Eleven Candles
It was Jill’s fifth birthday. Mom and Dad gave her birthday presents. There was a party—her friends ate cake and played games. It was a good day.
That night, before bed, they brought her another present.
“This is from your grandfather,” Jill’s mother told her.
“Opa already gave me a present!” Jill said.
“No, Jill,” her mother said. “This is from your other grandfather.”
“Opa is my only grandfather,” Jill said. Jill was fond of Opa. She didn’t like to think he might have competition.
“You are right,” said Dad. “Opa is my father.”
“I had a father, too,” Mom added. “If he were here, he would be your Grandfather Calloway.”
“Where is he?”
“He is gone,” Mom said. “He died when you were a very little girl. But he left you some birthday gifts. This is one of them.”
It was a small metal box. A candle was stuck to the top. It was a little candle, the kind for birthday cakes. Except this one was pure black. Jill had never seen a black birthday candle. There was a knob on the side of the box. It had a circle of numbers around it.
Jill was not like most five-year-old birthday girls. She knew so many numbers already! She could count to twenty. She could write the numbers from one to ten. The numbers on the box went from 1 to 10, then continued 11, 12, …, 20. Right away she knew that must be how to write the rest of the numbers from eleven to twenty.
The knob had a little pointer. It could point to one of the twenty numbers.
Jill’s mother explained, “Inside the box are candles like this one on the top. It’s a puzzle. Your grandfather wanted you to guess how many candles are in the box. If you turn the knob to that number, the box will open. You can take the candles, and you can keep the box as a place to store secret treasures. No one will be able to open it without knowing the number of candles Grandfather Calloway put in it.”
Ooo… that was intriguing. Jill didn’t really care about the candles, but her own secret treasure box!
Jill shook the box a little. “Not too hard!” her father said. “Don’t break the candles.” Still, she could hear a lot of little things rattling around in the box.
“How am I supposed to guess?” Jill asked.
Her mother said, “Well, there are some clues. This is not the first box of candles your Grandfather left for you.
“When you were one, you got a box with two candles.
“When you were two, you got a box with three candles.
“When you were three, you got a box with five candles.
“And now you are five, and you have a box, and we don’t know how many candles are in it.”
“What happened when I was four?” Jill asked.
“You didn’t get one that year.”
Jill was not happy about that. “Did he make a mistake?”
“We don’t think so,” Mom answered.
Jill noticed that the number of candles in the box was always more than the number of the birthday. This one must have at least six, then. She turned the knob to six and tried to open the box. She couldn’t.
She tried seven. That didn’t work, either. Eight didn’t work. Nine didn’t work. Ten didn’t work. Was she doing it right? Maybe there was a trick, even if you got the number right.
Then she turned the knob to eleven. It went “Click.” The box opened. Inside it lay eleven black birthday candles.
Jill couldn’t stop thinking about Grandfather Calloway’s presents. Why did she get eleven candles on her fifth birthday?
And what about the years before that? Why wasn’t there a Grandfather Calloway present on her fourth birthday? She thought Mom and Dad were right, that it wasn’t a mistake. She noticed that, whenever she got a box of candles, the number of candles in the box was always the next birthday that she got a Grandfather Calloway present. On her third birthday, she got five candles. And then the next year, birthday 4, no present, and the year after that, birthday five, she got a Grandfather Calloway present.
She asked Mom and Dad, “Do you know if Grandfather Calloway left a present for my next birthday?” They did not. Grandfather Calloway had left the presents with someone called a lawyer, who never told anyone until a week before Jill’s birthday.
A week before her sixth birthday, she asked her parents if she could talk to the lawyer man.
“It’s a woman,” Mom answered. “Her name is Ms Raza.”
“Well, can I talk to her?” Jill asked.
“I don’t see why not.”
Mom called a number on the phone, then went through one of those things where you had to pick a number according to what you wanted. Finally, a human answered, but it still wasn’t Ms Raza.
“May I speak to Ms Raza?” Mom asked the voice.
“Who should I say is calling?” the voice asked.
“My name is Helen Calloway Garcia. I am calling on behalf of my daughter Gillian Garcia.”
“Elaine Raza,” said a new voice. “How may I help you, Mrs Garcia?”
“My daughter Gillian would like to speak to you.” Mom answered.
“How can I help you, Gillian?” said Elaine Raza.
Gillian felt a little frightened. She hadn’t known how complicated it would be to talk to this lawyer person.
“Is there a present this year?” she asked, shyly. “From Grandfather Calloway, I mean?”
“I’m sorry,” said Ms Raza. “There will be no gift from your Grandfather Calloway this year.”
That was what Jill had expected. She asked Ms Raza, “Will the next one be on my eleventh birthday?”
“Oh! You’re a sharp one, aren’t you?” Ms Raza said. “I can’t answer that. Mr Calloway charged us to keep the gift birthdays secret.
“Anything else, Jill?” Mom asked her. Jill shook her head.
“Thank you, Ms Raza,” Mom said. “I apologize for bothering you.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “Your father Sean Calloway was a good friend, and I am happy to help his family. If you and Gillian have any more questions, call me. My direct number is 212-555-1212.”
That was really interesting, Jill thought. She felt good when Ms Raza had called her a “sharp one.” (Mom said that “sharp” meant “smart.”) But also, it meant that Jill was probably right that the next present would be when she was eleven. Ms Raza said it was secret. Jill thought Ms Raza wasn’t good at keeping secrets.
