SARK - It was nearly dawn. Signaling the end of the scant hours, Flight Commander Thomas Carter had told her, that she would be allowed out-and-about at La Salle's farm. So she would come to appreciate the light - however little of it she might see when outside the farmhouse - appreciate it in these stolen hours before dawn, and after sunset.

She would possess the night, train herself to sleep during the long days. It could be done, she did not doubt. So many things she had learned since she had been taken by the Germans, chief among them that anything, truly, for good or for ill - with enough of one's will set behind it - anything could be done.

The colors of the sky were only just thinking of turning, the lay of this island's particular landscape granting one unobstructed views of both the sun's rise and set, no distant (or near) mountains to get in the way, no towering forests to block the line of the horizon.

She had no light of her own with her - another stipulation of her being allowed to roam freely in the night - and relied entirely on the moon. She did not mind.

She thought of the things that had so recently taken place since her gamble of an escape. Certainly she had never expected to fall in among so many - a veritable clan - of such men working to thwart the Germans.

The closeness of their attachment and loyalty to one another cheered her in a way that reminded her of what she thought of as home; that tightly woven society she had been absent from the fellowship of for so long. Too long.

Her family would not even recognize her now, her hair shorn long ago, her body (despite enforced privation and sub-human nutrition) having altered in her time away from them from that of a child's to (when disrobed) an approximation of a woman's.

And her Romanipen - the essence of what it was to truly be Roma? Since the Porajmos began, the German Einsatzgruppen appearing only to kill her people on sight, the others being sent to camps to be killed or forced into laboring for their enemies, she had felt such a terrifying disconnect from her culture. Unable to follow its laws and customs, unable to observe its celebrations, or oft-times even the simplest of marimes. Washing and eating (when there was a way to accomplish either) were no longer able to be handled as they ought.

And the purity of her own, private physical self? Desecrated at the hands of both Germans, and fellow prisoners, on more than one occasion, wherein she had proved powerless to oppose her attackers. She would never be wanted by any Romany in marriage.

Her entire way of life had been torn from her people, raped of their culture, the ways in which they believed it best to exist. Raped and pillaged and thrown on a pyre. She did not know if it was something that could ever be repaired, reassembled. And if it were, she was not certain there would be a place for her among it.

Still, her mind called to her, in echo of the belief that had, for so long, kept her going...anything could be done.

Somewhere, someone of her intertwined family could be found, someday (and she must stay alive for it). Someday she could re-join Romany society, in a lesser role than wife and mother, but still reunited with her people, her clan - what had been before the war - the Porajmos - her world.

In the bare light of the pre-dawn, she saw the bird, not knowing enough to name it for what it was, a peregrine falcon at hunting its prey. And her quick eyes sighted that frightened prey, a dove. The falcon struck, and had the smaller bird, but for reasons Djak could not discern, could not keep hold of it.

Injured, the dove plummeted toward earth, the falcon somewhat dazedly flying off, perhaps not interested in a meal proving such a trouble to acquire.

She tracked where the dove would fall and raced toward the spot, the bird unable to fly with both wings.

When she arrived to the spot, not far from the manure pile, the dove was pacing back and forth on its spindly bird's feet, one wing worse for wear, and wearing a dazed look of its own.

She bent at the knees into a low squat and listened as the wounded dove cooed to itself. Making similar soft noises of comfort, she gently reached to scoop the bird up in one hand, settling its wrongly bent wing into something approximating a tuck.

In doing so she sighted something attached to its leg. She withdrew a paper from the tiny metal ring there and placed the bird inside the shirt she wore, its excess fabric making a sort of comfortable sling-like nest for the animal, which did not protest at being approached or handled so.

He woke to the sound of Djak the Gypsy.

"Wills, read!" she demanded, using one of the remembered words in her new English lexicon. She tugged like an annoying younger sibling on his arm. "Wills! Read!"

