Becca at Sea Page 12

  “I didn’t mean to start a fight!” Becca panted.

  “You know what I think about seaweed and the garden,” Gran said, ignoring Becca. “I wasn’t going to make a big fuss about it, and Becca did work very hard, but there’s too much salt in seaweed and how do you know it won’t leach through the soil and pollute the well?”

  “Oh, I didn’t think of that!” Becca tried to say, but Aunt Fifi was already talking.

  “Kay and the others all agree that that is utter — ” Here a wave must have slapped into Aunt Fifi’s face, for Becca couldn’t hear the next word. “In any case I brought along a file of articles about the benefits of seaweed mulch,” she went on. “All very scientific. Why don’t you just stop being so pig-headed for once, exercise your reason, and come around to a right way of thinking? And anyway it would be cruel — cruel! — not to build on the great progress Becca has made. Becca! Who actually knows that plants need more than a thimbleful of water every two days!”

  “Fifi!” shouted Mum, Auntie Meg and Aunt Clare all at the same time.

  “Oh, sorry, Mum,” said Aunt Fifi cheerfully. “Don’t mean to be rude! What I mean is, how about giving it a go for a while? And it would be nice for Becca, too, after all the work she’s put in. Right, Becca?”

  Becca didn’t know whether she wanted to answer or not.

  “You won’t find enough seaweed on the beach at this time of year anyway,” said Gran, panting with the effort of paddling. “And exactly who is going to cart it all the way up from the beach to the garden? I’d like to know. Not you! You’re far too busy with your blackberry pies and all-night arguments with the only plumber on the island, not to mention — ”

  Suddenly Becca realized that they’d arrived back at the beach they’d started from. There were Alicia and Lucy, Mollie and Ardeth staggering out of the water like sea creatures not used to land life.

  Mum and Auntie Meg beached the kayak and Gran jumped out of the bow of the canoe to pull it up on shore. Aunt Fifi and Becca swam in slowly, carried by the waves that washed them up on to the pebbles, surging and sucking by turns.

  I made it, Becca thought, lying face down on the clean, sea-washed rocks. Hugging the land. She turned her head and looked straight into Aunt Fifi’s face.

  “How come you started talking about seaweed all of a sudden?” she asked.

  “Why shouldn’t I talk about seaweed if I want to?” Aunt Fifi said. “What — now we can’t even bring up the subject, never mind do anything about it?”

  But she looked enormously pleased.

  It was as Becca had guessed. The whole argument hadn’t been about seaweed, really. It had been Aunt Fifi’s way of helping Becca finish the swim, and maybe even Gran’s, too.

  * * *

  “Hurrah for the circumnavigators!” cried Merlin, Dad and the uncles.

  Uncle Clarence took pictures of all the swimmers together, then all the swimmers and paddlers.

  “How about getting one of all the cousins?” asked Gran. “I like to see my grandchildren all lined up together.”

  “I never thought you’d make it,” Alicia said to Becca. “But you did! Maybe next year we can swim around the big island. What do you think?”

  “How about standing by this log?” Uncle Clarence asked. “You can line up by height.”

  Becca pressed against Lucy’s wet arm, shivering even though she was holding Pin in a bundle of blankets. Just as Uncle Clarence snapped the pictures, she felt the touch of something warm and fleecy — Auntie Meg slipping quickly in between photos to put her jacket over Becca and Pin.

  “Look out to sea and smile!” Uncle Clarence commanded.

  Becca did. Her wet hair stuck clammily to her head, and the boisterous northwest wind of Dugald’s small-craft warning blew straight into her face.

  * * *

  Long, long after they had all arrived back at Gran’s, after the blowy picnic of deviled eggs and shortbread biscuits and birthday cake and stinky cheese that Merlin had insisted she try, Becca sat alone and thought about the day. But it wasn’t Alicia being mean and then practically inviting her to swim around the big island that stayed in her mind. It wasn’t being surrounded by aunts and cousins as she swam all the way around Camas Island and the uncles. It wasn’t the happy moment of Pin’s birthday presents, made hugely better by Auntie Meg and Uncle Martin’s “welcome to sisterhood” present for Becca — a really good mask and snorkel.

  Nor was it what she had noticed about the photograph Uncle Clarence had taken — that there had stood Ardeth, then Mollie, and beside Mollie Alicia, and then Lucy, all wet and shivery, and then Becca with Pin in her arms — the end of the line. But she hadn’t been the end of the line, after all. Suddenly, Auntie Meg had appeared with a jacket, and she had stayed there while the camera went click.

