Edith Buchanan's Wonderful Machine

Did you know that a turtle is in fact a kind of tortoise? I didn't know this. I thought they were just, you know, closely related. Justice for Disco Turtle.

This week's story is about a magic lamp that, as far as we can tell, does not have a genie in it. It's also, in my view, your best opportunity so far if you have been hoping to get a band name out of my titles.

This week's daily stories

Monday

I took the little box you made me out to the garage, where the wasps build their nests. Such light, papery things they make. It will take them decades to get through it. At the end of each winter I cut down the empty nest and hang it gently from my ceiling. All your beautiful inlaid details, spread out above me. You take up so much space.

Tuesday

The dull dread had drained from his limbs while he slept. It must be in the sheets somewhere: he sprang up to go about washing them. Crisp, fresh linen for a crisp, fresh day. They dried double-quick in the sun, and as he watched the low wind fill them he thought of great sailing ships on a calm blue sea. He wondered where all that fear and misery had come from, but it didn’t do to dwell on it, with a whole wonderful life to be getting on with.

Beneath his feet, unnoticed, the earth began to crack in two.

Wednesday

We had been waiting for the train a very long time. A few of the songs we sang had become favourites: one about the train that would come one day, most about the things we had done while we were waiting. On Saturdays we played a game, throwing coffee cups at the departures boards in three teams. Wednesday was market day, and Sundays were spent in quiet contemplation of the timetable. I fell in love, but it was not to be. At last, the train came, and I found I had bought the wrong ticket.

Thursday

Jenny always joined in with pass-the-parcel, so I wrapped the ring box up in golden paper and made that the big prize in the middle. Haribo friendship rings in some of the layers, just to drop a hint. Of course I checked with her sister and her niece first. I don’t know what happened. The Wi-Fi must have gone down or something. But Jenny wouldn’t let us take it off the kid. I suppose that’s why I love her.

Friday

Lightning struck the spire, then stayed, stretched across the sky like a nerve. On cold days it stretched out taut and thrummed in the wind; on warm days it curled lazily around the sky. Before long we found we were navigating by it, without thinking: it framed our space the way the bells framed our time. And the easiest place to navigate to was the church, so blinding bright inside that you could not step through the doors.

Saturday

I spent forty minutes tucked in the little booth, drawing on my ballot paper with the stubby pencil. Nobody can look at you there. It’s not allowed. They have to leave you alone to make whatever mark you choose. I drew a different thing in every square, six of them ugly and one of them beautiful. Then I folded up my paper and pushed it through the slot into the darkness. Tonight they will unfold it, and they will have to look at it, and make me count.

Sunday

I was worried about the yellowing around my fingernails, a dirty sort of yellow, like I had been smoking all my life. I was worried about the skin cracking at the corner of my mouth, and the taste when I woke, and the way my tongue felt too big by the evening. I was worried about head neck shoulders back stomach hips legs knees ankles feet toes, worried just about being a thing in the world. I was worried that I worried too much. What got me in the end was something quite different.

I have been reading...

How Saints Die by Carmen Marcus. I loved this book. I don't really want to say anything else about it because it's still doing its work on me, so I'll just reiterate: I loved this book, my favourite novel for quite some time.

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This week's story: Edith Buchanan's Wonderful Machine

It was a wonderful machine. Light the candle and turn the crank and figures danced on the walls. It had enchanted Edi as a child. It made her want to build things of her own, to learn how to bend metal and light into shapes nobody else had imagined. And so she had: she became very good at it, and made many machines, none quite as wonderful. Which was how she knew that first one must be magic.

How could it cast figures that were brighter than the candle flame? How could they dance so smoothly through those thin slits? Why didn't it work with a lightbulb or a motor? She made another, a perfect replica, matching all the materials and using antique tools. It smeared dim, muddled light on the walls, and rattled as it span. Never quite right. She swapped the parts over one by one, the new becoming old, the old becoming new, but only when the original was completely reassembled did the figures dance again.