My father’s blood was spraying all over our living room. The bright red liquid pulsed out of his body at a terrifying pace. His eyes were filled first with terror, then a sort of acceptance, as he slid down to the ground.

  I ran towards my father, and held his head in my arms. As I picked it up it bobbed in a horrifying way, revealing how deeply the cut had gone into his throat. I held him up to my chest, my dress becoming soaked with his blood. I put my hand on his neck, trying to stop the bleeding, but even as I started to do it I knew my efforts were futile.

  “Talia,” the word sounded like a squeak.

  I looked over to my sister, who crawled out of a space in the kitchen.

  “Elina,” I muttered.

  We sat in stunned silence for a moment, then my head snapped up.

  “He can’t get away with this!” I shouted. “Elina, take care of dad, I have to get the man who did this!”

  She looked at me stunned as I carefully moved our father’s body into her p. Not that it did any good. He was already dead by then, but I was in shock. Then I stood up and ran out of the door in the direction the man had gone. Towards the harbour.

  I sprinted as fast as I could, the blood spttering from my dress in all directions. I couldn't see the man in the dense forest. I cursed my reaction time. He had too much of a lead on me. I ran in to the town, in the direction of the harbour. When I got to a pce where people could hear me I started shouting.

  “A red headed man with scars around his mouth just killed my father! A red headed man with a scarred face just killed Lee the tinker!”

  People turned around and stared at me. I must have looked frightful. I was covered in blood from head to toe and my expression and tone were desperate. The harbour was usually filled with travellers, especially during the day, but all the locals knew me and my father, and they started mobilizing quickly.

  “Call it out as well! If we all search we can find him now!” I called to the people.

  “A red headed man just killed Lee the tinker!”

  “A red headed man!”

  The people repeated my words, running purposefully around the town to spread the message. I hurried to the harbour. If the man stayed on the isnd we might get him. If he left now we probably never would.

  “Red hair man just killed my father!” I shouted in Medoran. “He has a bad lower face! Help me find him!”

  I shouted it in Haverish too, just for good measure.

  The foreign sailors were not as helpful as the locals. Maybe they really just thought I was crazy. They looked around a bit though and asked each other if they knew who he was.

  ***

  I sat and stared into my cup of coffee. Smoke swirled up from the cup and dissipated into the air. It was te into the night. They had not found the red headed man.

  I had run around screaming until the entire vilge had known of my father’s murder. I had looked into the face of every pale man I found, fearing and hoping that it would be the man, but no such luck. Finally my mother had found me. She led me home and took my dress off. She put me in a tub full of water and started to wash my skin.

  My father’s blood was not easy to get off, it had dried and stuck to my skin. She scrubbed me thoroughly, as she had done when I was a child. The water in the tub quickly became red from the blood. The red mixed with the bck of the soap, making a disgusting deep brown.

  My mum called to her sister Nana who had been inside the house with Elina. As I sat and my mother scrubbed me, Nana boriously filled another tub of water from the well. When Nana was done, we transferred me from the first tub to the second, and my mother finished washing me.Finally she put me in a clean new dress, and held me to her chest as I sobbed.

  The isnders had searched tirelessly until it was much too dark to find anything. Amoto, the mayor of the vilge had put a hard ban on any ship from leaving until the next afternoon. We would have the next morning to search. He said he wished he could have made the period longer, but our vilge was so small the sailors might overpower our men if we demanded too much.

  The strongest men in the vilge were waiting at the ships, so that none of them could leave in the night. They were called the peacekeepers, and often dealt with rowdy sailors, but in my lifetime they had never had to handle such a grim murder before.

  “I just don’t understand why anyone would do this to him,” I sobbed. “Some man from Medora. Why did he do this?”

  “Your father had a past before me, darling,” my mum said calmly. “I guess it must have caught up with him.”

  “What terrible past could he have had?” I asked. “He was so kind, so calm.”

  “He carried anger with him, Talia. He hid it well from you girls but I always knew.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you would do best not to get involved with it darling. Let’s go to sleep for now, they’ll find the man in the morning.”

  They did not find the man in the morning. They searched high and low, but he was nowhere to be found. I went to the harbour while my mother and Elina stayed at home. She was still in terrible shock from seeing the murder, and could barely leave her bed. I walked around every ship, asking every man from the vilge what they had discovered.

