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PART THREE
The airman
August 1944 - The Grain Moon

One
------------
It is dark when the airman falls from the sky.
    Above him, a storm rages, but it is an artificial one; the thunder and lightning are shellfire and tracer bullets.
  As he tumbles like a leaf in an autumn gale through the cold night air, he twists gently on his lines, the parachute sighing to him softly from above. He watches the storm, the flashes above him, the flashes below him.
  One of those flashes below will be his Supermarine Spitfire, and he tires to still the feeling of fear and loss that this thought gives him. Minutes ago it was a roaring beast, a tiger of the sky, now it will be a bonfire burning around the twelve cylinder Rolls-Royce engine, twisted and broken.
  He tries to spot his landing, but it's dark, and the lightning flashes only serve to blind him further.
  Then suddenly the ground is right there, and there is no time to prepare himself.
  He's unconscious before he even feels the pain.
Two
------------
Hovering between life and death, the airman's dreams are as twisted and broken as his fighter plane, which still smokes on a hillside a mile away. He sees weird visions of heaven and hell, and has a nightmare of running but being unable to run, as something chases him through fiery pits.
  He groans in his sleep, and thrashes wildly, disturbing the hare that has been sitting nearby, watching him, wide eyes blinking in the near moonless night. Finally, as he wakes in early daylight, he dreams he's being eaten by a dragon.
------------
He sits up and screams, because his ankle is broken.
  A beast scumbles away from him and he sees the dragon from his dreams, a large dog, a wolfhound. He collapses onto his back again, and with his thick leather glove he wipes his face, wet with the dog's slobber.
  Turning his neck awkwardly, he sees the lines of his chute stretching across a field of wheat. He's made quite a mess, and suddenly panic takes hold.
  He sits up again, this time avoiding using his right leg, the ankle of which is throbbing in a threatening way.
  The dog has run away a few paces, but now sits watching him,
  Where the hell am I? he thinks.
  The last thing he remembers is that he'd managed to radio Angor before he'd had to bail out, but even then they were way off course, having made a run north to avoid a fighter patrol. What bad luck to hit another one. They'd come from nowhere and taken half the flight down before they even knew what was happening.
  They'd been over the coast, God knows where, and he'd seen the light's of a small group of islands, and prayed he'd land on one of them, and not the sea, for no land in the sea would mean death.
  He considered the facts, the chances of his survival.
  His ankle is broken, he cannot walk.
  If his emergency kit has survived, he can inject himself with some morphine, which, while it lasts, will ease the pain.
  The island on which he had fallen must be inhabited; this is a wheat field, there is someone's dog.
  He knows this is not the mainland, but it could be almost anywhere else; they'd gone a long way north before the dogfight.
    He radioed Angor, but maybe Angor didn't make it either.
  He decides not to think that.
  Angor Thomas is a good pilot, and he knows he'll have made it. He'll report their position, and then . . .
  Then what?
  They're not going to mount a rescue operation for one missing airman, even if he is a flight lieutenant. The best he can hope for is to make contact with friendly forces, get himself picked up by the Navy.
  He's just thinking all this when he heard a harsh voice, shouting.
    "Skilla! Skilla!"
    He fumbles to pull his gloves off.
    "Skill-a!"
    It's a man's voice, and it sounds angry, even if he doesn't understand what the man is shouting.
  He manages to pull his glove off with his teeth, and scrabbles for his pistol, but before he can pop the catch on his holster, the light is blotted out above him by the figure of a man. A large man.
  He looks down and whistles.
  The dog bounds over to him, begins to lick his hand.
  "Well, Skilla," he says, "what have you found this time?"
Three
------------
Wait here," the man says, and the airman is not sure whether he means him or Skilla, because the wolfhound stays, panting noisily beside him, while the man goes.
  He is gone a long time, during which the airman wonders if he should try to escape.
    "Good idea," he says allowed to Skilla. "And where exactly should I crawl to?"
  The dog pants at him some more, hanging out its log pink tongue.
  When the man returns, he's with another, younger, man, possibly his son. They have made a stretcher from two spindly pine trunks and some sacking.
  Without a word, they cut him free from his lines and lift him on to the stretcher. The pain is almost enough to make him black out once more, but something makes him want to be strong in front of these two quiet men. He bites his lip and focuses on the white clouds floating in the blue sky above him as they carry him out of the wheat field.
  Half delirious, he looks at the sky, his real home. That is where he should be, he thinks. In the blue heavens, the engine growling in front of me, the wind whistling behind me. It was when he joined the Air Force, really. If he was going to fight, and if he might be going to die, at least he could fly like an angel first.
  That is where I should be. Up there.
  But now he is earthbound, and worse than earthbound, for he cannot even walk. He is a worm, stuck to the surface of a ball of mud.
  Very soon, the rescue party of silent men and tongue-lolling hound step across a low wire fence at the edge of the wheat field, and onto a path that winds beside some woods.
  They turn down another track, and craning his head to one side, the airman sees they're heading for a farmhouse.
  It's very early still. He can't see his watch, but he can tell from the angle of the sun, from the smell of the dew evaporating off the grass, from the morning calls of the cockerels in the farmyard.
  A woman runs out of the farmhouse, looks down at him briefly, and nods to the older man.
  "Quickly," she says.
    They carry him into the kitchen, set his stretcher on the table, and then lift him off and sit him in a large wooden armchair. He winces as they support his bad leg on a small stool, but he's determined not to fuss.
  "Flight Lieutenant M. Turpin, 331st Fighter Squadron," he says, as smartly as he can, then immediately realises he's being an arse. He's not facing the secret police. Standing looking at him are three farmers, a middle-aged man, his wife, and their son. All three are mystified.
  He smiles.
  "Call me Mark," he says.
  The farmer node.
  He looks at his wife.
  "This is Fiona. This is Ben. My son."
  He puts a hand on the young man's shoulder. Mark doesn't get up but he holds out his hand. The farmer doesn't take it, just stays where he is.
  "I am Xephos," he says.
  He doesn't smile.

Four
------------

When Mark wakes again he is in a bed.
  He has no idea how long he has slept. After they'd brought him to the farm house, Xephos had sent Ben back to the wheat field to collect the airman's equipment.
  Mark had told Fiona how to administer the morphine, and within minutes of the injection, he'd started to feel very drowsy, the exhaustion and shock catching up with him.
  "We will take your parachute," Xephos said. "And your equipment."
  But Flight lieutenant Mark Turpin was already asleep.
  "Well," said Xephos, shaking his head, "so it is."

------------

Mark wakes not in a large but simple room, barely more than a peasant's dwelling. The mattress he's lying on is filled with straw, he's underneath a plain white quilt, stuffed with goose or duck feathers; h can hear both birds in the farmyard.
  He might have slept for twenty-four hours, which seems likely as he's desperate to pee. Which presents a problem, since he cannot walk.
  He hears voices downstairs, cannot make out the words, but the voices are raised, arguing.
  He hears a door slam, and a few minutes later, footsteps in the corridor. The door opens.
  Fiona puts her head round the door, expecting to find him asleep still.
    "Oh!" she says. "So you are awake, after all."
  "Never felt better," he lies.
"We thought it best to let you rest for as long as possible."
"That's very kind. You're very kind, in fact. I don't know how I shall be able to thank you."
Something passes across Fiona's face. She comes into the room, and begins fussing and tidying, and he has a chance to appraise her. She has an honest face, he thinks. She is tall, very tall in fact, and strong. The word sturdy pops into his head.
He realises that they have undressed him; all his clothes hang over a chair by the bed neatly. On the top of the pile, even his camouflage pattern silk scarf is precisely folded.
He feels the need again, and coughs.
"I wonder," he says. "Call of nature, you know?"
She looks at him blankly, then realises what he means. She reaches under the bed and pulls out a large china pot.
"Do you think you can manage?" she asks.
My God, he thinks in horror, is she offering to help me?
He smiles.
"I'll find a way," he says briskly.
She leaves, and he performs his task. Every second is agony.
When it is done, he collapses back in bed, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
I should have got her to give me another jab, he thinks, but very soon he begins to get sleepy again anyway.
As he drifts back to the blue dreaming heavens once more, his eyes fix on his clothes, on the remains of his equipment pack, and he notices something.
His pistol is missing.

