Wizard Jones seemed to be offended by May Day. Or maybe he was trying to join in, in his own fashion. Anne was too terrified to care. She would have gone home, except that she was halfway to Cesari’s by then. So she ran.
“What made me think I wanted life to be interesting?” she asked as she ran. “I’d be far too scared. It comes of being the eldest of three.”
When she reached Market Square, it was worse, if possible. Most of the inns were in the Square. Crowds of young men swaggered beerily to and fro, trailing cloaks and long sleeves and stamping buckled boots they would never have dreamed of wearing on a working day. The girls strolled in fine pairs, ready to be accosted. It was perfectly normal for May Day, but Anne was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Anne and decided to accost her as well, Anne shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide.
The young man looked at her in surprise. “It’s all right, you little gray mouse,” he said, laughing boomingly in a rather pitying sort of way. “I only wanted to buy you a drink. Don’t look so scared.”
The pitying look made Anne utterly ashamed. He was such a dashing specimen too, with a boyish, handsome face - not quite old, but in his twenties - and elaborate blonde hair. His sleeves trailed longer than any in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. “Oh, no thank you, if you please, sir,” Anne stammered. “I - I’m on my way to see my sister.”
“Then by all means do so,” laughed this advanced young man. “Who am I to keep a pretty lady from her sister? Would you like me to go with you, since you seem so scared?”
He meant it kindly, which made Anne more ashamed than ever. “No. No thank you, sir!” she gasped and flew away past him. He wore cologne too. The smell of wheat and sunshine followed her as she ran. What a courtly person! Anne thought, as she pushed her way between the little tables outside Cesari’s.
The tables were packed. Inside was packed and as noisy as the Square. Anne located Elizaveta among the line of assistants at the counter because of the group of evident farmers’ sons leaning their elbows on it to shout remarks to her. Elizaveta, prettier than ever and perhaps a little thinner, was putting cakes into bags as fast as she could go, giving each bag a deft little twist and looking back under her own elbow with a smile and an answer for each bag she twisted. There was a great deal of laughter. Anne had to fight her way through to the counter.
Elizaveta saw her. She looked shaken for a moment. Then her eyes and her smile widened and she shouted, “Anne!”
“Can I talk to you?” Anne yelled. “Somewhere,” she shouted, a little helplessly, as a large, well-dressed elbow jostled her back from the counter.
“Just a moment!” Elizaveta screamed back. She turned to the girl next to her and whispered. The girl nodded, grinned, and came to take Elizaveta’s place.
“You’ll have to have me instead,” she said to the crowd. “Who’s next?”
“But I want to talk to you, Elizaveta!” one of the farmers’ sons yelled.
“Talk to Lily,” Elizaveta said. “I want to talk to my sister.” Nobody really seemed to mind. They jostled Anne along to the end of the counter, where Elizaveta held up a flap and beckoned, and told her not to keep Elizaveta all day. When Anne had edged through the flap, Elizaveta seized her wrist and dragged her into the back of the shop, to a room surrounded by rack upon wooden rack, each one filled with rows of cakes. Elizaveta pulled forward two stools. “Sit down,” she said. She looked in the nearest rack, in an absentminded way, and handed Anne a cream cake out of it. “You may need this,” she said.
Anne sank onto the stool, breathing the rich smell of cake and feeling a little tearful. “Oh, Elizaveta!” she said. “I am so glad to see you!”
“Yes, and I’m glad you’re sitting down,” said Elizaveta. “You see, I’m not Elizaveta. I’m Mei.”
AN: So here it is, the first chapter! We get our first glimpse of you-know-who (and not that one!), and we see Anne in her native environment. I really enjoyed adapting this! Please comment!
Genre: Fantasy/ Crossover
Pairings: USxfem!UK; and in this chapter Spainxfem!Romano. There will be more later, but it would spoil a lot if I gave it away! (none of the other pairings are major, but I will be posting each additional pairing chapter by chapter.)
