Dear Akkani

     I hope that you are finding joy in reading this letter or whatever you are doing while I write this letter. It always saddens me when I go down to the beach and I know that your beautiful smile and somehow haunting voice I will not find anywhere, no matter how hard I look. Nor will I find a collection of seashells or coloured rocks by where I sit, from where you would have left them then gone to play in the sea.

     But enough of my reminiscing. You must tire of it every time I write to you. You probably are looking at me right now and laughing that an old Xweetok like me should even bother trying to write a letter to a long-dead child. Yet in a way, you'll never die because of the memories we have of you. Like that small, perfectly shaped and coloured shell you once found. I wear it on a string around my neck, and every time I see it, I can remember as clearly as yesterday a tiny Island Xweetok half running, half stumbling up the beach towards me, the shell in her hands.

     Yes, that was you and although I am an old man now, I still wear that shell around my neck on a piece of string to remind me of you, and that long ago day. Sometimes I laugh to myself because I can remember that day but I can't remember something as simple as where my glasses are, or where I put my coffee mug which I was certain I had left right next to me.

     I have long since gone back to Mystery Island, to see if any traces of the four original clans are left but every time I search, my heart tells me that I know there aren't. I wish there were in some ways, but in other ways I'm glad they aren't because otherwise there would be more tourists on this island; it's ruined enough already without other city-dwellers coming and tearing up the forest, or digging and diving in the river to see if there is any gold there. Mystery Island is so full of tourists you would think that it had just opened to the public! At least our secret is safe; I promise for all our own goods that I will keep it that way - safe.

     There is one day that I can remember quite clearly but I'm not sure why. You had come out of the water and come over to me where I had been sitting watching you. You picked up a few shells and with a bit of seaweed started to tie them into a string. I watched you for a while. Soon afterwards you looked up at me and asked me a question. I was struck dumb with the thought of my young daughter not even properly a child, more like an infant, asking a question such as this. You asked me on that day this question: "Daddy? What is war?"

     I can remember staring at you for almost a minute then remembering what I was doing. I blinked and smiled at you.

     "You want to know what war is?" You nodded seriously in reply. I gaped.

     "War is…" I paused. I wasn't sure how to put it.

     "War is when someone disagrees with another someone's ideas." When I said this you looked puzzled and questioned me again.

     "Daddy, were you ever in a war?"

     I smiled gently. "Yes Akkani, I have been in a war."

     Then this third question really made me realise how you saw me. You asked: "Is that why you're so silent?"

     I looked up and out towards the horizon where I could see a clear sky, turning a slightly pink colour as the day began to end. You had made me think exactly why I was, as you had put it "so silent." You were right. That was the reason I was silent. You of course know now that the war which I was in took the life of your mother and my wife. At the time I had felt like it was my fault and since then my personality had been quiet, calm and like you'd said, silent. I remember vaguely telling you it was time to go back even though every other night we would stay for much longer. I can remember lying waiting for sleep to come and hearing you sing one of your little songs that you so often sang and it was then it became clear.

     "…The sea's waves and the spray and foam that washes up onto beach

     Is the starting of the ripples that spread for people to learn from and teach…"

     It made me think about how I had been so quiet and calm. Maybe this was why you were too. Knowing what my own life was like I tried from then on to be more lively. It seemed to work.

     I remember with a smile when you discovered your special power and you changed from a small Xweetok to a tiny Zafara. I would wake to wonder where my yesterday-Zafara child had gone to discover that you were an Aisha again or a Maraquan Kyrri, swimming around joyfully in the shallows of the sea, where I could just see you splashing in and out of it like a fish.

     You were my island child, our island child, and yet when you slipped away from us we knew we had often subconsciously thought all that time that you would never grow up. You didn't. You never will. But I often do wonder what would have happened if I say hadn't decided to doze off that day or if Karesh had left you where you had lain on that night. What would have happened? So many times I seem to look back and wonder the same question every time. What would have happened if…?

     I must sound like an old fool to you, and indeed I probably am but I still do wish you were here again. Some nights, when the sea is an angry dog, rolling around on the beach and gnashing its teeth in the storm, when the rain pours down on the roof of my lonesome small hut, I wish you were here to sing your strange lilting "time-songs" as you called them. I always wondered why but I suppose I'll never know. Whenever I asked you, your face just darkened slightly and you looked up at me and answered that you didn't know why, "it just is" you would say, and that would be the end of it for the day and you would go down to play in the water again, off to collect some shells or some pretty rocks or a crab cupped in your hands. You would laugh and smile and I would leave the subject and join you, splashing the water everywhere and looking most undignified but having fun with my daughter, just like all fathers should do.

     I smile as I finish this letter. "It just is." That's what you used to say all the time. Now I feel much better, as if the burdens in my heart have been laid out and evaporated, as if the paper could deal with it and has lifted them. But I can somehow feel that all along you've been watching me write this and I know that it was not the paper that lifted my heart free of its burdens. It was you.

     Now I must finish and coil up this piece of paper. I shall tie it with one of the shell strings you used to make so you shall recognise that it is from me. Then I will slip it into a bottle and set it adrift where I hope that one day soon you will come across it and know that I will always be

     Loving and longing for you,

     Your affectionate father, Khalon

The End