Wills' eyes opened, but not without great effort. He had only been asleep for scant hours following his appointed watch the night before (longer watches being needed as they were down three men - Mitch captured, Robin and Allen off to Guernsey). In initial reaction to realizing that whatever she wanted was not a true matter of life and death - or Jerries - he tried to roll away from her, only to far-too-closely encounter the thrown-open armpit of the still sleeping Flight Commander Thomas Carter, his bedmate for the night.

With a grunt of low-grade misery, Wills sat up, his feet to the floor, scrubbing at his eyes, and looked at her.

"Wills!" she again demanded.

He noted that she seemed to have gotten his name down.

"Read!" Her voice carried the authority of a particularly strict physical education instructor he seemed to recall from his early school years. She thrust a miniscule paper under his nose. Far too close under his nose. She nearly served him a paper cut.

He took the paper and squinted at what was written there. It was a series of letters and numbers, in no discernable order.

He used the version of 'I don't know' she had given him in Romany.

"Read!" she beseeched him again.

"No, see," he tried to explain in English this time. "I don't know what it says. I can read it out to you...A-4-G-F-67-9-4...but it doesn't hold any meaning..."

With apparent disgust she snatched it back from him and deliberately rounded the bed to Carter's side. "Flight Commander Thomas Carter!" she announced this time, surprising Wills by addressing the other man in English. "Read!"

Carter, though he had been asleep far less time than had Wills, responded rapidly to her rousting of him. He was sitting up in the bed almost immediately, his eyes clear and focused, accepting the paper from her and studying it for a moment.

"Gibberish," he said aloud. "A code, perhaps," he added to her in Russian. "Letters and numerals only." He looked to her for an answer. "Where did you find it?"

Wills wanted to tell them to quit with the Russian-thing. If Djak were able to fall back on that mode of communication in a pinch she would never get a best grasp of English and (perhaps more worrying to him) he would never get a good handle on her Romany.

"Says he found it on a bird," Carter offered, having already handed the slip of paper back to Djak.

"What sort of a bird?" Stephen could be heard to ask from the hallway, where the girl's insistent demands and impatient actions had woken him from his own sleep.

Wills exchanged a glance with Carter, and asked Djak in Romany, "bird?" at which prompting Djak removed the dove from where she had nestled it.

Its wing's injury was not lost on the men.

"It is a dove," Carter offered, informing the sightless La Salle of Djak's reveal. It has an injured wing."

"A dove?" Stephen asked, uncertainty in his tone. "Doves are forbidden."

"Forbidden?" Wills asked. "What can you mean?"

"It is only ever the Seigneur," Stephen explained, "that can keep doves on our island entire. Else wise they might overrun us here, there are so few of their natural predators among the islands. That is original Sarkese law. However," the former rector's brow grew troubled, "since the Germans came they have forbid any among the islands from the keeping of doves or pigeons - birds of any kind, fearful they could be used to carry messages."

Wills nodded. "As this one clearly has been tasked to do."

"Clearly," Carter agreed, returning himself to the mattress Wills had just vacated, "but in a code we are unlikely to be able to crack."

"We cannot set it free to travel on to its rendezvous - " Wills referenced the bird's obvious inability to fly at present, "but we must wish it to arrive. It is obviously not a German courier."

Carter, head to the pillow, eyes moments from re-closing, warned, "Even if it is not doing the Reich's work we ought not aid it on its way without knowing where it is bound - and with what information."

"Even so, 'tis no reason to punish the messenger," Stephen asserted. "Perhaps have young Djak take the bird to John, see what he might be able to do to ease its suffering."

Wills herded the still-dissatisfied Djak down the constricted stairwell to where John had been taking his turn at the watch.

The unit's medic looked over the bird.

Djak re-produced the sliver of paper, demanding of him, "John, read!" and he also gave it a go, coming up with nothing.

He did the best he could to patch the wounded animal, having no experience with avian medicine, nor the veterinary field whatsoever. As Djak moved to re-cradle the bird inside her shirt, John managed to catch a glimpse of suspiciously roughened skin on her torso.

"What's that?" he asked, his eyes flicking to Wills' as he knew the Gypsy boy would not answer.