Rating/Warnings: G, human names are used exclusively, genderbending
Summary: Based off the book version of Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynn Jones. Everything belongs to their respective owners. There are some odd familial relationships in here, but please just go with them :)
Notes: This is not the movie, but there are somethings I've bridged. I loved the book, and I felt it deserves more credit.
For the fem!Human names...
Anne Kirkland = England
Yan Kirkland = China
Lovina Vargas = Romano
Bridgette = Belgium
Mei Kirkland = Taiwan
Elizaveta Kirkland = Hungary
Katayusha Braginskaya = Ukraine
Chapter 1: In which Anne talks to hats
In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you seek your fortunes.
Anne Kirkland was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success. Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies’ hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mother died when Anne was two years old and her sister Elizaveta was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant, a pretty oriental called Yan. Yan shortly gave birth to the third sister, Mei. This ought to have made Anne and Elizaveta into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Elizaveta was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Yan treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor Mei in the least.
Mr. Kirkland was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town. Anne was the most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her sisters and grooming Mei to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Yan was always busy in the shop, Anne was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of screaming and hairpulling between those younger two. Elizaveta was by no means resigned to being the one who, next to Anne, was bound to be the least successful.
“It’s not fair!” Elizaveta would shout. “Why should Mei have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!”
To which Mei always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.
Then Anne would drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with her needle. (Not as deft, persay, with the kitchen, but we won’t get into that.) As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she made for Elizaveta the May Day before this story really starts, which Yan said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.
About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again. It was said the Witch had threatened the life of the King’s daughter and that the King had commanded his personal magician, Wizard Edelstein, to go into the waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard Edelstein had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had gotten himself killed by her
So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly sure that the Witch had moved out of the Waste again and was about to terrorize the country the way she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly at night. What made it all the scarier was that the castle did not stay in the same place. Sometimes it was a tall black smudge on the moors to the northwest, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the east, and sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last farm to the north. You could see it actually moving sometimes, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty gray gusts. For a while everyone was certain that the castle would come right down into the valley before long, and the Mayor talked of sending to the King for help.
But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Jones. Wizard Jones was bad enough. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Anne, Elizaveta, and Mei, along with all the other girls in Market Chipping, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them. They wondered what use Wizard Jones found for all the souls he collected.
They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Kirkland died suddenly just as Anne was old enough to leave school for good. It then appeared that Mr. Kirkland had been altogether too proud of his daughters. The school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Yan sat down in the parlor in the house next door to the shop and explained the situation.
“I'm afraid you’ll all have to leave school,” she said. “I’ve been doing sums back and front and sideways, and the only way to keep the business going and take care of the three of you is to see you all settled in a promising apprenticeship. It isn’t practical to have you all in the shop. I can’t afford it. So this is what I’ve decided. Elizaveta first - “
Elizaveta looked up, glowing with health and beauty which even sorrow and black clothes could not hide. “I want to go on learning,” she said.
“So you shall, aru,” said Yan. “I’ve arranged for you to be apprenticed to Cesari’s, the pastry cook in Market Square. They’ve a name for treating their learners like kings and queens, and you should be very happy there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs. Cesari’s a good customer and a good friend, and she’s agreed to squeeze you in as a favor.”
Elizaveta laughed in a way that showed she was not at all pleased. “Well, thank you,” she said. “Isn’t it lucky that I like cooking?”
Yan looked relieved. Elizaveta could be awkwardly strong minded at times. “Now Mei,” she said. “I know you’re full young to go out to work, so I’ve thought round for something that would give you a long, quiet apprenticeship and go on being useful to you whatever you decide to do after that. You know my old school friend Katayusha Braginskaya?”
Mei, who was slender and dark haired, fixed her big brown eyes on Yan almost as strong-mindedly as Elizaveta. “You mean the one who talks such a lot,” she said. “Isn’t she a witch?”