Five
------------
When he realises that they have given him their own bedroom, Flight Lieutenant Mark Turpin insists on being moved to another room, any other room.
There is a long argument, and finally, as he starts to hoist himself out of bed, saying he'll crawl if he has to, they relent.

------------

A while later, he hops down the corridor with Xephos on one side and Ben on the other. They have to hop sideways as the corridor is so narrow, but very soon he is lifted into a smaller bed in a smaller room.
Now he realises that it's Ben's room, and he starts to protest again, especially as they'd passed the closed door of presumably another bedroom on the way down the corridor.
"You are our guest," Ben says, putting his hand on Mark's forearm. "And you are ill. It is summer, and I'll be quite well in the barn. The hay has just been cut, last month, and it makes a very soft bed. You should see the hares run as we cut the hay! It's my favourite job. How they run! Crazy!"
The young man prattles on and on, and before long, Mark has even forgotten what it is they were arguing about.
Fiona appears in the doorway, with the morphine vial and the needle.
"You are an angel," Mark says, for the pain has got worse again, but as he falls asleep, three things worry him.
He has done nothing about finding out where he is.
The pain is still awful, and there is very little morphine left.
And they are arguing again, downstairs. He knows that they are arguing about him.

Six
------------
Next day, Mark feels well enough to get up for a while.
They carry him downstairs and he sits at the kitchen table, in a big armchair, with his foot straight out in front of him, on a cushion on a stood.
Fiona is cooking at the stove.
Xephos and Ben have gone out; always working.
Mark knows how much work there is to do on a farm; when he was a young boy he used to spend his summers in Devon, staying on a farm. He has no idea now, thinking about it, why he went there. His parents were somewhere else. But then, his parents where always somewhere else.
It was while he spent those summers on the farm that he knew he wanted to fly. He can remember, clearly, drinking milk while sitting on the back doorstep of the farmhouse. The milk was still warm from the cow, and as he sat there, it must have been early evening, he guesses, dozens of little birds flew around his head. They were swifts, nesting in cracks in the eaves of his farmhouse.
At that point, he'd never seen a plane, but when he did a year or so later, he knew that's all he wanted to do with his life. That, and fall in love.
Somehow, he knew that when he was a young boy too.

------------

His memories are brought back to the present.
"At least, let me do something," he says to Fiona. "I feel terrible just sitting here, watching you all working."
Fiona shrugs, goes to the pantry, and returns with a large basket of peas, still in their pods. Skilla briefly lifts his head form where he sits, under the kitchen table, at Mark's good foot.
"You can shell these," she says. "You know how to do that?"
Mark can see she's only teasing, but he feels slightly nettled.
"Yes," he says. "I know how to do that."
For a while, they work in silence, Mark shucking the peas into a white bowl, letting the empty pods lie on the table, and Fiona chopping and grinding at the stove, where a pot is simmering. There is a strange smell, but Mark doesn't really notice.
His mind is on other matters.
"Why are you arguing?" he says. "You're arguing about me, aren't you?"
"No . . ." Fiona says, but she is interrupted.
"Yes," says Xephos, suddenly filling the doorway. "We are arguing about you."
Mark drops his pea pods and raises a hand.
"Listen. I am very grateful to you both, to you all. But what can I do?"
He looks at his ankle, realising he actually has no idea how long a broken ankle takes a heal.
"You should not have come here," Xephos says, barely hiding his anger.
"I didn't exactly choose to come here," Mark says. "Come to that, I'm not exactly sure where here is."
"Here," says Xephos, coming into the kitchen, "is somewhere that is not part of your war. We have not chosen to fight and kill each other. We want to remain out of your war. Neutral. And yet, your war comes here anyway."
Mark shakes his head.
"So what would you have me do? I'd like nothing more than to fly away, I promise you that. Just give me my pistol back and I'll be gone,"
Xephos grunts, turns and washes his hands in the sink. Drying them, he turns back to Mark.
"I dropped your gun in the sea," he says. "It is part of your war, your life, not ours."
"What do you mean by 'my war'? The enemy . . ."
"The enemy? There are two sides fighting in this war, are there not? But yes, though we said we will not take part, we have your enemy on our soil anyway. They should not be here, but there are reports of them all along the coast. And they hunt for the enemy soldiers. For airmen who's aeroplanes have crashed. Just like you. And they will come looking for you, and then your war will come here, to Blest Island."
He bangs his hand on the table in front of Mark, so hard that the white bowl wobbles.
He leans down in front of Mark.
"I want no part of it."
Her turns and storms from the kitchen.
Now angry himself, Mark calls after him.
"Where is my pistol? What have you done with my pistol?"
But Xephos has gone and, cursing his ankle, Mark cannot follow.
Fiona stands at the stove still, her back to the scene, her shoulders trembling.

Seven
------------
The days pass.
With each day, Mark's ankle is healing.
The morphine has run out, but in its place, Fiona has been feeding him a constant supply of a special black tea. Every day she chops and grinds at the stove, concocting that rather strange smelling liquid in a small pot.
  Although it smells unpleasant, Mark has to concede that the tea more than take the edge off the pain.
  "It's something my mother used to make us when we were ill," Fiona explains. "And her mother taught her, before that. W   e have this very special flower here, it only grows on the western half of the island. Nobody knows why but it will not grow on this side. Look."
  She holds up a very bizarre looking flower. It is purple-black. He thinks it looks like a dragon's head.
    "It can work miracles, you know, if prepared properly," she says.
  He even wonders if it is helping his ankle to heal faster, for after a couple of weeks, he can hobble slowly down the corridor, and even get downstairs, though that hurts a lot.

------------

The days pass.
  They give Mark some old clothes of Xephos' to wear. Just to be on the safe side. They are big for him, and he feels silly. And more than that, it's odd to wear another man's clothes, especially when that man seems to hate you. But it makes sense.
  "Maybe Ben is more your size," Fiona says, looking him up and down. At the moment Ben walks into the kitchen.
  "Well," says Fiona, "Speak of the devil and his horns appear. What do you think, should we give Mark some of your clothes instead?"
  "I think he looks just fine as he is," says Ben solemnly, and then bursts out laughing.
  Fiona chases him off, batting at his head with a large wooden spoon.

------------

Then days pass.
  Mark gets better, but the mood in the house gets worse.
  The arguments continue, Mark can hear them at night, along the corridor from his room. He knows he needs to do something, but he has no idea what. When he can walk, he can just walk away, even if it means walking into captivity. Or worse.
  Over mealtimes, no one speaks.
  Even Skilla is quiet, lurking in the shadows under the table.

