I have no more use for it," where the words. The speaker, Gair McGinn. Fallon McGinn's grandfather. 'It' a chest. Fallon was too young to understand why he no longer wanted his chest full of cool metal parts. It became her treasure. Strange exciting smooth things. Shiny brass. Stainless steel tubes. A mahogany cover for something. Knobs, levers, gears, some wrapped in oiled paper. Every few years she'd take the chest down from a shelf and lay all the parts out on the floor or a desk. Sit and look at them. Turn this part this way and that. A lot of engineering had gone into each part. After Gair died she thought about where they had come from. Had he made them? Collected them from dusty antique stores? Ordered mechanics and metalworkers around the county, maybe the whole island, to build such and such a part to these exact specifications? And when she was done she would take care to wrap them in their oiled paper or put them in their little wooden boxes. Set everything back in the chest just so.
What do You think about Fallon's Wonderful Machine?