“Yes, with a lovely house and clients all over the Folding Valley,” Yan said eagerly. “She’s a good woman, Mei. She’ll teach you all she knows and very likely introduce you to grand people she knows in Kingsbury. You’ll be all set up in life when she’s done with you.”
“She’s a nice lady,” Mei conceded. “All right.”
Anne, listening, felt that Yan had worked everything out just as it should be. Elizaveta, as the second daughter, was never likely to come to much, so Yan had put her where she might meet a handsome young apprentice and live happily ever after. Mei, who was bound to strike out and make her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to help her. As for Anne herself, Anne had no doubt what was coming. It did not surprise her when Yan said, “Now, Anne, it seems only right and just that you should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So I’ve decided to take you on as apprentice myself, to give you a chance to learn the trade. How do you feel about that?”
Anne could hardly say that she simply felt resigned to the hat trade. She thanked Yan gratefully.
“So that’s settled then!” Yan said.
The next day Anne helped Mei pack her clothes in a box, and the morning after that they all saw her off on the carrier’s cart, looking small and upright and nervous. For the way up to Upper Folding where Mrs. Braginskaya lived, lay over the hills past Wizard Jones’s moving castle. Mei was understandably scared.
“She’ll be all right,” said Elizaveta. Elizaveta refused all help with the packing. When the carrier’s car was out of sight, Elizaveta crammed all her possessions into a pillow case and paid the neighbor’s bootboy sixpence to wheel it in a wheelbarrow to Cesari’s in Market Square. Elizaveta marched behind the wheelbarrow looking much more cheerful than Anne expected. Indeed, she had the air of shaking the dust of the hat shop off her feet.
The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Elizaveta saying she had put her things in the girls’ dormitory and Cesari’s seemed great fun. A week later the carrier brought back a letter from Mei to say that Mei had arrived safely and that Mrs. Braginskaya was “a great dear and uses honey with everything. She keeps bees.” That was all Anne heard of her sisters for quite a while, because she started her own apprenticeship the day Mei and Elizaveta left.
Anne of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a tiny child she had run in and out of the big workshed across the yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowers and fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who worked there. Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Bridgette, the only remaining shop attendant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove the cart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you made felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Yan could teach her, except perhaps the best way to get a customer to buy a hat.
“You lead up to the right hat, aru,” Yan said. “Show them the ones that won’t quite do first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on.”
In fact, Anne did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing in the workshed, and another day going round the clothier and the silk merchant’s with Yan, Yan set her to trimming hats. Anne sat in a small alcove at the back of the shop, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to velours, lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outsides. She was good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt isolated and a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much fun and, besides, they treated her as someone who was going to inherit the business someday. Bridgette treated her the same way. Bridgette’s only talk anyway was about the farmer she was going to marry the week after May Day. Anne rather envied Yan, who could bustle off to bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted.
The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Anne sat in her alcove and stitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables, and that Wizard Jones’s castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper… The voices always dropped low then they talked of Wizard Jones, but Anne gathered that he had caught a girl down the valley last month. “Bluebeard!” said the whispers, and then became voices again to say that Lovina Vargas was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That was one who would never attract even Wizard Jones, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Anne began to feel that Wizard Jones and the Witch of the Waste should get together.
“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match,” she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.
But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all about Elizaveta. Cesari’s, it seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying large quantities of cakes and demanding to be served by Elizaveta. She had had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the Mayor’s son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she was too young to make up her mind yet.
“I call that sensible of her,” Anne said to a bonnet she was pleating silk into.
Yan was pleased with this news. “I knew she’d be all right!” she said happily. It occurred to Anne that Yan was glad Elizaveta was no longer around.
“Elizaveta’s bad for custom,” she told the bonnet, pleating away at mushroom-colored silk. “She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look at Elizaveta and despair.”
Anne talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was no one else much to talk to. Yan was out bargaining, or trying to whip up custom, much of the day, and Bridgette was busy serving and telling everyone her wedding plans. Anne got into the habit of putting each hat on its stand as she finished it, where it sat looking almost like a head without a body, and pausing while she told the hat what the body under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.