  They found two men with red hair and showed them to me. One of them was old, and annoyed about the disturbance. The other one was very young, and trembled as they put him in front of me. Neither of them were the scarred man though, and I told let them go.

  At noon the ships sailed away. I stared silently as they went. The vilge men didn’t even dare approach me. Then I walked home.

  My mum’s younger sister Nana had come to stay at our house. We needed the help with Elina. She greeted me as I walked back to the hut. She didn’t even ask if we had found the killer. My expression told her everything she needed to know.

  I walked inside. My mum was holding a mug up to Elina’s lips. My sister’s beauty was faded by the sadness. Her green eyes looked grey as she stared straight ahead in the shady hut.

  “Mum we need to talk.”

  She just nodded, put the mug to the side and walked out with me.

  We walked outside into the midday sun. It was a hot, sunny day. In stories the skies always cried for terrible loss, but in reality, tragedy could happen even on the brightest of days.

  “What was dad’s past? I have to know.”

  “My heart,” my mother replied. “I don’t want you to get consumed by this tragic event. Life can move on.”

  “How can you say that? Your husband was murdered!”

  “Many other husbands have been murdered before! Before you were born there was terrible war across the entire Northern Continent, but afterwards life moved on.”

  “Mum! I have a right to know. Don’t be so evasive!” I implored.

  “The truth is I don’t know,” she sighed. “I never asked about it because he never asked about my past.”

  “What is your past?” I paused and looked at her.

  She sighed.

  “Why don’t you focus on one thing at a time. There is a person that knows about your father.”

  “Who?”

  “Her name is Ilia, she came around the same time your father came. She has all the answers.”

  “Ilia?” I asked.

  I tried to remember a woman by that name. Coconut Isnd had very few inhabitants, and I thought I knew them all. Then slowly a vague figure came to my mind. The idea of a small, slight pale woman with greying brown hair. She was the woman who lived with Ana Abya. Ana Abya was well known on Coconut Isnd, and on many of the surrounding isnds as well. She was a beautiful middle aged woman who sold salves and potions to help against disease. She lived on the eastern beach with her son Timo and that pale woman.

  ***

  Ana Abya’s house always smelled wonderful. When I was a little girl and had a lot of free time I often went there just to smell it. I was too shy to talk to Ana Abya herself, and would run away when she or the pale woman went out into the garden.

  The house was a lovely little straw hut, much like my home. It was pced on the edge of the beach. One side turned to the sandy beach and on the other there was a fertile garden filled with various different sorts of medicinal herbs and roots. Many of them could not be found anywhere else on the isnd.

  I strutted straight up to the door. On normal days I would still be a little shy of Ana Abya, but on this day I was too filled with desperation. The door was already open.

  “Come in,” a melodious woman’s voice beckoned.

  Ana Abya sat in her living room, a beautiful older woman with skin as dark as the night. Her eyes were so dark they were almost bck. They sparkled with kindness and intelligence. She was grinding some kernels with a mortal and pestle in her p. Next to her was the pale woman. She sat still with her hands in her p, as if she were waiting for something. She was an unremarkable woman in any room, but in a room where Ana Abya also sat, it was almost impossible to notice her at all. The pale woman smiled nervously.

  “Talia, welcome. We’ve been expecting you.”

  Ana Abya stood up from her task.

  “I’ll make the two of you some coffee,” she said softly.

  “How you know I would come?” I asked.

  “We heard that your father was murdered by a man from Medora. I figured either you or one of the vilge peacekeepers would be here to talk to me, since I came from Medora with your father,” Ilia said. “I’m gd it was you.”

  As she started to talk it became easier to focus on her. I could look at her more clearly. She was a woman of around forty, with greying brown hair and a wrinkled face. She had clear grey eyes, with a keen earnest gaze. I wondered why I had been unable to notice her all those years.

  Ana Abya handed us our coffee and then went out back to put the kernels from the mortar into a big bubbling pot. Then she came back in and started grinding some more. I turned to Ilia.

  “My father came from Medora? I thought he was from Havermark.”

  “Yes your father is from Havermark, but he lived for a while in Medora. That is where I met him.”

  “Were you friends?” I asked.

  She sighed.

  “No. To be honest he really fucked up my life.”