The Kicksott Windmill

On our second day in Kicksott I came across a tower on a low hill that rose over the village. It stood alone, a spar of daubed timber jutting from the mud like a solitary molar in a rotten gum. Attached to it's roof were four wooden sails like siege fences that rotated sluggishly around a central post. The tower groaned and rumbled, and of a time, local villagers hurried inside and out clutching sacks, though I knew not what was inside, or what they carried with them. I passed it by - another curiosity in this strange land. That night, I asked my guide, who told me that it makes food for the wretches who live in the village. If the fare I had been served that night was any indication, the tower must be creating sustinance from the mud of the hill it sat upon, so gritty and cloying was the soup in my dinner bowl. I later found out that the village had put on an especially luxurious meal for my companions and I, and the locals often went without food one night in every two.

The next day, I got to see inside the Kicksott tower. It comprised two floors, each pierced by a large wooden mast. At the top, a family of nine creatures, chinless and scraggy, lived in a single room - these were the Millers, custodians of the tower. Below, the room was dominated by a large stone disk that revolved with the wooden post. Into the top, the villeigns would put whatever food they had - withered, cracked roots, clumps of vegetable smut, handfuls of dry grasses - and soon the meagre food would disappear into the stone. From the circumference of the stone, a rough meal poured into waiting sacks. This meal they call "flaa", and from it they can make pottages, gruels, and even tough baked cakes that they spread with tuber grease.

From E.G. Quern's 'Travels in a Distant Land'.