“You have a mysterious allure,” she told one that was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide, creamy hat with roses under the brim she said, “You are going to have to marry money!” and to a caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather she said, “You are young as a spring leaf.” She told pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed with velvet that they were witty. She told the mushroom pleated bonnet, “You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall in love with you.” This was because she felt sorry for that particular bonnet. It looked so fussy and plain.
Lovina Vargas came into the shop the next day and bought it. Her hair did look a little strange, Anne thought, peeping out of her alcove, as if Lovina had wound it round a row of pokers. It seemed a pity she had chosen that bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats and bonnets around then. Maybe it was Yan’s sales talk or maybe it was spring coming on, but the hat trade was definitely picking up. Yan began to say, a little guiltily, “I think I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get Mei and Elizaveta placed out, aru. At this rate we might have managed.”
There was so much custom as April drew on toward May Day that Anne had to put on a demure gray dress and help in the shop too. But such was the demand that she was hard at trimming hats in between customers, and every evening she took them next door to the house, where she worked by lamplight far into the night in order to have hats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green hats like the one the Mayor’s wife had were much called for, and so were pink bonnets. Then, the week before May Day, someone came in and asked for one with mushroom pleats like the one Lovina Vargas had been wearing when she ran off with the Count Carriedo.
That night, as she sewed, Anne admitted to herself that her life was rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake. The staid gray dress did not suit Anne, particularly when her green eyes were red-rimmed with sewing, and since her hair was a dirty blonde color, neither did autumn orange nor black. They also served to emphasize her larger than normal set of eyebrows, which she wished would go away. And the one with mushroom pleats simply made her look dreary. “Like an old maid!” said Anne. Not that she wanted to race off with counts like Lovina Vargas, or even fancied half the town offering her marriage, like Elizaveta. But she wanted to do something - she was not sure what - that had a bit more interest to it than simply trimming hats. She thought she would find time next day to go and talk to Elizaveta.
But she did not go. Either she could not find the time, or she could not find the energy, or it seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she remembered that on her own she was in danger from Wizard Jones - anyway, every day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister. It was very odd. Anne had always thought she was nearly as strong-minded as Elizaveta. Now she was finding that there were some things she could only do when there were no excuses left. “This is absurd!” Anne said. “Market Square is only two streets away. If I run - “ And she swore to herself she would go round to Cesari’s when the hat shop was closed for May Day.
Meanwhile a new piece of gossip came into the shop. The King had quarreled with his own brother, Prince Matthias, it was said, and the Prince had gone into exile. Nobody knew the reason for the quarrel, but the Prince had actually come through Market Chipping in disguise a couple of months back, and nobody had known. Count Carriedo had been sent by the King to look for the Prince when he happened to meet Lovina Vargas instead. Anne listened and felt sad. Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to someone else. Still, it would be nice to see Elizaveta.
May Day came. Merrymaking filled the streets from dawn onward. Yan went out early, but Anne had a couple of hats to finish first. Anne sang as she worked. After all, Elizaveta was working too. Cesari’s was open till midnight on the holidays. “I shall buy one of their cream cakes,” Anne decided. “I haven’t had one for ages.” She watched people crowding past the window in all kinds of bright clothes, people selling souvenirs, people walking on stilts, and felt really excited.
But when she at last put a gray shawl over her gray dress, straightened her glasses, and went out into the street, Anne did not feel excited. She felt overwhelmed. There were too many people rushing past, laughing and shouting, far too much noise and jostling. Anne felt as if the past months of sitting and sewing had turned her into an old woman or a semi-invalid. She gathered her shawl round her and crept along close to the houses, trying to avoid being trodden on by people’s best shoes or being jabbed by elbows in trailing silk sleeves. When there came a sudden volley of bangs from overhead somewhere, Anne thought she was going to faint. She looked up and saw Wizard Jones’s castles right down on the hillside above the town, so near it seemed to be sitting on the chimneys. Blue flames were shooting out of all four of the castle’s turrets, bringing balls of blue fire with them that exploded high in the sky, quite horrendously. Wizard Jones seemed to be offended by May Day. Or maybe he was trying to join in, in his own fashion. Anne was too terrified to care. She would have gone home, except that she was halfway to Cesari’s by then. So she ran.
