The waterwheel begins again

Original fiction extract.

The mill had not worked during the months of repairs. On the morning of the test, villagers stood along the rail while the millwright checked a gate beside the channel. The wheel’s lower edge hung above a shallow pool. Its wooden compartments looked like a row of empty shelves arranged around a circle.

Water entered the first compartment and waited there, a dark weight considering its purpose. The wheel gave a reluctant inch. Another compartment filled; another edge tipped. Then the whole circle began to carry its own argument forward. What had been a fixed wooden face acquired a slow, uneven expression. Water fell from the rising boards in broken strings, each one bright for a moment before it lost its shape. Beneath the rail, the channel found a busy voice which had been missing from the village all winter.

The millwright listened without smiling. He raised one hand, and the people along the rail stopped talking. Through the water’s noise came a small repeated knock. He nodded towards it and asked his assistant for the notebook. The wheel was turning again, but its return had become a beginning rather than the end of the work.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the waterwheel’s return to motion.

Write about 200 to 250 words.