Episode 4: “The Magic Doll Shop’s Magic”
“Now then, I’ll go make the magic doll, so please go take a bath in the meantime, Claudia-sama.”
“…A bath?”
“Christa-sama is looking forward to seeing her usual mother, after all.”
At Fiine’s words, Claudia nodded and rose to her feet. Heinz quickly moved to support her by the shoulder.
“Yuria, please stay with our guests. I’ll go make the magic doll.”
“Got it.”
Parting ways with a nodding Yuria, Fiine headed for the hill behind the estate. Partway up the slope, she used a detection spell to confirm no one else was nearby.
She drew a wand from inside her coat — a slender wand carved from jade wood, one she’d used since before she’d even entered the magic academy. A golden amber stone was set into its tip.
She traced a magic circle in the air with the wand. Amber-colored light shot from the wand’s tip, drawing a glowing circle against the sky.
The wind blew, stirring Fiine’s bangs. Her right eye, normally hidden, was briefly exposed — golden in color.
“I’m sorry, Christa.”
She murmured the apology, then dropped a pendant into the center of the rising earth. It was a keepsake, one Christa had apparently received on her third birthday.
The soil began curling itself around the pendant, folding inward. Once it formed a perfect sphere, the sphere let out light in seven colors from within.
Making a magic doll required not a single elemental spell, but magic combining multiple elements at once — which was why the light came out mixed, in seven colors.
A flower of light, seven petals blooming around a sphere of earth at its center.
Only a human being would ever call something like this beautiful.
The birds and beasts nearby all began crying out at once, as if protesting a display of power that belonged only to a god.
She traced the magic circle one final time. The petals scattered in a burst of blinding light, and the moment the glow faded, a young girl stood in their place.
(Yeah — there’s no way I could ever let a client see this part.)
A fake shaped like a human. A human being made of dirt.
She wouldn’t have any right to complain if someone called it an insult to god, to life itself.
And yet Fiine knew — this doll really could save people.
“It’s nice to meet you, Christa-sama. I’m Fiine Fellner.”
“…Who are you? Where’s Mama?”
“She’s waiting for you at the manor, looking forward to seeing you. Let’s go together.”
She held out her hand, and Christa gently placed her own on top of it. The warmth of her palm wasn’t because she was alive — it came from Fiine’s own heat magic.
(People can’t bring themselves to think of a cold doll as human.)
Through endless trial and error, Fiine had learned to make magic dolls as close to human as it was possible to get. Which meant no one understood better than she did just how fake they really were.
“I want to see Mama right away!”
Swinging Fiine’s hand back and forth, Christa set off with big, eager strides. But there was something Fiine needed to tell her before she saw Claudia.
“Christa-sama. You’ll only be able to see your mother for one day.”
“…Because I died?”
“Yes.”
“I see. So I died from being sick…”
Magic dolls didn’t normally carry memories of their own cause of death. But in Christa’s case, she had memories of being bedridden with illness — easy enough to piece together the rest.
After a brief silence, Christa broke into a wide smile.
“Then I have to go see Mama right away!”
A magic doll doesn’t remember how it died. It only understands that it has died.
The ease with which she accepted her own death was only possible because she was fake — because Fiine had built her that way.
No matter how closely a magic doll resembled a human, no matter how convincingly it carried memories from a past life, it was still fake. Worse, it was a doll shaped conveniently to Fiine’s own design.
Even if its speech and thought patterns were identical to the real thing, it still wasn’t truly her.
(I’m sorry, God.)
Someday she might end up in hell for this. Even so, this magic was something Fiine needed.
◆
“Mama—!!”
Unable to wait inside, Claudia was standing at the estate’s front gate. Bathed, hair done, freshly changed — she looked like an entirely different person.
More than anything, the sight of her crying at the sight of Christa was a complete reversal from the shell of a woman she’d been just moments before.
“Christa…!!”
Claudia ran on legs that looked ready to give out, and threw her arms around Christa with full force. Watching her crying mother, Christa tilted her head, puzzled.
“Mama, what’s wrong? Does something hurt?”
“No, Christa. I just wanted to see you, so badly, for so long…”
“Me too! Oh — Papa, come here too!”
Bouncing on her feet, Christa called out to Heinz, who had been standing frozen in place. He answered with a quick “ah,” and hurried over to her side.
In the brief moment their eyes met, he looked at Fiine the way one might look at a monster.
“Good work, Fiine.”
Yuria gave her a light pat on the right shoulder.
“…Thanks, Yuria. But this is really just the start of the real work.”
Making the magic doll used a fair amount of magic power, but operating it demanded even more.
On top of that, unlike ordinary offensive magic, it required constant, delicate control the entire time.
Even the slightest slip in that control could end up traumatizing the client instead of helping them. Because of that, Fiine made a point of keeping some distance from the doll whenever she could.
“Mama, Papa. I want to play in the garden. Can I?”
Christa laughed innocently and tugged both her parents by the hand. Heinz glanced over at Fiine as if seeking permission; she nodded back, and the group made their way to the garden.