It stands at the edge of my shade and hums, a bright cold trunk that has never once needed the sun. The walking ones come to it the way sparrows come to me in the lean months, quick and single-minded, and they feed it not seed but small metal discs and thin paper leaves, pressing them into its side.
Then it drops them something in return. I have watched this trade through a thousand afternoons. They never wait. They never look up.
It fruits on demand, which is a strange miracle to me, who spend a whole spring swelling one green apple into red and let the wind decide who gets it. This thing has no spring. It bears fruit in every season at once, cold rattling fruit in bright skins, and the walking ones take it standing, tear it, and drink or chew while already turning to go.
I have seen a child press its whole face to the glass, watching a coil turn and turn and hold its offering hostage, and I remember the child's mother once did the same, smaller, in a shorter coat, thirty rings ago.
The wind takes the torn skins and pins them against my roots, red and silver, and there they stay through the rain until they soften into the ground the way everything softens into the ground.
The humming trunk will go dark someday, hauled off in a season I will barely notice. But the child will come back grown, and stand where the machine was, and find only my shade, and not remember why the spot felt like waiting.