Page 40 of There’s a Way (Mythic Beast #2)

Micca

Will handed me one of the gifts and he carried the others, and we headed down with our hosts.

It occurred to me that this couple wasn’t exactly traditional.

Ethel was clearly the tech person, and she said Malcolm had the stew on simmering.

I’d assumed the opposite, since Malcolm had handled most of the initial conversations with Davy, and since he’s primarily the one on their YouTube channel, but maybe Ethel just isn’t an outgoing personality, or only speaks when the conversation revolves around her specialties, which isn’t unusual with really smart technical types. Or, that’s been my experience.

Davy came in the backdoor, and Will offered him the first present, but Davy said, “I need to wash my hands first.”

He quickly washed his hands at the kitchen sink, dried them, and then accepted the gift from Will. Our boy had wanted us to do this part, but Will had said, “Your grandparents. You give the hostess gifts.”

We’d had to find things that didn’t take up a whole lot of room, that weren’t terribly heavy, and that weren’t just token gifts. We wanted to give them something they could actually use, and even more, be happy they had them.

They’d been in Alaska for decades, so it wasn’t like we could buy them gloves or really warm socks. Clearly, they already had those things.

In the end, we’d decided on spa-type items, luxurious things they might not want to spend the big bucks to have shipped in.

Soaps, lotions, fancy teas, shampoo, conditioner, and even some beard conditioner.

Two boxes filled with items, one in girly-girl scents and the other in manly-man scents.

Davy’s grandmother came off as a badass, but I work with a lot of female badasses who use the girly-stuff when they aren’t working.

I mean, not super-strong-scented human things, but lightly scented items designed for shifters.

Davy gave Ethel her gift first, and she seemed genuinely happy with the entire box, and especially the shampoo and conditioner, which told me she recognized the brand.

The second box went to Malcolm, and he seemed happy with his box as well.

I wasn’t surprised to learn he wasn’t aware there are products made especially for the beard.

The third box was a joint gift, the teas, and they both looked through all the flavors and exclaimed happily over the orange spice, the Earl Grey, and the pu-erh, which surprised me that they knew what it was.

We’d hand-selected nearly two dozen, and I’d ended up buying about a dozen of them for myself.

Shopping with Will is an experience. He doesn’t even look at the prices.

I’d have opted for something cheaper than the pu-erh, but after seeing their reaction, I’m glad we chose it.

Same with the shampoo and conditioner. We chose a medium-cost lotion because we all prefer it for ourselves, but I make my own body oil, and I included some of it, and her scent told me she liked it most of all, once I told her the ingredients.

My guess is that she probably makes her own as well, or possibly just uses olive oil or coconut oil, since they have to buy it anyway.

Or maybe they used lard or tallow instead of vegetable oil? That probably made more sense.

With the gift giving over, Ethel offered to show me their home’s various systems, and I was more than impressed.

When we stood in front of a nice wall of batteries that stored power from the solar panels, I asked, “Did you wire all of these together?”

“Yes. Only way to be sure it was done right was to do it myself. I didn’t scrimp on the soldering or the electrical tape.

We also have a fire suppression system in here specifically designed for a battery fire.

We have a regular fire suppression system near the tankless water heater, and all around the fireplace. ”

“If you did the work, that brings it down from forty thousand to around twenty-five thousand for the electrical system.”

“Everything’s more expensive in Alaska. However, the solar panels were kits, too, and that made them a lot cheaper.

Malcolm built a lumber mill out of an old Chevy truck engine when we first got here, and then built the house with the trees he had to fell to make room for the structure and yard.

Our only expense was the gas for the mill, insulation, the hardware like nails and hinges, and we had to buy some roofing materials.

We made the bricks for the fireplace. We lived in a tent the three weeks it took us to build the barn, and then we lived in the barn until the house was built.

So, overall, our costs are less than you’d think for the whole thing.

There were no sinks, showers, or pipes in the original build.

Nothing electrical, so no wiring and no fuse box. All that came much, much later.”

“Sweat equity on steroids. Do you ever regret moving out here? Off to yourselves? Or is it still a good thing?”

She shrugged. “We’re healthy enough, but I worry about what happens if one of us has a serious problem.

It takes about forty minutes for an air ambulance to get to us, and then at least that long to a small hospital, and a lot longer for one that can handle major surgery.

I fell and messed my wrist up bad enough we thought it was broken a few years ago.

Turns out it was a really bad sprain, but it basically showed me that we might not survive a heart attack or stroke, this far out. ”

I’d seen the background checks Drake Security had done on them, so I knew they were sixty-two and sixty-three.

Rather than ask her age, I asked, “Ya’ll built the house over twenty years ago, when you weren’t worried about that kind of thing.

What did you do for heat, light, and cooking back then?

This system can’t be older than four or five years. ”

“Candles, oil lamps, wood stove, and the fireplace. We had a wood burning stove out in the barn while we built the house, and it’s still out there. We had a small one in the kitchen to cook on when it’s too hot for the fireplace, but we moved it to the sauna when we put propane in.”

“You have a sauna?”

She laughed. “It isn’t so unusual up here, and to be honest, the video we did of making it has been one of our biggest moneymakers, barely behind the solar videos.

I love being able to get completely warm during the dead of winter, cooked all the way through.

We don’t have running water in the winter, so there’s no hot showers. ”

“How do you get clean?”