------------

Eventually, Mark can stand the atmosphere no longer, and after they have finished their evening meal of chicken stew and black bread, with great effort, he stands up.
  He looks at the three whose lives he is endangering.
  "Throw me out," he says. "I can't bear this, and I can't be responsible for your safety. Put me in a cart and drop me back in the fields somewhere. I'll fight my way out of this. I've done it before."
  He has done no such thing, but it makes him feel brave to say it.
  No one says anything, then finally, Xephos clears his throat.
  "Sit down, Mark Turpin," he says.
  Then Xephos gets up, and leaves.
  "Ben, help your mother," he says, as he goes. "I have work to do."
  Fiona puts her hand on Ben's shoulder.
  "Go with your father," she says, "I can manage here."
  When the men are gone, Mark sits again. He does so with great relief - he is almost weeping from the pain of standing on his ankle.
  "What is it?" he asks, when he gets his breath again.
  "What do you mean?"
  "It's not just war. This war that you say you are not a part of. You may not want to be a part of the war, but you are a part of the world. And the world is at war. It's not a question of what you want."
  Fiona says nothing. She clears up for a while, then turns to look at Mark, dish-cloth in hand, leaning back against the sink.
  "Xephos says . . ."
  "What? That I am dangerous? That I will get you into trouble? He might be right, you know. Maybe you should listen to your husband. Throw me out before soldiers come looking for me."
  "No one knows you are here."
  "Are you sure? What about the other villagers? Did no one see me arrive? Is no one wondering why Ben is sleeping in the barn on sacks of grain?"
  Fiona doesn't answer that.
  "He is not a bad man," she says instead, quietly.
  "I never said he was."
  "But you are right. It is not just the war. None of us want the war, but, you are right, there is something else."
  Mark feels the tension in her voice, and feels his own heart beating. He knows what she is about to say.
  "You may have seen there is an empty room upstairs . . ."
  She stops, puts a hand to her mouth, shakes her head, and clears her throat.
  "Ben is - was - not our only child. We had a daughter too. Her name was Kim. She was twelve years old. One day, two summers ago, planes flew overhead. They were being chased by your people. They were fighting."
  Her voice lowers a little, but she presses on.
  "We were out in the fields, we ran for cover. Then the planes dropped their bombs. Ben says they only did it to be lighter, so they could fly faster, and escape. He has read about it. And they did escape, but they let their bombs fall on the island first."
  Fiona's voice is a whisper now - Mark's own heartbeat is louder than her words.
  "Kim was at the farm. She ran to the woodshed. One of the bombs fell right there."
  She turns back to the sink, wringing the dish-cloth.
  "That is why Xephos is so angry. This war, that none of us want, took our girl away from us. What had she done? Why her?"
  She looks Mark in the eye, tears running down her face.
  She whispers.
  "Why?"

Eight
------------
The days on the farm pass, as if no war had ever existed.
Xephos and Ben work endless hours in the fields, Fiona runs the house and the farmyard.
  They are indefatigable, tireless, stoic, and given the tragedy of their daughter, Mark decides, they are still people with life inside them.
  Only once does he hear anything like a complaint.
  "There's much to do," Fiona tells him one afternoon, as she makes his special tea. "Always so much to do on a farm, but nothing compared to when we harvest the wheat. That's when the work really starts."
    Even then, Mark detects no self pity in what she says. It is simply their life here, on the island, on the farm.
    "When did you cut the grain?" Mark asks. He is struck by a desire to help. If it's not too soon, his ankle might be better enough.
  "After the grain moon."
  "The grain moon? What's that?"
  "Just what it says. We still use the old names for the moons here, the full moons. They come from the land, from life on the land. Calf moon, when the animals give birth, leaf moon, when the leaves turn to the trees. The flower moon. Grain moon."
  Mark nods, thoughtfully.
  "I like those," he says. "I like those a lot. And when is the grain moon?"
  "The day after tomorrow," Fiona says, and Mark known then he won't be able to help.

Nine
------------
Until that moment when Fiona told him about the death of their daughter, Mark had not thought of home.
  Unconsciously, he'd decided to suppress such thoughts, as they would have hurt far more than his ankle ever could.
------------

Mark sits alone at the kitchen table, staring out of the window. Vaguely he notices smoke from a bonfire in the farmyard, then he hears shouting outside.
  They are arguing again, but this time Ben is involved too.
    Suddenly, Ben is back in the kitchen.
  "Mr Turpin," he says breathlessly, "my father is burning your things."
  Mark almost jumps from the chair.
  "Why?" he cries. "What? Why?"
  "I don't know. He wont make sense."
  "I must stop him. Will you help me?"
  Ben nods and becomes a crutch on Mark's right side. Together, they hobble out of the kitchen and into the farmyard, where Xephos has an old oil drum with the end cut off. Grey smoke broils from inside, in thick choking clouds.
  Mark is too late, Xephos is poking at the last of Mark's uniform into the drum with a hefty wooden stick.
  Skilla runs around, barking.
    Mark's heart is pounding.
  "What on earth are you doing? What gives you the right to do that? Stop it!"
  Without waiting, and heedless of the pain in his ankle, he lunges at the barrel, knocking it flying, and sending smoke and spits of fire across the mud of the yard. He sees what he feared was in there, and grabs his smouldering flying jacket.
  Sinking to his knees, he bats at the burning leather, frantically hunting through the pockets.
  "Right?" shouts Xephos. "It is not a question of right. It is a question of sense. There are soldiers coming. I heard it in the village today. They have been on the other islands, to the south, hunting for men like you."
  Mark hears him but ignores him, and ignores the burns he's inflicting on himself, as he turns his jacket inside out, searching for something as if his life depends on it.
  Finally, he finds what he is looking for, drops the jacket on the ground, and sits back, speechless.
  It had seems so unreal here, like a dream, in this little idyllic haven, away from the war. But Xephos was right after all. The war has come back ot find him, to the very doorstep of the island.
  Soldiers are coming.
  "And if they come here, there must be no trace," Xephos says. "Of you."
  He sets the barrel upright again, and with the stick fishes everything back off the ground and inside.
  He pulls matches form his pocket and sets it all alight again, and this time, Mark makes no effort to stop him.
  He sits on the ground, clutching something tightly to his chest.
  He is trembling.
  "What do you have there?" Xephos asks roughly. "Everything of yours must be burned."
  Mark does not answer.
  "Do you hear me?" shouts Xephos. "Everything!"
  He makes a grab at whatever is in Mark's hands, but Mark pulls away and they begin to fight, wrestling on the ground.
  "No!" screams Fiona. "Stop it!"
  Ben loiters, unsure what to do. Skilla barks.
  "No," cries Fiona again.
  The men do not listen to her, but it is ever soon. Xephos is stronger than Mark, and the airman is injured after all.
  Xephos stands, grimly about to cast the object into the flames when he stops.
  He looks at it.
  It is a wallet, a simply one that folds in half.
  Xephos opens it, looks for a long time, then slowly closes it again.
  He holds it in the air for a moment, his arm outstretched, as if thinking, and then he drops it at Mark's feet, and walks away, into the farmhouse.
  Fiona approaches. She sees what her husband saw.
  The wallet has flopped open, and inside is a photograph.
  She kneels beside Mark, who picks the wallet up and shows her the photograph.
  It's a portrait, of three people. One of them is Mark, in his uniform. He has his arms around a pretty woman; his wife. Standing in front of them, her head tilted to one side, and a smile on her face, is their daughter.
  Fiona takes the photograph and Mark lets her.
  "What is her name?" she asks quietly.
  "My daughter?" Mark asks.
  She nods.
  "Xevphera. Her name is Xevphera."

