Extra Story: A Father and Daughter’s Magical Tool Invention Diaries—the Dryer

My little girl’s the cutest in the whole wide world.

Carlo’s six-year-old daughter, Dahlia, was a gorgeous little angel with vivid red hair and the gentlest green eyes. Her face was a little mature for her age, but her expressions were so animated that one could never tire of looking at her. She may have been a tiny bit clumsy, but she made up for it with her proficiency in reading and writing.

Dahlia had been one and a half when she’d spoken her first word: “fada” (father). Her second word was “misofee” (Miss Sofia). Sofia was the elderly maid who helped Carlo with housework and caring for his young daughter. The first time Dahlia had called out to him, he’d grinned from ear to ear as he replied, but he had been so overcome with happiness that he’d sunk to his knees and been unable to move for several minutes.

It soon became clear that Dahlia had inherited her father’s passion for toolmaking. She pointed out the “madic toows” (magical tools) in the workshop. The first thing she ever asked for was a “madic kistal” (magic crystal). Nearly all of her earliest words had something to do with magical toolmaking. When she was four years old, she would cling to Carlo’s side without getting in the way and watch him as he worked. Every time he enchanted something, she would stare in astonishment with little murmurs of “wow,” and “’majing” (amazing). Carlo worked twice, no, three times as hard whenever Dahlia was by his side.

Soon, she wanted more to do besides merely watching, so Carlo set aside a corner of the workshop especially for her. He prepared some spent magic crystals and harmless materials for her to play with, along with some simple books on magical tools and colorfully illustrated bestiaries. Dahlia was delighted, amusing herself for hours on end in her special corner. Of course, she did all the things an ordinary child did too, happy to run around and play with the neighborhood kids whenever they invited her. She seemed to be best friends with a girl named Irma. Irma lived nearby and was three years older than Dahlia. They could often be found playing together with building blocks and marbles.

On her fifth birthday, Dahlia announced, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a magical toolmaker like father!”

Carlo was overjoyed, and he immediately threw his full support behind her. His fellow toolmakers were aghast that he’d begun teaching the craft to his five-year-old daughter.

“Have you gone loopy? She’s five!”

“You spoil that child rotten!”

In fact, Carlo found that Dahlia absorbed the basics of toolmaking like a sponge. Of course, he held off on things like input and output calculations and fortifying techniques. Those would probably need to wait until she’d graduated from elementary school. Children entered elementary school at age eight; until then, he planned to teach her reading, writing, and simple mathematics, taking his time readying her for school.

However, his little daughter exceeded all his expectations. Her magical toolmaking books were soon stuffed with bookmarks. Before long, she came to him pleading to see even bigger books. He gave her all the volumes on magical toolmaking he had, along with more bestiaries and catalogs of crafting materials. He also permitted her to handle some magic crystals with a little power left in them, taking the opportunity to begin teaching her how to control magic. He made absolutely sure she understood how to use any tools she needed safely and that she would only do so when he was in the workshop beside her. Seeing how delighted she was, Carlo soon let his guard down.

“Eeek!”

One day, when Carlo was out in the garden, he heard a scream that made his blood run cold.

“Dahlia!”

Carlo burst into the workshop to find white smoke rising and a sizable scorch mark running up at least a third of the wall near the entrance. Thankfully, the only things actually on fire were a few pieces of paper, which Carlo quickly extinguished with a water crystal.

“Dahlia, these crystals aren’t toys! What if you’d gotten burned? What were you thinking?!” Carlo roared at her. A few locks of her red hair had been singed. “I told you never to use magic crystals unless I was with you!”

Dahlia listened meekly as her father launched into a harsh and thorough lecture on the danger of magic crystals. Eventually, though, it became too much for the little girl. Carlo’s eyes widened as he saw tears spill from Dahlia’s emerald-green eyes.

“I’m...s-sorry...”

“I know, I know. Look, why did you do this?”

“I wanted to...m-make something in secret.”

“What for?”

“I-It was a surprise. I thought...you’d be happy...”

As his daughter tried her best to explain herself through sniffles and sobs, he noticed an L-shaped metal tube on the floor at her feet.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a dryer... It was...supposed to blow warm air.”

Carlo saw what appeared to be a blueprint for a magical tool made with air and fire crystals, both kinds of magic coming out through an L-shaped tube. There wasn’t much wrong with the construction, but without any adjustment, the crystals would have expressed almost their full power.

“I didn’t think...it would come out so hard.”

“Yeah, I haven’t taught you the proper calculations or how to reduce crystals’ power yet.”

“I’m really sorry...” Dahlia apologized again, doing her best to hold back her tears.

It pained Carlo to see her eyes so reddened.

“What did you want to do with this ‘dryer,’ Dahlia?”

“I wanted to dry my hair with it... Long hair’s hard to dry properly.”

Dahlia may still have been small, but she was a woman nonetheless. She was reaching the age when she’d begun to care more about her hairstyle. Carlo felt ashamed that he hadn’t even considered this before now.

“I understand. Let’s see if we can make it better, eh?”

She’s only six; shouldn’t be that much of a challenge, Carlo thought, but he soon found himself completely absorbed in the project.

“Whoa!”

Carlo staggered backward as he tried out the “dryer” in the garden. A light press of the switch was enough to blast out a long, fierce tongue of flame. This kind of power would be an intermediate spell for a mage. The lawn in front of Carlo was scorched black in an instant.