When she started first grade in the fall, Jill was specially interested in everything having to do with numbers. Most of the other kids hated arithmetic and math. All the girls except Jill said that. They said they hated math as if hating math was something to be proud of. It was funny, because the girls were usually better at math than the boys.
Jill was good at math. She was good at everything in school, but she was especially good at math. And she liked it. It was hard to like math the way it was taught in school, but she found books.
Also, she talked to Ms Raza. Jill’s Mom was not sure she should really call Ms Raza. But Jill thought it would be rude not to. After all, Ms Raza had asked them to call. Jill remembered the number exactly. Mom was afraid that Ms Raza would be too busy to talk to Jill.
Mom wasn’t wrong. The first time they called Ms Raza was too busy to talk.
“Gillian, and Mrs Garcia!” she said. “I can’t talk now, but I will call you back.”
She did call back. She knew things about Grandfather Calloway that Mom didn’t know: things about his work, and what he had been interested in. She told them that Grandfather Calloway had been interested in something called Number Theory.
A theory of numbers? That sounded cool.
Mom left Jill to talk with Ms Raza by herself. After that Mom let Jill call Ms Raza whenever she wanted.
Jill liked talking with Ms Raza. Ms Raza really seemed to have fun talking with Jill. Also, Ms Raza made her feel important. Like, Ms Raza always called her “Gillian,” or sometimes “Miss Garcia.” She asked what Jill thought about things, and remembered what Jill answered.
When Jill was in third grade she learned about prime numbers. She read about something called the Sieve of Eratosthenes for finding prime numbers. She made a big one for herself and found all the primes from 1 to 200. She saw right away that Grandfather Calloway’s presents only came on prime number birthdays: 1, 2, 3, 5, and, if her guess was right, 11. (They said 1 was not a prime, but Jill thought that was wrong.) But it was not every prime. She was now 8 years old, and there had been no Grandfather Calloway present on her seventh birthday even though 7 is a prime.
On her eighth birthday, Ms Raza gave her a present. It was a special book of ten magazine articles called Mathematical Games by a man named Martin Gardiner.
Ms Raza sent a card with the book. On the card she wrote, “Martin Gardiner wrote almost 300 of these articles. I chose ten that I thought you would like, Gillian. I had them specially printed and bound into a little book.
“This is a present from me, Ms Raza. It is not from your Grandfather Calloway. Eight is not a Grandfather Calloway birthday.
—Elaine Raza”
The magazine articles were hard, very hard for an eight-year-old to understand. They were even hard for an eight-year-old as good at math as Jill secretly thought she was. (It was secret, because she didn’t want to brag. But she thought Ms Raza knew.) But Martin Gardiner was good at explaining. There were lots and lots of pictures.
It took Jill a month to work through the book. She had to call Ms Raza for help with some of them. She learned more math in that month than she had in her first eight years.
The evening of Jill’s eleventh birthday, Ms Raza came to the Garcia home. She was a small, dark-haired woman, older than Mom and Dad, with sparkling black eyes. They had never seen her before—even Jill, who had talked to her so many times, didn’t know what she looked like. Jill thought she was beautiful.
She carried Jill’s present. This one was bigger than Jill’s secret treasure box from her fifth birthday. The eleventh birthday present was the size of a shoebox. It had a USB plug on the top with a flash drive inserted. On the side there was a keypad, like on a phone. A small LED display read, “3 guesses remaining”
Ms Raza explained, “The box contains some number of USB flash drives. Each one is a gift for Gillian. The box will open if the correct number is typed in on the numeric keypad.
“But,” she warned, “You have only three tries. If you guess wrong three times, all the USB sticks inside will be erased.”
Mom and Dad thought this was important, so they asked Jill if it was OK if they got to try. “We’ve been thinking about the numbers for a long time, and we have worked out our guesses scientifically!” Dad said.
“As long as you let me have one guess,” Jill said. “I know the answer.” She was sure as sure could be.
Mom went first. She typed in 19. The box made a loud buzzing noise, and the LED display flashed. When it stopped flashing, it read, “2 guesses remaining” She flushed and sat down heavily.
Then Dad tried. His guess was 38. Another buzz, another flash. “1 guesses remaining” (Jill thought it was funny that it said “1 guesses.”) Dad looked angry and turned red.
Ms Raza spoke up, “Gillian?”
Jill typed 31. The box played a little tune. The display flashed and read “CORRECT!” It opened on a hinge at one end and revealed inside 31 USB flash drives, each plugged into a receptacle They were numbered from 1 to 31.
Ms Raza clapped her hands once. “Well done, Gillian.”
Afterword
Ordinarily I release stories on the first and sixteenth of every month. This one, however, is scheduled for 25-Sep-2026. That’s because I wrote it for the TiF event “11: A Once-in-a-Century Writing Event”, and TiF imposed the 25-Sep release date.
This story is a prolog. I intend to follow it with a second story, named “Thirty-one.”
The cover depicts 2, 3, 5, 11, and 31 colored disks arranged in five concentric ellipses.
This is such a good idea to blend maths knowledge with storytelling! Enjoyed this;)
I really liked this! The whole prime numbers thing was such a fun idea, and I honestly didn’t expect the USB drives at the end. Now I really want to know what’s on them.