Fallon's Wonderful Machine by Maire De Léis

One
     
    "I have everything I need. 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.
Replace oil and paper as needed. Because there was one thing she
valued as much as she valued the chest itself. The smell. The
tool-shop in South Mall had the correct oil. Smelled like the oil
from before. And everything was perfect.
    All those years that passed. As she grew up,
became a woman with a job and a house and a boyfriend. In all those
years she never asked, 'what is it?'. Not her. Nor her trusted
friends from childhood and on. When her boyfriend Darragh asked
her, seeing it on a shelf in the garage, she had no reply.
    "I don't know!" she said, "I never saw it as
a something."
    "That's daft. Get someone to look at it. Bet
it's worth a few euro," Darragh said.
    "I'm not gonna sell it."
    "Whatever. Might be nice to know,
though?"
    "I guess," she said. It had been years since
she opened it. She felt disappointed that Darragh hadn't been more
excited about it. Privileged as he was to be let in on her secret.
Not the oohs and wows from her childhood. No young faces lit up in
reflected torchlight.
    She snapped the lid down and went back to
look for the shears.
    That night Fallon dreamt of Gair. Not the
man who'd died. No. The legs that bore him were strong and
youthful. Not the frail branches he could barely move on. His
fingers not bent at strange angles, with nails like brown paper
that crumbled every time he tried to perform any task better suited
to a younger man. Her big strong grandfather. And she an adult.
    They spoke about the things you speak with
dead people about in dreams. How strange it was that they had put
him in that stupid wooden coffin. Should have made sure he was
dead. They had been sad and cried. How wrong can you be? Another
strange thing was how they could fly now. Before Gair died they
never flew. But now it was common. Everyone did. On her antique
table in her living room stood a machine. Fully assembled, from the
parts in her chest.
    The next day Fallon got the chest out of the
garage and set it on her living room table. And she asked, to the
room, to herself. To her grandfather:
    "What is it?"
    The question her starting point. The
assembly was difficult. She was no mechanic. So many parts she
didn't know what did. So many that fit into one another. From her
dream she knew that the chest was part of the machine. Not just
storage. Working from there she got the frame put together. That
made it easier. She pondered. She theorised and tested theories.
She put a part in its place, then removed it from there, because
no, it wasn't that part's place at all, but this one. But how could
that be?
    How patient was Fallon, how single-minded!
One day, a forgotten and stained glass of white wine forgotten on
the table, one day at last, the final piece fell into place. The
machine was completed.
    And Fallon asked again. Knowing that she'd
never get an answer. Not from the room, or Gair. And least of all
from herself. But still she asked:
    "What is it?"

Two
     
    Darragh surprised her