Ten
------------
That night, Mark goes to bed early.
He's been drinking Fiona's tea like water, and it really appears to be working miracles on his ankle, as well as making him very sleepy.
  He is getting ready for bed, when there is a knock at the door.
  "Yes?" he calls.
  Fiona comes in, and behind her, Ben.
  They both look solemn.
  As Mark climbs into bed, they each stand at one corner of its foot. Fiona twists her hands nervously.
  "Ben," she says. "Tell Mark what you heard."
    Ben nods.
  "I was in the village today, at the inn, and there I spoke to a fisherman called Nilesy. Nilesy was in Skarpness yesterday and he heard talk in the harbour there."
  He pauses.
  "Go on, Ben," says Fiona, but Ben seems scared, as if what he has to say if risky. And maybe it is.
  Fiona helps him out.
  "We may not be fighting in this war, Mark, but some of our people don't like having foreign soldiers telling us what to do. There is a resistance movement, and they have made contact with your people. It seems they know you are here somewhere. They have come for you, and have put word around that if you are able to travel, you should present yourself at the tavern in Skarpness, on the docks."
  Mark is speechless.
  Angor made it home.
  Somehow, this single, wonderful piece of news is enough to make him dissolve in tears. He buries his face in his hands, and Fiona nods at Ben to leave. When Mark raises his head again, they are alone.
  "But, what can I do? How can I get there?"
  "You will take our rowing boat. Tomorrow night. It will be too dangerous by day, but the moon is full tomorrow, the grain moon. It will be bright, and you will see the lights of Skarpness to guide your way.
  "Go to the tavern in the docks. Ask for a man called Lyndon. He works there. I know him. But I didn't know he works for the resistance."
  "But your boat . . .? Xephos?"
  "Xephos has said you are to take the boat."

Eleven
------------
The following day is over in a moment, and yet seems to last for centuries.
  Every ten minutes, Mark finds himself checking the height of the sun in the sky, waiting for the dusk, but this far north, it has gone nine o'clock before the sun finally disappears behind the western hill of the island.
  All day, Fiona fusses, making food for his short journey, strapping his ankle tightly, then unstrapping it, then strapping it once more. She feeds him lots of tea, tells him to keep all weight off his leg until he has to.
  Ben loiters in the yard with Skilla, not coming close, unable to pull away.
  Xephos is nowhere to be seen.
------------

Finally, at ten o'clock, as Mark sits in the kitchen, getting his last instructions from Fiona, Xephos walks into the house.
  "Well," he says. His voice is flat, his face is expressionless. He looks at Mark. "It's time. Everything's ready."
  Mark stands, and winces, but in truth, he can walk now.
  There is silence, as the two men contemplate each other, yet say nothing.
  Fiona slides a packet of food into a knapsack, and hands it to Mark.
  He is about to thank her, when Ben blunders into the kitchen.
  "There are soldiers! Here! In the village!"
  His eyes are wild, and his panic infects them all.
  "In the village? Are you sure?"
  "Teep saw them, and cycled to tell us. They're coming this way!"
  "You must go," cries Fiona. "Hurry, hurry!"
  Now there is no time for goodbyes. Mark throws his arms briefly around Fiona, and Ben, who stands in the doorway of the farmhouse. Then Xephos hurries away into the moonlit night, Mark hobbling at his side.

------------

They take a small lane, one that rises over a hill, and down through some woods, to an empty field.
  At the end of the field, Mark can already hear the sea, and a narrow path leads to a dilapidated jetty.
  They hurry, but Mark is struggling. Not only does his ankle hurt, he's had no exercise for several weeks.
    Suddenly there are shouts on the lane behind them. Torchlight.
  "They're here," Xephos whispers. "Quick, we'll hide in the boathouse."
  They duck the last few steps, through a low doorway, into the boathouse, where Xephos' boat is moored. It bobs in the water, waiting to be off.
  "We'll be safe here," whispers Xephos. "Until they've gone. They won't think to look here. Maybe."
  Mark nods in the darkness, in pain again.
  "All right," he says. "All right."
  They wait, and the voices they heard soon face. They wait some more.
  Xephos points at the moonlight shining across the water.
  "The moon is bright," he says. "You should have no trouble seeing. When this moon is over, we cut the wheat, on the next dry day. I think we'll be cutting wheat tomorrow."
  Mark nods.
  "I wish I could be here to help you."
  He means it. It would be one small way of repaying them, in return for what they've done.
  "I think it is nearly time for you to go," Xephos says, and he helps Mark into the boat.
  Suddenly, they hear voices again. Close.
  Very close.
  Xephos swears.
  "Go," he hisses.
  "I'll be a sitting duck if they see me!" Mark hisses back.
  Xephos says nothing. When he speaks again, his words seem idiotically inappropriate.
  "Your daughter," he says. "Your daughter. How old is she?"
  Mark desperately looks at the shore line, beyond the boathouse. Any moment he expects to see soldiers silhouetted against the starry sky. The voices are coming closer.
    "She's twelve. Twelve."
  Xephos nods.
  "I thought so," he says. "I could tell. I knew it . . . Just like out Kim."
  He pushes the prow of the boat, silently, yet hard and strong, and as he does so, he leans over and drops something heavy in Mark's lap.
  "Just in case of trouble," Xephos whispers.
  The shouts are right behind the shed. If they come round the side, Mark will be seen, and it will all be over.
  Xephos stands, and being careful to make noise, he begins to run along the shoreline, the opposite way, away from Mark and the boat, calling out as he goes.
  Mark picks up the oars, and begins to row, as powerfully but as quietly as he can. Very soon he is out to sea, and safe. He ships the oars, and feels for what Xephos dropped in his lap.
  It is his service pistol that he thought had been thrown away.
  In the pure bright moonlight, he half sees Xephos, a shadow moving along the coast. The soldiers are after him, running.
  Torchlight sweeps the dark, and finds Xephos.
  There is a short sudden clatter of machine gun fire.
  It stops.
  Mark knows that Xephos will not be cutting the wheat tomorrow.

Ten
------------Mark Turpin's daughter Xevphera has a favourite story, one that she never forgets as she grew up, about how a man called Xephos, who she never met, saved her father, and gave him back to her. What she is never told is what really happened to Xephos; that is a secret that Mark and Esmé, his wife, keep to themselves. It would only hurt the child to know it, they think, and anyway, they are grateful enough for all three of them, as the first years pass

------------

Esmé dies at the age of sixty-three, and even Xevphera dies before her father, at seventy.
  Mark Turpin himself lives to be one hundred and one years old.
  His life is a happy life, and he remains physically fit, and fairly sharp right up to the end, as if he once drank some elixir of life.
  In fact the only thing that ever ails him is arthritis in that dodgy ankle.
Eventually, a short but fatal pneumonia takes him.
  Even on the morning of the day he dies, however, he still reads his paper over breakfast, from cover to cover. On this particular day, he reads about a startling discovery of a Viking burial, on a small island in the north.
  He's always been interested in archaeology, but it's something else about this story that tickles at his memory.
  Something about the island, though he can't remember exactly what.
  He thinks he might have been there, once, a lifetime ago.

