Determination was Thalia’s middle name. Or it should have been, were it not already Blue – so given by her ma, the proprietress of Dara Island. Named for a palette of impossible hues: the supreme turquoise of the Coral Sea encompassing their island paradise; the swarming fish shoals and shallow sea stars; the blue-glittered butterflies, fairywrens and kingfishers flashing through the jungle deep; the indigo skies of the monsoon; and the bright cyan gleam of her eyes. Thalia Blue, the heiress of Dara.
That, of course, had proved too fanciful a name for the intrepid tot growing up among the small working village of Dara’s Mermaid Bay Resort, with her streaky driftwood curls perpetually wind tangled, her nose ever pink and peeling from the sun, her feet and shoulders always bare, nutbrown, salt dusted. Soon, she came to be known simply as Tally.
Eleven-year-old Tally was the whole island’s daughter, not just the only child of Richard Ramsey, the most powerful man in the region. She was as beloved as he was feared.
But Ma, and Ma alone, called her Tally Ho . . .
‘My Tally Ho – when she sets her mind on a thing, nothing can ever stand in her way.’
It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about Tally, and no surprise it should come from Ma. There was not a kinder person, nor a gentler spirit in all the world than Nerissa Ramsey nee Forster. One day, when Dara was hers, Tally hoped to have as much wisdom and patience as Ma did – though she didn’t like her chances. It was her determination that was the problem, for it always seemed to get the better of her.
This cicada-shrill summer morn had unfolded in familiar fashion: Tally had filched a fruit-platter breakfast from Anita in the resort kitchen, helped resort groundsman Frank with the coconut de-nutting, and swum with stingrays and reef sharks under the long jetty with her island playmate, Lila. Then, she had grown restless. Rebelliousness invariably followed restlessness, and so, Tally had set out to right the latest injustice in her young life.
While her father was doing his morning rounds of the resort, she determined to retrieve the red leatherette notebook he had confiscated from her weeks earlier for some forgotten misdeed and then locked away in his hallowed office – a place no Ramsey woman was permitted. She was sick of asking, and being denied. Her father, for all that he terrified her, would not stand in her way…
Leave a Reply