“What made me think I wanted life to be interesting?” she asked as she ran. “I’d be far too scared. It comes of being the eldest of three.”
When she reached Market Square, it was worse, if possible. Most of the inns were in the Square. Crowds of young men swaggered beerily to and fro, trailing cloaks and long sleeves and stamping buckled boots they would never have dreamed of wearing on a working day. The girls strolled in fine pairs, ready to be accosted. It was perfectly normal for May Day, but Anne was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Anne and decided to accost her as well, Anne shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide.
The young man looked at her in surprise. “It’s all right, you little gray mouse,” he said, laughing boomingly in a rather pitying sort of way. “I only wanted to buy you a drink. Don’t look so scared.”
The pitying look made Anne utterly ashamed. He was such a dashing specimen too, with a boyish, handsome face - not quite old, but in his twenties - and elaborate blonde hair. His sleeves trailed longer than any in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. “Oh, no thank you, if you please, sir,” Anne stammered. “I - I’m on my way to see my sister.”
“Then by all means do so,” laughed this advanced young man. “Who am I to keep a pretty lady from her sister? Would you like me to go with you, since you seem so scared?”
He meant it kindly, which made Anne more ashamed than ever. “No. No thank you, sir!” she gasped and flew away past him. He wore cologne too. The smell of wheat and sunshine followed her as she ran. What a courtly person! Anne thought, as she pushed her way between the little tables outside Cesari’s.
The tables were packed. Inside was packed and as noisy as the Square. Anne located Elizaveta among the line of assistants at the counter because of the group of evident farmers’ sons leaning their elbows on it to shout remarks to her. Elizaveta, prettier than ever and perhaps a little thinner, was putting cakes into bags as fast as she could go, giving each bag a deft little twist and looking back under her own elbow with a smile and an answer for each bag she twisted. There was a great deal of laughter. Anne had to fight her way through to the counter.
Elizaveta saw her. She looked shaken for a moment. Then her eyes and her smile widened and she shouted, “Anne!”
“Can I talk to you?” Anne yelled. “Somewhere,” she shouted, a little helplessly, as a large, well-dressed elbow jostled her back from the counter.
“Just a moment!” Elizaveta screamed back. She turned to the girl next to her and whispered. The girl nodded, grinned, and came to take Elizaveta’s place.
“You’ll have to have me instead,” she said to the crowd. “Who’s next?”
“But I want to talk to you, Elizaveta!” one of the farmers’ sons yelled.
“Talk to Lily,” Elizaveta said. “I want to talk to my sister.” Nobody really seemed to mind. They jostled Anne along to the end of the counter, where Elizaveta held up a flap and beckoned, and told her not to keep Elizaveta all day. When Anne had edged through the flap, Elizaveta seized her wrist and dragged her into the back of the shop, to a room surrounded by rack upon wooden rack, each one filled with rows of cakes. Elizaveta pulled forward two stools. “Sit down,” she said. She looked in the nearest rack, in an absentminded way, and handed Anne a cream cake out of it. “You may need this,” she said.
Anne sank onto the stool, breathing the rich smell of cake and feeling a little tearful. “Oh, Elizaveta!” she said. “I am so glad to see you!”
“Yes, and I’m glad you’re sitting down,” said Elizaveta. “You see, I’m not Elizaveta. I’m Mei.”
AN: So here it is, the first chapter! We get our first glimpse of you-know-who (and not that one!), and we see Anne in her native environment. I really enjoyed adapting this! Please comment!