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

PART THREE
The airman
August 1944 - The Grain Moon

One
------------
It is dark when the airman falls from the sky.
    Above him, a storm rages, but it is an artificial one; the thunder and lightning are shellfire and tracer bullets.
  As he tumbles like a leaf in an autumn gale through the cold night air, he twists gently on his lines, the parachute sighing to him softly from above. He watches the storm, the flashes above him, the flashes below him.
  One of those flashes below will be his Supermarine Spitfire, and he tires to still the feeling of fear and loss that this thought gives him. Minutes ago it was a roaring beast, a tiger of the sky, now it will be a bonfire burning around the twelve cylinder Rolls-Royce engine, twisted and broken.
  He tries to spot his landing, but it's dark, and the lightning flashes only serve to blind him further.
  Then suddenly the ground is right there, and there is no time to prepare himself.
  He's unconscious before he even feels the pain.
Two
------------
Hovering between life and death, the airman's dreams are as twisted and broken as his fighter plane, which still smokes on a hillside a mile away. He sees weird visions of heaven and hell, and has a nightmare of running but being unable to run, as something chases him through fiery pits.
  He groans in his sleep, and thrashes wildly, disturbing the hare that has been sitting nearby, watching him, wide eyes blinking in the near moonless night. Finally, as he wakes in early daylight, he dreams he's being eaten by a dragon.
------------
He sits up and screams, because his ankle is broken.
  A beast scumbles away from him and he sees the dragon from his dreams, a large dog, a wolfhound. He collapses onto his back again, and with his thick leather glove he wipes his face, wet with the dog's slobber.
  Turning his neck awkwardly, he sees the lines of his chute stretching across a field of wheat. He's made quite a mess, and suddenly panic takes hold.
  He sits up again, this time avoiding using his right leg, the ankle of which is throbbing in a threatening way.
  The dog has run away a few paces, but now sits watching him,
  Where the hell am I? he thinks.
  The last thing he remembers is that he'd managed to radio Angor before he'd had to bail out, but even then they were way off course, having made a run north to avoid a fighter patrol. What bad luck to hit another one. They'd come from nowhere and taken half the flight down before they even knew what was happening.
  They'd been over the coast, God knows where, and he'd seen the light's of a small group of islands, and prayed he'd land on one of them, and not the sea, for no land in the sea would mean death.
  He considered the facts, the chances of his survival.
  His ankle is broken, he cannot walk.
  If his emergency kit has survived, he can inject himself with some morphine, which, while it lasts, will ease the pain.
  The island on which he had fallen must be inhabited; this is a wheat field, there is someone's dog.
  He knows this is not the mainland, but it could be almost anywhere else; they'd gone a long way north before the dogfight.
    He radioed Angor, but maybe Angor didn't make it either.
  He decides not to think that.
  Angor Thomas is a good pilot, and he knows he'll have made it. He'll report their position, and then . . .
  Then what?
  They're not going to mount a rescue operation for one missing airman, even if he is a flight lieutenant. The best he can hope for is to make contact with friendly forces, get himself picked up by the Navy.
  He's just thinking all this when he heard a harsh voice, shouting.
    "Skilla! Skilla!"
    He fumbles to pull his gloves off.
    "Skill-a!"
    It's a man's voice, and it sounds angry, even if he doesn't understand what the man is shouting.
  He manages to pull his glove off with his teeth, and scrabbles for his pistol, but before he can pop the catch on his holster, the light is blotted out above him by the figure of a man. A large man.
  He looks down and whistles.
  The dog bounds over to him, begins to lick his hand.
  "Well, Skilla," he says, "what have you found this time?"
Three
------------
Wait here," the man says, and the airman is not sure whether he means him or Skilla, because the wolfhound stays, panting noisily beside him, while the man goes.
  He is gone a long time, during which the airman wonders if he should try to escape.
    "Good idea," he says allowed to Skilla. "And where exactly should I crawl to?"
  The dog pants at him some more, hanging out its log pink tongue.
  When the man returns, he's with another, younger, man, possibly his son. They have made a stretcher from two spindly pine trunks and some sacking.
  Without a word, they cut him free from his lines and lift him on to the stretcher. The pain is almost enough to make him black out once more, but something makes him want to be strong in front of these two quiet men. He bites his lip and focuses on the white clouds floating in the blue sky above him as they carry him out of the wheat field.
  Half delirious, he looks at the sky, his real home. That is where he should be, he thinks. In the blue heavens, the engine growling in front of me, the wind whistling behind me. It was when he joined the Air Force, really. If he was going to fight, and if he might be going to die, at least he could fly like an angel first.
  That is where I should be. Up there.
  But now he is earthbound, and worse than earthbound, for he cannot even walk. He is a worm, stuck to the surface of a ball of mud.
  Very soon, the rescue party of silent men and tongue-lolling hound step across a low wire fence at the edge of the wheat field, and onto a path that winds beside some woods.
  They turn down another track, and craning his head to one side, the airman sees they're heading for a farmhouse.
  It's very early still. He can't see his watch, but he can tell from the angle of the sun, from the smell of the dew evaporating off the grass, from the morning calls of the cockerels in the farmyard.
  A woman runs out of the farmhouse, looks down at him briefly, and nods to the older man.
  "Quickly," she says.
    They carry him into the kitchen, set his stretcher on the table, and then lift him off and sit him in a large wooden armchair. He winces as they support his bad leg on a small stool, but he's determined not to fuss.
  "Flight Lieutenant M. Turpin, 331st Fighter Squadron," he says, as smartly as he can, then immediately realises he's being an arse. He's not facing the secret police. Standing looking at him are three farmers, a middle-aged man, his wife, and their son. All three are mystified.
  He smiles.
  "Call me Mark," he says.
  The farmer node.
  He looks at his wife.
  "This is Fiona. This is Ben. My son."
  He puts a hand on the young man's shoulder. Mark doesn't get up but he holds out his hand. The farmer doesn't take it, just stays where he is.
  "I am Xephos," he says.
  He doesn't smile.

Four
------------

When Mark wakes again he is in a bed.
  He has no idea how long he has slept. After they'd brought him to the farm house, Xephos had sent Ben back to the wheat field to collect the airman's equipment.
  Mark had told Fiona how to administer the morphine, and within minutes of the injection, he'd started to feel very drowsy, the exhaustion and shock catching up with him.
  "We will take your parachute," Xephos said. "And your equipment."
  But Flight lieutenant Mark Turpin was already asleep.
  "Well," said Xephos, shaking his head, "so it is."

------------

Mark wakes not in a large but simple room, barely more than a peasant's dwelling. The mattress he's lying on is filled with straw, he's underneath a plain white quilt, stuffed with goose or duck feathers; h can hear both birds in the farmyard.
  He might have slept for twenty-four hours, which seems likely as he's desperate to pee. Which presents a problem, since he cannot walk.
  He hears voices downstairs, cannot make out the words, but the voices are raised, arguing.
  He hears a door slam, and a few minutes later, footsteps in the corridor. The door opens.
  Fiona puts her head round the door, expecting to find him asleep still.
    "Oh!" she says. "So you are awake, after all."
  "Never felt better," he lies.
"We thought it best to let you rest for as long as possible."
"That's very kind. You're very kind, in fact. I don't know how I shall be able to thank you."
Something passes across Fiona's face. She comes into the room, and begins fussing and tidying, and he has a chance to appraise her. She has an honest face, he thinks. She is tall, very tall in fact, and strong. The word sturdy pops into his head.
He realises that they have undressed him; all his clothes hang over a chair by the bed neatly. On the top of the pile, even his camouflage pattern silk scarf is precisely folded.
He feels the need again, and coughs.
"I wonder," he says. "Call of nature, you know?"
She looks at him blankly, then realises what he means. She reaches under the bed and pulls out a large china pot.
"Do you think you can manage?" she asks.
My God, he thinks in horror, is she offering to help me?
He smiles.
"I'll find a way," he says briskly.
She leaves, and he performs his task. Every second is agony.
When it is done, he collapses back in bed, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
I should have got her to give me another jab, he thinks, but very soon he begins to get sleepy again anyway.
As he drifts back to the blue dreaming heavens once more, his eyes fix on his clothes, on the remains of his equipment pack, and he notices something.
His pistol is missing.

