Headscratchers / Castle in the Air

• When the plot of Castle in the Air begins, how long exactly has it been since the moving castle was stolen? When Sophie talks about what happened in Chapter 16, it sounds as if it happened quite a while ago. But Howl as the genie makes his first appearance in the story and the genie bottle looks new and unopened, and even the genie acts as if it's the first time the bottle's been opened. Could the genie really have been with Hasruel for that long without being used at all?
  • Makes sense to me: Hasruel didn't need a genie's wishes himself, after all. Maybe he just tucked the bottle away somewhere tidy until he thought of a use for it as part of the lesson he decided to teach Abdullah.
• Why was the genie able to transport Jamaal to the transformed moving castle but not detect Flower-in-the-Night and transport Aldullah to her location though they were both in the same place?

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