One still evening at twilight, McKenna brought her knees to her chest. For more than an hour, she’d been trapped in the corner of her shed.
Above the silence, frogs croaked, an owl hooted, and flocks of crows chattered in the budding trees. Her stomach growled.
Earlier, she’d come in out of the steady rain, swept, and sponged down the floorboards. She’d stirred a pail of whitewash and with a big brush, hurriedly slopped on the lime solution. McKenna had started at the doorway, where the light was strongest, and worked her way backward.
Think before you act, think before you act. … Isn’t that what her social worker was always telling her to do? If she couldn’t paint a stupid floor without painting herself into a corner, how was she ever going to make it all the way to Toronto?
Maybe she should give up, phone Mrs. Gaspé—and let her come haul McKenna away to some “school” for “girls like her.”
McKenna’s rolled sleeping bag was hanging on the doorknob. Where was she going to sleep? No way was she walking into Jeannie Cody’s kitchen with whitewashed feet to ask for a bed, or the couch.
The woman didn’t like McKenna. McKenna didn’t know why. Lately, at mealtimes, McKenna dished up a plate of food and ate by herself at the picnic table.
McKenna rubbed the spot between her eyebrows where her headaches always took hold. Beneath the floor, she heard the now-familiar sound of her friend, the fox, burrowing a tunnel.
Sometimes, McKenna imagined that her birth mother was dead, but had come back to this earth—not as a spirit, but as a fox. Why else would a wild animal shadow McKenna her entire life?
With a long stretch, McKenna reached for a multicolored cloth pouch, suspended from a peg under the porthole window. She dug inside for Bun-Bun, a dirty gray and tailless toy she’d carried with her for as long as she could remember.
Deep inside his stuffing, the tiny music box still worked. McKenna wound the key. She chewed the inside of her cheek and bit her lips. By the time the cradle song finished, a few tears had escaped. These she wiped away with her sleeve.
Then she dug out a black, leather-bound book with a broken binding. The pages were water-damaged; the cover curled at the corners. When she was about seven, McKenna discovered it inside a broken-down desk in Annie Pike’s attic. When McKenna showed it to her foster mother, Annie didn’t recognize the boy’s name engraved on its cover.
“It’s a Bible,” Annie had said with a smile. “Finders, keepers.”
Behind Annie’s back, McKenna took Mr. Pike’s pocketknife and scratched off the boy’s gold-lettered name.
To this day, she never knew why the Pike family couldn’t take her along when they moved to Toronto. But McKenna had quickly learned that foster kids don’t get answers to those kinds of questions.
Fingering the Bible’s scar, McKenna recalled the moment when she’d discovered a piece of paper between two pages of the Psalms.
Enchanted Candles—written in faded, delicate penmanship—was centered at the top of the parchment paper. At the bottom, a sentence was starred: This recipe makes 13 pillar candles.
Often, she’d searched the recipe for hidden meaning, but found none. By the time she turned twelve, McKenna was convinced that it was her destiny to create these candles. She’d started collecting the ingredients, now in baby food jars on the shelf above her.
McKenna struck a match and traced the words on the paper, whispering the list of ingredients she’d long since memorized.
To melted paraffin, add:
One tablespoon of white sand from the North Shore
Two tablespoons of red earth from the South Shore
A strand of bark from a silver birch tree
Scrapings from the opalescence of three blue mussel shells
Thirteen dried purple lupine blossoms
A sprig of fireweed at peak color
One snail’s shell, crushed
One sand dollar, finely ground
It was kind of spooky—it was like the Enchanted Candles recipe had known that she would travel from the North Shore to Victoria, on the South Shore, even before she did.
She had yet to find a sand dollar. Not that it would be easy, but finding “mermaid’s money” was the least of McKenna’s worries. There had to be more to making candles than melting wax, but what?
McKenna had no clue.
McKenna dug deeper into the pouch, feeling for the silver chain she’d found on the beach. After feeling her way past a half-broken dreamcatcher, the wrinkled red envelope with Annie’s address in the corner, a tube of lip balm, a pack of gum, and a wallet, she found the chain. She’d tried the bracelet on her wrist, but the chain was too long—around her neck, too short. An ankle bracelet, maybe?
McKenna took off her socks. She wound the silver links around her left ankle—perfect! With a string of leather from the dreamcatcher, she tied the two end-links together.
Later, surrounded by darkness, McKenna leaned against the wall, cradling her neck with her sweatshirt. Hoping to fall asleep, she recited the names of months, like Annie had taught her—in the Old Way.
She began with April, when she’d run away: Egg hatching time… frog croaking time … leaves are budding time… animal fur thickens time … ripening time… mate calling time….
McKenna drummed her thigh, trying to remember October, but couldn’t. Hungry and frustrated, she covered her face with her hands.
Big Bart told her that whitewash dried quickly. McKenna sure hoped he was right because she had to open her shop soon. As nice as the South Shore was, she couldn’t hang around Victoria-by-the-Sea forever. Just like Miss Gustie’s dog, someone might come looking for her one of these days.