Five
------------
When he realises that they have given him their own bedroom, Flight Lieutenant Mark Turpin insists on being moved to another room, any other room.
There is a long argument, and finally, as he starts to hoist himself out of bed, saying he'll crawl if he has to, they relent.

------------

A while later, he hops down the corridor with Xephos on one side and Ben on the other. They have to hop sideways as the corridor is so narrow, but very soon he is lifted into a smaller bed in a smaller room.
Now he realises that it's Ben's room, and he starts to protest again, especially as they'd passed the closed door of presumably another bedroom on the way down the corridor.
"You are our guest," Ben says, putting his hand on Mark's forearm. "And you are ill. It is summer, and I'll be quite well in the barn. The hay has just been cut, last month, and it makes a very soft bed. You should see the hares run as we cut the hay! It's my favourite job. How they run! Crazy!"
The young man prattles on and on, and before long, Mark has even forgotten what it is they were arguing about.
Fiona appears in the doorway, with the morphine vial and the needle.
"You are an angel," Mark says, for the pain has got worse again, but as he falls asleep, three things worry him.
He has done nothing about finding out where he is.
The pain is still awful, and there is very little morphine left.
And they are arguing again, downstairs. He knows that they are arguing about him.

Six
------------
Next day, Mark feels well enough to get up for a while.
They carry him downstairs and he sits at the kitchen table, in a big armchair, with his foot straight out in front of him, on a cushion on a stood.
Fiona is cooking at the stove.
Xephos and Ben have gone out; always working.
Mark knows how much work there is to do on a farm; when he was a young boy he used to spend his summers in Devon, staying on a farm. He has no idea now, thinking about it, why he went there. His parents were somewhere else. But then, his parents where always somewhere else.
It was while he spent those summers on the farm that he knew he wanted to fly. He can remember, clearly, drinking milk while sitting on the back doorstep of the farmhouse. The milk was still warm from the cow, and as he sat there, it must have been early evening, he guesses, dozens of little birds flew around his head. They were swifts, nesting in cracks in the eaves of his farmhouse.
At that point, he'd never seen a plane, but when he did a year or so later, he knew that's all he wanted to do with his life. That, and fall in love.
Somehow, he knew that when he was a young boy too.

------------

His memories are brought back to the present.
"At least, let me do something," he says to Fiona. "I feel terrible just sitting here, watching you all working."
Fiona shrugs, goes to the pantry, and returns with a large basket of peas, still in their pods. Skilla briefly lifts his head form where he sits, under the kitchen table, at Mark's good foot.
"You can shell these," she says. "You know how to do that?"
Mark can see she's only teasing, but he feels slightly nettled.
"Yes," he says. "I know how to do that."
For a while, they work in silence, Mark shucking the peas into a white bowl, letting the empty pods lie on the table, and Fiona chopping and grinding at the stove, where a pot is simmering. There is a strange smell, but Mark doesn't really notice.
His mind is on other matters.
"Why are you arguing?" he says. "You're arguing about me, aren't you?"
"No . . ." Fiona says, but she is interrupted.
"Yes," says Xephos, suddenly filling the doorway. "We are arguing about you."
Mark drops his pea pods and raises a hand.
"Listen. I am very grateful to you both, to you all. But what can I do?"
He looks at his ankle, realising he actually has no idea how long a broken ankle takes a heal.
"You should not have come here," Xephos says, barely hiding his anger.
"I didn't exactly choose to come here," Mark says. "Come to that, I'm not exactly sure where here is."
"Here," says Xephos, coming into the kitchen, "is somewhere that is not part of your war. We have not chosen to fight and kill each other. We want to remain out of your war. Neutral. And yet, your war comes here anyway."
Mark shakes his head.
"So what would you have me do? I'd like nothing more than to fly away, I promise you that. Just give me my pistol back and I'll be gone,"
Xephos grunts, turns and washes his hands in the sink. Drying them, he turns back to Mark.
"I dropped your gun in the sea," he says. "It is part of your war, your life, not ours."
"What do you mean by 'my war'? The enemy . . ."
"The enemy? There are two sides fighting in this war, are there not? But yes, though we said we will not take part, we have your enemy on our soil anyway. They should not be here, but there are reports of them all along the coast. And they hunt for the enemy soldiers. For airmen who's aeroplanes have crashed. Just like you. And they will come looking for you, and then your war will come here, to Blest Island."
He bangs his hand on the table in front of Mark, so hard that the white bowl wobbles.
He leans down in front of Mark.
"I want no part of it."
Her turns and storms from the kitchen.
Now angry himself, Mark calls after him.
"Where is my pistol? What have you done with my pistol?"
But Xephos has gone and, cursing his ankle, Mark cannot follow.
Fiona stands at the stove still, her back to the scene, her shoulders trembling.

Seven
------------
The days pass.
With each day, Mark's ankle is healing.
The morphine has run out, but in its place, Fiona has been feeding him a constant supply of a special black tea. Every day she chops and grinds at the stove, concocting that rather strange smelling liquid in a small pot.
  Although it smells unpleasant, Mark has to concede that the tea more than take the edge off the pain.
  "It's something my mother used to make us when we were ill," Fiona explains. "And her mother taught her, before that. W   e have this very special flower here, it only grows on the western half of the island. Nobody knows why but it will not grow on this side. Look."
  She holds up a very bizarre looking flower. It is purple-black. He thinks it looks like a dragon's head.
    "It can work miracles, you know, if prepared properly," she says.
  He even wonders if it is helping his ankle to heal faster, for after a couple of weeks, he can hobble slowly down the corridor, and even get downstairs, though that hurts a lot.

------------

The days pass.
  They give Mark some old clothes of Xephos' to wear. Just to be on the safe side. They are big for him, and he feels silly. And more than that, it's odd to wear another man's clothes, especially when that man seems to hate you. But it makes sense.
  "Maybe Ben is more your size," Fiona says, looking him up and down. At the moment Ben walks into the kitchen.
  "Well," says Fiona, "Speak of the devil and his horns appear. What do you think, should we give Mark some of your clothes instead?"
  "I think he looks just fine as he is," says Ben solemnly, and then bursts out laughing.
  Fiona chases him off, batting at his head with a large wooden spoon.

------------

Then days pass.
  Mark gets better, but the mood in the house gets worse.
  The arguments continue, Mark can hear them at night, along the corridor from his room. He knows he needs to do something, but he has no idea what. When he can walk, he can just walk away, even if it means walking into captivity. Or worse.
  Over mealtimes, no one speaks.
  Even Skilla is quiet, lurking in the shadows under the table.

