Dinner followed and the evening passed quietly. Gwyneth has signed a complex and detailed employment contract, so she won't be able to say what's going on in the house, if anything happens, but without fanaticism like losing magic or dying. Britain loves clericalism, so there are many curses for such cases, like "Dead Mute", when a person is unable to pass on any information at all, or "Morpheus Cage", which puts the cursed person into a dream-like sleep that only the cursed person can wake up from.
Such curses prohibit the unauthorized sharing of information, but in order for them to be imposed, a person must agree to the terms of the curse. They are called "contractual," and it is clear why. Who would agree to lose magic or life if they went to work on a farm where secret special spells were used, for example?
So, assuming Gwyneth wouldn't tell anyone, I decided to raise an unexpected child, Kiriko. The girl turned out to be anatomically very similar to a human, the only external difference being the color of her skin, ears, teeth and metal claws. With the help of the ritual circle, I was able to make a complete diagnosis, the results of which I hovered over in a deliberate manner.
I was still a little hopeful that I was wrong, that the girl was still a doll, albeit a super smart one. But no, she's really alive, and she'll grow up and be able to bear children in the future — Kiriko's reproductive system turned out to be a copy of the human one, only the biochemistry is too different.
I can't say that I know anything about medicine, but Gwyneth was also put in the diagnostic circle to compare the indicators, and I even visited it myself, so the obvious difference is irrefutable and obvious. I couldn't see anything, in the sense of understanding the data, so I decided to postpone it to better times.
About the structure of the girl's internal organs. Liver, kidneys, lungs — almost human, almost. The heart turned out to be enclosed in a metal "case", i.e. the heart became a crystal. Anyway, at some point I just got tired of looking at incomprehensible data and gave up on this case.
The main thing — I found out that the girl is fully alive, has a soul and a mind, magic. In addition, the contract with the spirit that was reborn as a soul left an imprint on me, so Kiriko calls me "Master". Oh well. Anyway, since the first day of my return, and she was four, the girl has been moving around the house freely.
True, with the correction that she has to hide from the guests. But that is until Gwyneth and I, and the woman who saw in Kiriko either a daughter or a younger sister, do not teach her the minimum acceptable level of the necessary things. Then she'll go out in a blind dress and mask with one of the adults (me or the maid), with a bunch of amulets and protective talismans, of course.
There is a lot of work to do, but the girl turned out to be understanding, intelligent, calm, although very curious. For example, I was working on a new artifact, ironing out the last few bugs, and Kiriko was always close by, learning what I was telling her. I even gave the girl a crystal wand for the lessons Ms. Travers had taken over. It made the little house seem more alive somehow.
It seems that the mere presence of a child in the house somehow enlivens it, even the silence is filled with sounds like "Kiriko is reading...", "Kiriko is studying..." and so on. I don't have children of my own yet, but if they're anything like this yellow-eyed, smart girl, I wouldn't mind having them. ....