She smiled. “Washcloths work just fine for that. Our ancestors survived without showers and baths in the winter. I bought a crank-powered agitator a while back, so it’s easier to wash clothes.

I do that out in the barn, and then we hang them to dry near the fireplace in the living room.

We have a clothesline that stretches across the room when we need it, and recoils when we don’t. ”

It takes a special kind to survive the winters up here, I supposed, but I had no desire to do so.

Their fireplace is awesome. It’s between the kitchen and the living room, with a huge hearth on the living room side, and flat spots built so you have places to put pots and pans to cook with on the kitchen side. Also, a brick oven on the kitchen side.

“How do you regulate the oven temperature?”

She laughed. “You can get it close by making the fire bigger or smaller, but it’s kind of a crapshoot, which is why we now have the small propane oven.

I still cook things like hamburger steak and meatloaf in the original oven, but cakes have to be cooked in the propane oven.

I added a temperature gauge for the original one, and sometimes it works out we can cook things that are more finicky about temperature, but…

” She shrugged. “If it’s supposed to cook for thirty minutes at three-fifty, and you’re at four-twenty, don’t close the door all the way and then check on it at fifteen minutes and see how much longer it needs.

We have a meat thermometer, to make sure we hit the right numbers for the correct length to kill the bad stuff. ”

We walked back into the living room, and I noted the men were all looking at the massive fireplace.

Clearly, once all those bricks were heated, the room would be several levels above toasty.

There was a small fire now, enough to keep the chill off, or maybe to cook with, but it would clearly hold a much larger fire.

“We stayed with a family in the north of China on one of my missions,” I told them. “Their chimney went straight back from the fireplace for about ten feet before it went up and out, and their bed was on top of the horizontal part.”

Malcolm smiled. “Genius.”

And here’s the problem with doing a background check on someone.

The next question should be to ask them what they did before they moved to Alaska, but Malcolm had owned a construction firm, and Ethel had managed the books and dealt with making sure everything was ordered and onsite when needed.

Clearly, she’d learned some electrical stuff in there somewhere.

“I know you can’t tell us much about your job, but it sounds fascinating,” Ethel said.

“We came downstairs to feed you and then never got around to it. Are you hungry? I’m so happy none of you are vegetarians.

I have no idea how we’d have fed you. The stew has moose meat, potatoes, carrots, and onions. ”

In minutes, we were seated at the long table, benches on either side, eating a wonderfully hearty stew. I really hoped there was no bear meat in their freezer. How would I handle it if they tried to serve us bear? I had no idea.

Technically, it would probably be fine for me to eat it, but it just seemed too cannibalish.

Davy talked to them about a video he’d watched of them hunting moose, field dressing it, and then smoking the meat.

When that conversation was over, I asked Malcolm, “I’m assuming you made this table?”

He nodded. “Every table in the place, the beds, all the chairs outside, most of the ones inside, and the swing. We bring a hundred and twenty gallons of gas in every year, and at the end of the year, if we have any left over, I fill everything that takes gas and then fire up the lumber mill and use what’s left until we run out.

We have the snowmobile, a small motorcycle with dirt bike tires, chainsaws, and the like that use gas.

Some years we run out a few weeks before the new arrives, some years we still have twenty or even thirty gallons left, and I build something new. ”

“Next time we have plenty left, we’ll be adding a lean-to room on the barn for more storage,” Ethel said.

“We lost a lot of space in the barn when we put the cistern in, and I don’t regret having water all year so we don’t have to melt snow every morning to cook with and to drink, but we need to replace the storage we lost.”

“We’ve always kept a little heat in the barn for the chickens,” Malcolm explained.

“The wood stove is in the center of the barn with a cage around it so they can’t get so close they burn themselves.

They’re good down to about twenty degrees as long as there’s no draft and they have warm-ish water to drink, but if we want eggs then this breed needs it above forty degrees.

I have a thermostat alarm that lets me know if the temp gets below forty-two. ”

“And a camera on the wood stove, so we can keep an eye on it from in here. The chickens need light, too, before they’ll lay,” Ethel said.

“We give them a three-month break during the dead of winter, without artificial light, since we don’t get enough light to fully charge our system then.

We’re mostly back to oil lamps and the fireplace ourselves, and use our limited electricity for the other systems that need them. ”

“So,” Will said, “you work your asses off during the short summer, and then have to survive the long winters?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Plenty to do in the winter, too, but yeah, the summer is mostly about making sure everything’s in place to survive the winter. It’s when all our deliveries arrive, when we grow our vegetables, and handle maintenance so we aren’t repairing shit in the winter.”

“We sold our home in Florida for more than we ever dreamed,” Ethel said, “so we had a lot of money to start, but over the years, even being frugal, it was drawing down more and more. Thankfully now, with internet access, we’re making far more than enough so we can live here as long as our health holds out, and the videos we make of adding to our home more than pay for the cost of the supplies. ”

“And we’ve had some decent offers on the homestead when we aren’t even for sale,” Malcolm said, “So when it’s time to leave, we’ll have enough to set up in a city with decent medical facilities.”

“I love Alaska,” Ethel said, “but I’m thinking Florida or Texas when we move again. I wouldn’t mind the heat and a beach.”

Malcolm rolled his eyes. “While I was thinking somewhere in West Virginia, maybe on a mountain.”

“If you have enough money, maybe Florida in the winter and the mountains in the summer,” I said.