Диана Джонс - Wizard's Castle - Omnibus

“You are a marvel!” said Abdullah.

“Then so are you,” she said, and went back to her map.

They returned to Ingary in due time with an extra packhorse loaded with the boxes of sweets the princesses had promised Valeria. There were chocolates and candied oranges and coconut ices and honeyed nuts, but the most wonderful of all were the sweets from the tiny princess—layer upon layer of paper-thin candy that the tiny princess called Summer Leaves. These came in a box so beautiful that Valeria used it for jewelry when she grew older. Strangely enough, she had almost given up screaming. The King could not understand it, but as Valeria explained to Sophie, when thirty people all tell you you’ve got to scream, it rather puts you off the whole idea.

Sophie and Howl were living—somewhat quarrelsomely, it must be confessed, although they were said to be happiest that way—in the moving castle again. One of its aspects was a fine mansion in the Chipping Valley. When Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night returned, the King gave them land in the Chipping Valley, too, and permission to build a palace there. The house they had built was quite modest—it even had a thatched roof—but their gardens soon became one of the wonders of the land. It was said that Abdullah had help in their design from at least one of the Royal Wizards, for how else could even an Ambassador have a bluebell wood that grew bluebells all the year around?