Dotty Juniper counted her tools by lantern light and knew they would not be enough. She stood in the dirt cellar under her cottage, where she meant to build a hidden workshop for the whole village. One shelf for every neighbor's future trouble. A leaky roof, a jammed door, a broken plow. She wanted the right tool waiting before anyone thought to ask. But her toolbelt held only the everyday things: a hammer, three screwdrivers, a coil of wire, a rusted wrench. Enough to fix one problem at a time. Not enough to stock a wall. She unbuckled the belt and laid it on the workbench. Twelve tools. She had counted on more. Her owl watched from a beam, quiet and unblinking, its heart-shaped face pale in the dark. "Twelve won't do it," Dotty told it. "Not for a whole village." She climbed the cellar steps and walked through the wet grass to the old grandmother at the edge of the wood. Granny Teapot lived in a cottage grown against a great dark tree, its windows warm and gold. Nobody in the village could say how the old woman did her magic, or when. Dotty only knew that when a pot cracked or a lamp died, Granny fixed it without ever seeming to try. Granny opened the round door before Dotty knocked. She wore her flowered apron and her small half-moon glasses. Flour dusted her sleeves. "You've been counting," she said, smiling. "You always count when you're worried." "I want to help everyone," Dotty said. "But I've only got the one belt. I can't be in two houses at once, and I can't fix what I can't reach." Granny took the toolbelt from Dotty's hands and turned it over. She ran a thumb along the worn leather. Then she folded it closed and pressed it back into Dotty's palm. "It isn't the number of tools, dear. It's the belt that carries them." She patted Dotty's wrist. "Reach in tomorrow. Reach in slow. Trust it." Dotty walked home with the belt against her chest, unsure what the old woman meant. She hung it on its hook in the cellar and slept. At dawn she reached inside for her hammer. Her fingers closed on a saw she did not own. She pulled it out, then reached again and found a plane, then a bundle of nails, then a drill she had never bought. The belt gave and gave. She emptied it onto the workbench until tools covered every inch of wood, more than twelve, more than fifty. The pouches never went empty. Dotty sat down hard on the cellar step. She had her workshop's stock now, spilling from a belt she could not empty. But the owl shifted on its beam, and outside the first neighbor's shout came faint across the fields. Someone already needed her. And the belt, she saw, would follow her wherever she went, whether she was ready or not.