------------

Eventually, Mark can stand the atmosphere no longer, and after they have finished their evening meal of chicken stew and black bread, with great effort, he stands up.
  He looks at the three whose lives he is endangering.
  "Throw me out," he says. "I can't bear this, and I can't be responsible for your safety. Put me in a cart and drop me back in the fields somewhere. I'll fight my way out of this. I've done it before."
  He has done no such thing, but it makes him feel brave to say it.
  No one says anything, then finally, Xephos clears his throat.
  "Sit down, Mark Turpin," he says.
  Then Xephos gets up, and leaves.
  "Ben, help your mother," he says, as he goes. "I have work to do."
  Fiona puts her hand on Ben's shoulder.
  "Go with your father," she says, "I can manage here."
  When the men are gone, Mark sits again. He does so with great relief - he is almost weeping from the pain of standing on his ankle.
  "What is it?" he asks, when he gets his breath again.
  "What do you mean?"
  "It's not just war. This war that you say you are not a part of. You may not want to be a part of the war, but you are a part of the world. And the world is at war. It's not a question of what you want."
  Fiona says nothing. She clears up for a while, then turns to look at Mark, dish-cloth in hand, leaning back against the sink.
  "Xephos says . . ."
  "What? That I am dangerous? That I will get you into trouble? He might be right, you know. Maybe you should listen to your husband. Throw me out before soldiers come looking for me."
  "No one knows you are here."
  "Are you sure? What about the other villagers? Did no one see me arrive? Is no one wondering why Ben is sleeping in the barn on sacks of grain?"
  Fiona doesn't answer that.
  "He is not a bad man," she says instead, quietly.
  "I never said he was."
  "But you are right. It is not just the war. None of us want the war, but, you are right, there is something else."
  Mark feels the tension in her voice, and feels his own heart beating. He knows what she is about to say.
  "You may have seen there is an empty room upstairs . . ."
  She stops, puts a hand to her mouth, shakes her head, and clears her throat.
  "Ben is - was - not our only child. We had a daughter too. Her name was Kim. She was twelve years old. One day, two summers ago, planes flew overhead. They were being chased by your people. They were fighting."
  Her voice lowers a little, but she presses on.
  "We were out in the fields, we ran for cover. Then the planes dropped their bombs. Ben says they only did it to be lighter, so they could fly faster, and escape. He has read about it. And they did escape, but they let their bombs fall on the island first."
  Fiona's voice is a whisper now - Mark's own heartbeat is louder than her words.
  "Kim was at the farm. She ran to the woodshed. One of the bombs fell right there."
  She turns back to the sink, wringing the dish-cloth.
  "That is why Xephos is so angry. This war, that none of us want, took our girl away from us. What had she done? Why her?"
  She looks Mark in the eye, tears running down her face.
  She whispers.
  "Why?"

Eight
------------
The days on the farm pass, as if no war had ever existed.
Xephos and Ben work endless hours in the fields, Fiona runs the house and the farmyard.
  They are indefatigable, tireless, stoic, and given the tragedy of their daughter, Mark decides, they are still people with life inside them.
  Only once does he hear anything like a complaint.
  "There's much to do," Fiona tells him one afternoon, as she makes his special tea. "Always so much to do on a farm, but nothing compared to when we harvest the wheat. That's when the work really starts."
    Even then, Mark detects no self pity in what she says. It is simply their life here, on the island, on the farm.
    "When did you cut the grain?" Mark asks. He is struck by a desire to help. If it's not too soon, his ankle might be better enough.
  "After the grain moon."
  "The grain moon? What's that?"
  "Just what it says. We still use the old names for the moons here, the full moons. They come from the land, from life on the land. Calf moon, when the animals give birth, leaf moon, when the leaves turn to the trees. The flower moon. Grain moon."
  Mark nods, thoughtfully.
  "I like those," he says. "I like those a lot. And when is the grain moon?"
  "The day after tomorrow," Fiona says, and Mark known then he won't be able to help.

Nine
------------
Until that moment when Fiona told him about the death of their daughter, Mark had not thought of home.
  Unconsciously, he'd decided to suppress such thoughts, as they would have hurt far more than his ankle ever could.
------------

Mark sits alone at the kitchen table, staring out of the window. Vaguely he notices smoke from a bonfire in the farmyard, then he hears shouting outside.
  They are arguing again, but this time Ben is involved too.
    Suddenly, Ben is back in the kitchen.
  "Mr Turpin," he says breathlessly, "my father is burning your things."
  Mark almost jumps from the chair.
  "Why?" he cries. "What? Why?"
  "I don't know. He wont make sense."
  "I must stop him. Will you help me?"
  Ben nods and becomes a crutch on Mark's right side. Together, they hobble out of the kitchen and into the farmyard, where Xephos has an old oil drum with the end cut off. Grey smoke broils from inside, in thick choking clouds.
  Mark is too late, Xephos is poking at the last of Mark's uniform into the drum with a hefty wooden stick.
  Skilla runs around, barking.
    Mark's heart is pounding.
  "What on earth are you doing? What gives you the right to do that? Stop it!"
  Without waiting, and heedless of the pain in his ankle, he lunges at the barrel, knocking it flying, and sending smoke and spits of fire across the mud of the yard. He sees what he feared was in there, and grabs his smouldering flying jacket.
  Sinking to his knees, he bats at the burning leather, frantically hunting through the pockets.
  "Right?" shouts Xephos. "It is not a question of right. It is a question of sense. There are soldiers coming. I heard it in the village today. They have been on the other islands, to the south, hunting for men like you."
  Mark hears him but ignores him, and ignores the burns he's inflicting on himself, as he turns his jacket inside out, searching for something as if his life depends on it.
  Finally, he finds what he is looking for, drops the jacket on the ground, and sits back, speechless.
  It had seems so unreal here, like a dream, in this little idyllic haven, away from the war. But Xephos was right after all. The war has come back ot find him, to the very doorstep of the island.
  Soldiers are coming.
  "And if they come here, there must be no trace," Xephos says. "Of you."
  He sets the barrel upright again, and with the stick fishes everything back off the ground and inside.
  He pulls matches form his pocket and sets it all alight again, and this time, Mark makes no effort to stop him.
  He sits on the ground, clutching something tightly to his chest.
  He is trembling.
  "What do you have there?" Xephos asks roughly. "Everything of yours must be burned."
  Mark does not answer.
  "Do you hear me?" shouts Xephos. "Everything!"
  He makes a grab at whatever is in Mark's hands, but Mark pulls away and they begin to fight, wrestling on the ground.
  "No!" screams Fiona. "Stop it!"
  Ben loiters, unsure what to do. Skilla barks.
  "No," cries Fiona again.
  The men do not listen to her, but it is ever soon. Xephos is stronger than Mark, and the airman is injured after all.
  Xephos stands, grimly about to cast the object into the flames when he stops.
  He looks at it.
  It is a wallet, a simply one that folds in half.
  Xephos opens it, looks for a long time, then slowly closes it again.
  He holds it in the air for a moment, his arm outstretched, as if thinking, and then he drops it at Mark's feet, and walks away, into the farmhouse.
  Fiona approaches. She sees what her husband saw.
  The wallet has flopped open, and inside is a photograph.
  She kneels beside Mark, who picks the wallet up and shows her the photograph.
  It's a portrait, of three people. One of them is Mark, in his uniform. He has his arms around a pretty woman; his wife. Standing in front of them, her head tilted to one side, and a smile on her face, is their daughter.
  Fiona takes the photograph and Mark lets her.
  "What is her name?" she asks quietly.
  "My daughter?" Mark asks.
  She nods.
  "Xevphera. Her name is Xevphera."