  There was another cousin in the picture, Becca had realized then. One that was even smaller than Pin. One you couldn’t see yet because she was still growing inside Auntie Meg.

  But even that wasn’t what stuck most in Becca’s mind. What she remembered best was the rescue — the way Aunt Fifi and Merlin had kayaked valiantly back to the big island when the wind blew up too hard for the little boats to get back, and had commandeered Arnulf’s boat, but this time with Mac to pilot it.

  And Mac had come. He had come with the weather at his heels, full of accounts of frontal systems and high-pressure ridges and small-craft warnings, because he had come straight from his work as a weatherman.

  And not just any weatherman, either.

  “Did you know?” Becca asked Gran. “Mac is Dugald! No wonder his voice always sounded so familiar!”

  But Gran had just smiled and said, “He’s brought something else, too, besides weather reports.”

  And up from the hold in the boat popped a head, a figure in an orange life jacket.

  “Guess what!” Mac told Becca as he helped her into Arnulf’s boat.

  “What?” Becca said. “And who’s that?”

  “I’m a great-uncle!” Mac said. “And this is Jane, my great-niece who is visiting. And she is very, very good with a wheelbarrow. Has been practicing, in fact.”

  Jane! Her hair stuck out and she had scabs on both knees and a hole where one of her teeth should have been.

  “It wasn’t a baby tooth,” she told Becca. “I got it when I rode into a tree on my bike. I wanted to see how far I could go with my eyes closed without crashing. Did you really swim all the way around the island? And save your family from a burning house?”

  “Well, sort of,” Becca said.

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “Actually, next I want to hike around the big island,” Becca told her, as they crouched in the bottom of the boat. “We could take a backpack and a ton of food and…”

  “Yes!” said Jane. “And when we get home, we can go swimming in the dark.”

  “Skinny-dipping! And watch the falling stars,” said Becca.

  “We can sleep on the point by ourselves,” said Jane.

  “We can do a play,” said Becca. “Aunt Fifi and Merlin can help.”

  “We can get Uncle Mac to teach us to kayak.”

  “We can go sailing!”

  “We can sail around the big island,” said Jane. “Or sail and sleep over on Camas Island.”

  “I’ll show you the oak forest — ” said Becca. Then she stopped still, remembering a long-ago wish whispered into warm bark.

  It’s come true. It’s really come true, she thought, while Arnulf’s boat made its way through the dusk and the evening waves, and behind them the light of Camas Island blinked steadily, faithfully, in the growing dark.

  About the Author

  Deirdre Baker has taught children’s literature throughout Canada and the United States, and she currently teaches in the English department at the University of Toronto. She is the co-a
uthor (with Ken Setterington) of A Guide to Canadian Children’s Books, and her reviews of children’s books appear regularly in The Horn Book Magazine and the Toronto Star. She lives in Toronto and spends her summers on British Columbia’s Hornby Island — the setting for the Becca books.

  Also by Deirdre Baker

  Becca Fair and Foul

  When eleven-year-old Becca returns to her grandmother’s rustic cottage for another summer, she finds herself seeing her beloved island in new ways. A cozy sleepover on the beach is invaded by creatures speaking a strange language. An argument between a baby eaglet and its haranguing mother reaches operatic dimensions. A hunting owl seeks out the wrong prey. And then there’s the discovery of the bear on the beach …

  Meanwhile, cousin Alicia claims to be too old to participate in the kids’ summer project — a performance of The Tempest, a play that seems to find unsettling echoes in the natural surroundings Becca thought she knew so well.

  The bear’s legs and paws were stretched out as if it had flopped down to relax on the beach.

  But, Becca thought, it wasn’t relaxed. It was completely — she couldn’t even think of a word. Helpless? And so alone! It looked utterly dependent on the kindness of strangers for respectful treatment.

  And it had a face. That was bothersome, really.

  “It doesn’t seem right to leave it on the beach,” Becca said, even though part of her wanted to walk away and never come back …

  “We should bury it,” she said. “We should give it a decent burial.”

  About the Publisher

  Groundwood Books is an independent Canadian children’s publisher based in Toronto. Our authors and illustrators are highly acclaimed both in Canada and internationally, and our books are loved by children around the world. We look for books that are unusual; we are not afraid of books that are difficult or potentially controversial; and we are particularly committed to publishing books for and about children whose experiences of the world are under-represented elsewhere.

  Groundwood Books gratefully acknowledges the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Métis, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation on which we operate.

  Groundwood Books is proud to be a part of House of Anansi Press.