“It turned into a flamethrower,” muttered Dahlia as she watched from behind, looking gloomy.

She often came up with names like that on the spot—“dryer,” “flamethrower,” and so on. It was as if she somehow already knew what these things were. Carlo was sure she had a clear idea in her head of the object she’d wanted to create.

“N-No, no, you’ve got the right idea!” he quickly reassured her.

Her tearstained face lit up with a smile.

“I’ll just add some magic circuits to reduce the power,” he continued, “and we should have it blowing nice, warm air in no time.”

“Can you make it blow cold air and warm air?”

“Sure, no problem. You just adjust the fire crystal’s circuits like this.”

“That’s amazing, father! I want to make the air blow hard and gentle too. Can you do that?”

“’Course I can!”

Carlo incorporated all of these functions, just as Dahlia wanted. During testing, he noticed that the metal pipe was showing signs of degrading, likely due to being exposed to high temperatures. He decided to remake the object in a different metal. Dahlia was very particular about the shape. They spent a long time perfecting it until, at last, this “dryer,” like a curiously shaped fan heater, was complete.

Before they knew it, dawn was breaking. Carlo and Dahlia went to the bathroom and wet their hair—it was the moment of truth. As it turned out, the dryer performed perfectly. Father and daughter toasted their success—Carlo with red wine, Dahlia with grape juice. Their forgotten dinner became breakfast instead, and they ate with relish. Just as they finished, the maid Sofia arrived at the tower, back from her day off.

“Welcome back, Miss Sofia! We made a dryer!” Dahlia exclaimed with a grin as she hugged the maid, only to slump to the floor in a heap a moment later.

“Miss Dahlia?!”

Carlo smiled wryly as he scooped his daughter into his arms. She was fast asleep, just like a magic crystal that had exhausted its power.

“Ah, we were up all night, you see. No wonder she’s sleepy.”

“All night?” The maid stiffened, turning a frigid stare upon Carlo. “You kept this little girl up all night? Sir, what exactly is the meaning of this?!”

“Well, we were crafting a new magical tool together...”

“That is no excuse whatsoever. Miss Dahlia is a child; she ought to be in bed no later than eight o’clock. Goodness knows I’ve reminded you often enough. Please tell me you at least gave her a bath yesterday.”

“Sorry, not yet.”

As she slipped into dreamland, Dahlia could faintly hear Sofia giving her father a thorough tongue-lashing. It reminded her of being scolded by her mother in her previous life. As she lay huddled in her father’s arms, her brows drew together in a slightly troubled expression. Carlo noticed immediately.

“Let me put Dahlia to bed first, would you? Then we’ll talk about this properly.”

“Yes, certainly. Once you’ve done that, we shall indeed talk. At length.”

The old woman’s smile sent a shiver up his spine. She saw to it that he would never make the same mistake twice.

From then on, Dahlia made steady—in fact, rapid—progress in her magical toolmaking. She was always talking cheerfully of ideas that, in all honesty, seemed impossible to achieve with the magical tools Carlo knew.

“I bet you could make it for me one day, father!” she’d say, beaming up at him. “When I’m older, let’s make it together!”

No matter what she dreamed up, she always had total faith that he’d find a way to create it. Who was he to tell her it couldn’t be done? How could he say that it was too difficult or that he didn’t know how? It only drove Carlo to work, experiment, and study his craft harder than ever before.

“Daughters are bound to marry and fly from the nest one day,” the scrivener, Dominic, said to him more than once. “Why don’t you consider remarrying?”

Carlo knew it made sense, but he simply had no desire to get married again. In fact, he found it difficult to imagine Dahlia marrying either. If she really had to, perhaps they could at least make it to someone in the neighborhood so she’d always be close by. You never know, one day she might leave him and come back home with her kids in tow, and... Wait, no, that’s not how it’s s’posed to go. Carlo found himself picturing his grandchildren—their angelic faces, their bright-red hair.

“Such pretty hair you have, Miss Dahlia,” Sofia had once said to his daughter, some years ago now. “It’s the color of crimson clover.”

Dahlia had pouted.

“I want sandy-color hair like Fadder.”

“But yours is lovely. And you have your father’s green eyes.”

“We should match.”

Listening to his slightly sulky little daughter, Carlo felt a pang in his chest. Dahlia had never once asked him about her mother. She seemed to feel no yearning or attachment to her, to an extent that seemed strange for a small child. Carlo had always put it down to Sofia’s devoted care.

However, one day, one of the neighbors asked Dahlia, “Don’t you get lonely without a mother?”

“Nope! I’ve got Fadder!” she answered without a moment’s hesitation.

Even now, Carlo could vividly remember his daughter’s dazzling smile. If there was one thing he knew, it was that he would never forget it until the day he died. Dahlia’s mother had had the same crimson clover hair. Her almond-shaped eyes, too, had been a rich shade of red. She’d been a stunningly beautiful woman, with feline elegance in everything she did. Though he would never see her here in his tower again, Carlo loved her still. That said, were you to ask him if she were the person he loved most in the world, the reply would be a simple “no.” There was now no one Carlo adored more than his daughter, Dahlia.

My Dahlia’s the dearest little girl in the whole wide world.