Ten
------------
That night, Mark goes to bed early.
He's been drinking Fiona's tea like water, and it really appears to be working miracles on his ankle, as well as making him very sleepy.
  He is getting ready for bed, when there is a knock at the door.
  "Yes?" he calls.
  Fiona comes in, and behind her, Ben.
  They both look solemn.
  As Mark climbs into bed, they each stand at one corner of its foot. Fiona twists her hands nervously.
  "Ben," she says. "Tell Mark what you heard."
    Ben nods.
  "I was in the village today, at the inn, and there I spoke to a fisherman called Nilesy. Nilesy was in Skarpness yesterday and he heard talk in the harbour there."
  He pauses.
  "Go on, Ben," says Fiona, but Ben seems scared, as if what he has to say if risky. And maybe it is.
  Fiona helps him out.
  "We may not be fighting in this war, Mark, but some of our people don't like having foreign soldiers telling us what to do. There is a resistance movement, and they have made contact with your people. It seems they know you are here somewhere. They have come for you, and have put word around that if you are able to travel, you should present yourself at the tavern in Skarpness, on the docks."
  Mark is speechless.
  Angor made it home.
  Somehow, this single, wonderful piece of news is enough to make him dissolve in tears. He buries his face in his hands, and Fiona nods at Ben to leave. When Mark raises his head again, they are alone.
  "But, what can I do? How can I get there?"
  "You will take our rowing boat. Tomorrow night. It will be too dangerous by day, but the moon is full tomorrow, the grain moon. It will be bright, and you will see the lights of Skarpness to guide your way.
  "Go to the tavern in the docks. Ask for a man called Lyndon. He works there. I know him. But I didn't know he works for the resistance."
  "But your boat . . .? Xephos?"
  "Xephos has said you are to take the boat."

Eleven
------------
The following day is over in a moment, and yet seems to last for centuries.
  Every ten minutes, Mark finds himself checking the height of the sun in the sky, waiting for the dusk, but this far north, it has gone nine o'clock before the sun finally disappears behind the western hill of the island.
  All day, Fiona fusses, making food for his short journey, strapping his ankle tightly, then unstrapping it, then strapping it once more. She feeds him lots of tea, tells him to keep all weight off his leg until he has to.
  Ben loiters in the yard with Skilla, not coming close, unable to pull away.
  Xephos is nowhere to be seen.
------------

Finally, at ten o'clock, as Mark sits in the kitchen, getting his last instructions from Fiona, Xephos walks into the house.
  "Well," he says. His voice is flat, his face is expressionless. He looks at Mark. "It's time. Everything's ready."
  Mark stands, and winces, but in truth, he can walk now.
  There is silence, as the two men contemplate each other, yet say nothing.
  Fiona slides a packet of food into a knapsack, and hands it to Mark.
  He is about to thank her, when Ben blunders into the kitchen.
  "There are soldiers! Here! In the village!"
  His eyes are wild, and his panic infects them all.
  "In the village? Are you sure?"
  "Teep saw them, and cycled to tell us. They're coming this way!"
  "You must go," cries Fiona. "Hurry, hurry!"
  Now there is no time for goodbyes. Mark throws his arms briefly around Fiona, and Ben, who stands in the doorway of the farmhouse. Then Xephos hurries away into the moonlit night, Mark hobbling at his side.

------------

They take a small lane, one that rises over a hill, and down through some woods, to an empty field.
  At the end of the field, Mark can already hear the sea, and a narrow path leads to a dilapidated jetty.
  They hurry, but Mark is struggling. Not only does his ankle hurt, he's had no exercise for several weeks.
    Suddenly there are shouts on the lane behind them. Torchlight.
  "They're here," Xephos whispers. "Quick, we'll hide in the boathouse."
  They duck the last few steps, through a low doorway, into the boathouse, where Xephos' boat is moored. It bobs in the water, waiting to be off.
  "We'll be safe here," whispers Xephos. "Until they've gone. They won't think to look here. Maybe."
  Mark nods in the darkness, in pain again.
  "All right," he says. "All right."
  They wait, and the voices they heard soon face. They wait some more.
  Xephos points at the moonlight shining across the water.
  "The moon is bright," he says. "You should have no trouble seeing. When this moon is over, we cut the wheat, on the next dry day. I think we'll be cutting wheat tomorrow."
  Mark nods.
  "I wish I could be here to help you."
  He means it. It would be one small way of repaying them, in return for what they've done.
  "I think it is nearly time for you to go," Xephos says, and he helps Mark into the boat.
  Suddenly, they hear voices again. Close.
  Very close.
  Xephos swears.
  "Go," he hisses.
  "I'll be a sitting duck if they see me!" Mark hisses back.
  Xephos says nothing. When he speaks again, his words seem idiotically inappropriate.
  "Your daughter," he says. "Your daughter. How old is she?"
  Mark desperately looks at the shore line, beyond the boathouse. Any moment he expects to see soldiers silhouetted against the starry sky. The voices are coming closer.
    "She's twelve. Twelve."
  Xephos nods.
  "I thought so," he says. "I could tell. I knew it . . . Just like out Kim."
  He pushes the prow of the boat, silently, yet hard and strong, and as he does so, he leans over and drops something heavy in Mark's lap.
  "Just in case of trouble," Xephos whispers.
  The shouts are right behind the shed. If they come round the side, Mark will be seen, and it will all be over.
  Xephos stands, and being careful to make noise, he begins to run along the shoreline, the opposite way, away from Mark and the boat, calling out as he goes.
  Mark picks up the oars, and begins to row, as powerfully but as quietly as he can. Very soon he is out to sea, and safe. He ships the oars, and feels for what Xephos dropped in his lap.
  It is his service pistol that he thought had been thrown away.
  In the pure bright moonlight, he half sees Xephos, a shadow moving along the coast. The soldiers are after him, running.
  Torchlight sweeps the dark, and finds Xephos.
  There is a short sudden clatter of machine gun fire.
  It stops.
  Mark knows that Xephos will not be cutting the wheat tomorrow.

Ten
------------Mark Turpin's daughter Xevphera has a favourite story, one that she never forgets as she grew up, about how a man called Xephos, who she never met, saved her father, and gave him back to her. What she is never told is what really happened to Xephos; that is a secret that Mark and Esmé, his wife, keep to themselves. It would only hurt the child to know it, they think, and anyway, they are grateful enough for all three of them, as the first years pass

------------

Esmé dies at the age of sixty-three, and even Xevphera dies before her father, at seventy.
  Mark Turpin himself lives to be one hundred and one years old.
  His life is a happy life, and he remains physically fit, and fairly sharp right up to the end, as if he once drank some elixir of life.
  In fact the only thing that ever ails him is arthritis in that dodgy ankle.
Eventually, a short but fatal pneumonia takes him.
  Even on the morning of the day he dies, however, he still reads his paper over breakfast, from cover to cover. On this particular day, he reads about a startling discovery of a Viking burial, on a small island in the north.
  He's always been interested in archaeology, but it's something else about this story that tickles at his memory.
  Something about the island, though he can't remember exactly what.
  He thinks he might have been there, once, a lifetime ago.