Chapter 27
TRISTAN
Tristan glanced up at the chalet. The twinkle lights along the eaves were on, but all the windows were dark. It must have been three in the morning, and everyone was asleep and dreaming of Christmas.
He slogged through the snow around the corner of the building.
That lump by the garage must be Haisley’s car, he realized.
It had been covered with snow when they arrived, and its shape had only gotten softer and rounder.
He didn’t even have a guess for the make or model.
There was nothing distinguishing about it.
Haisley was waiting by the garage, wrapped in a long puffy parka. A cheerful knit hat in rainbow colors covered her hair and ears.
She waited until Tristan was right up next to her at the door before she opened it. “This is Steve’s Garage,” she announced with pride.
Tristan stared.
The aged building didn’t look like much from the outside, but on the inside?
It was a wreck.
No, he decided, after staring for a moment, it was a hoard.
There was as much in the building as could possibly be stuffed in four walls, from the plank floor to the high reflective-insulation ceiling.
It must have been a two or three car garage, but there was barely room for another bicycle in it now.
There were four bicycles already that Tristan could see.
One hung from the ceiling, two of them were propped up against a filing cabinet, and the fourth was in pieces on a cluttered workbench.
Half the walls were shelved and the other half were covered in hooks.
Tools, ladders, coiled hoses, and extension cords covered every surface.
There were aisles of…things. Old bathtubs, parts of vehicles, furniture, rolled-up rugs, tables, paddles, skis, boxes, bins, and buckets.
There were dozens of cabinets, some of them marked arcanely with radiation warnings and chemical symbols.
The workbenches were a slurry of tools and parts and ends of wood.
The corners of the room were full of standing pipes, lengths of conduit, dimension lumber, and siding.
Leaning slabs of weathered plywood were held in place by big coils of chain link.
Above the workbenches were more cabinets, some of them with doors sagged open to show stacks of old cans, boxes of fasteners, and electrical parts.
“What am I looking at?” Tristan asked, dazed. It was both appalling and wonderful.
“Steve was the first owner here. He homesteaded about a hundred years ago, and the cabin that is now the dining room came first. He expanded it every few years, adding a bedroom that is mine now, and a bathroom, then Dorothy’s room, the utility room, and finally the garage.
The kitchen and the front part of the chalet with the bedrooms was built by a fancy architect when he sold it in the nineties. ”
“Anything you need, anything you want, anything you can think of, you just have to concentrate on it, and you’ll find it in Steve’s garage.
” Haisley opened a cabinet. “I found your carving tools on the workbench by the bike. I swear on my grandmother’s grave that there weren’t there the day before.
I’ve found paint in this cabinet before, let’s see if it has what you’re looking for. ”
Tristan nearly jumped out of his skin when a heater came on, obviously triggered by the rush of cold air that had come in with them. It was an ancient blower heater, mounted high in the garage, and his feet remained chilled even as the air around them warmed up.
“I just need some white paint,” he said. “Maybe some red for the hats?”
Lurking behind a gallon of deep blue deck paint was a quart of white acrylic house paint, and a sample jar of brilliant red. A can with the label peeled off held a selection of small brushes. There was even a small stack of old newspapers to lay down.
“We need something to hang them with,” Haisley reminded him.
Tristan looked around skeptically and his eyes immediately fell on a roll of fishing line on one of the workbenches. “That will certainly work,” he said suspiciously.
But that wasn’t magic. It was a garage full of supplies. What they were looking for just happened to be there. It wasn’t even that much of a stretch. What garage in Alaska wouldn’t have a roll of fishing line and some old paint?
“I was thinking about something for scarves,” he said thoughtfully.
Haisley opened a few drawers in a tool box, rummaged through hand tools, lengths of wire, and air compressor fittings before closing them again. “Like yarn, maybe?”
“Or tinsel?”
“Pipe cleaners!” Haisley said in triumph.
The drawer she’d opened had little craft pompoms, double-sided sticky tape, a selection of drink umbrellas, and several half-used bags of pipe cleaners, including a selection of sparkly deep green and red strands that were clearly intended for Christmas decoration.
“That’s…perfect.” Tristan still wasn’t sure it was magic. He scooped up a few of the pompoms, too. “Do we need glue for these?”
“I have some inside,” Haisley assured him. “Never take what you don’t need. Do you think we could find tiny carrot noses?”
“I can’t imagine that even an enchanted garage has tiny carrots handy.”
Haisley was still opening drawers and rifling through stacks. “What about these?”
She had a box of miscellaneous wire nuts—including a selection of tiny orange ones that would only be good for 22 gauge wire. Tristan was not sure he’d ever seen any so small, and there were exactly six.
“See? Magic.” Haisley picked them out.
There was an empty cardboard box of just the right size on top of the toolbox, so Tristan put all of the supplies into it and followed Haisley back out into the snowy night.
“Don’t you need to lock it?” he asked, when she pulled it tight and started to walk away.
“No need,” Haisley said. “It will only let someone in if it likes them.”
Tristan remembered tugging on the door. He had a strong grip, and it had definitely been locked. “Have you ever thought about cleaning that place up and organizing it?” he asked cautiously. “Probably a good half of it could be hauled to the dump and it would be easier to find things.”
Haisley laughed. “Better men than you have tried. The first handyman that Mr. Barnum hired knocked down the door to get in and promptly fell through the floor and broke his hip. No one has even suggested it since then.” They were still under the eaves of the garage and Haisley patted the wall of the garage.
“Don’t listen to the man!” she told it fondly. “I won’t let him clean you.”
The heater inside chose that moment to rattle to a stop.