"What?" Wills asked, a nervousness beginning to tumble about his stomach. What had Johnson seen? Surely, to his own eye, Djak's disappearing the dove into the recess of her shirt (previously his shirt) had revealed little, if even darkness, so well-executed the move had been.

"He's a rash on his skin from the looks of it." The large man extended a large finger toward the now-covered general area. "Ringworm. Impetigo, even." The older man's eyebrows arched at Wills. "Did ye not see it when you gave him the lice-down?"

"Me?" Wills asked, trying to suppress his anxiety. He threw up his hands. "I saw nothing!"

"Well, it is best I shall have a look-see at it, before we are one and all crawling with it." John took a step toward Djak.

Wills watched, not certain whether - or how - to intervene.

But unlike the unfortunate Wills earlier in the washhouse, Johnson was more familiar with holding disinclined patients at bay in such a way that he might examine them. His own considerable strength was set against the girl, his proximity to her already close, and he counted on her desire not to fall into a tussle and harm the bird to be in his favor.

In short order and with little struggle or fuss - save angry gruntings from Djak - Johnson had the shirt tail flipped out of her trousers, and the waist of that garment away from her side to examine the rash. Never one to be eager to steal a peak down another fellow's trews (even in the name of medicine), he did find his eyes drawn, after inspecting the rash, to the top inside of the boy's leg, surprised to note that even in the lad's slender-from-early-stage-starvation state the beginning of the groin muscle that should have been quite visible at the spot where the rash had settled itself was missing. Quickly, before the lad could protest too much, John switched sides and looked for it there. Not finding it, he went ahead and (in the name of medicine) quickly sighted the lad down the front, where, even in the concealing shadows of the Gypsy's trousers something ought to have been hung.

With alacrity, Johnson let the waist of the trousers go.

Huffily, Djak took three steps backward, her face displaying her annoyance with both her present treatment, and lack of finding anyone who could explain the bird's message to her.

Johnson looked at Wills.

Wills looked back, "So?" he asked, aiming for a tone of normalcy.

"Impetigo," the medic declared, his voice like gravel. His gaze was steady. "It shall have to be dealt with, or we'll all be covered in it shortly."

Wills visibly let out his breath. "Right. Good," he agreed. He wondered if it were too soon to chivvy himself and Djak out of the room.

"I will work on mixing up a treatment," John said. "And about the other?" he continued on to ask, his eyebrow cocked at Reddy.

"Other?"

"What shall we do about that?" It did not even occur to the Scotsman that there was any way Reddy might not know the Gypsy's true gender.

Wills raised his shoulders and hands in a gesture of 'don't know'.

"Ticking time-bomb, that is," Johnson groused. "Don't have to call Royston in to tell you that." He cast a growlish expression at Djak, which at the sight of her cradling the dove, her slight frame showing the German depravity she had been living under, morphed quickly enough into one of half-tender (if slightly exasperated) compassion.

Seeing this, and ignorant of the exact nature of the two men's discussion, she smiled at him.

"Rash," John again turned gruff, pointing with great thrust to the spot in question. "If we don't fix it, it could take you over, and you'll die."

"John," Djak answered him in reply, and again, out came the paper. And again she keenly demanded, "Read!"

ALDERNEY - "Not usually one to ask such questions, Sir," Allen spoke to the Kommandant, seated behind him in the back of the moving car. "Only, Lady Marion and Fraulein Eleri were wondering..."

"What's that, Driver? You are trying to share some sort of news of my brat child?" Vaiser leaned incrementally forward.

"Only that she was asking after the Sarkese fisherman wot helped rescue Lady Marion. Miss Eleri seems quite taken with the romance of the whole story."

"Yesss," the Kommandant agreed dryly. "Romance. The reason she was sent here, of course. 'Romance'. Well," he replied chipperly, "you may tell them he has been sent home to his boat and his family, properly rewarded by Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer for his part in the returning of Barnsdale's once and future mistress." Vaiser grinned toothily. "I say, Driver, what did you think of Herr Geis' secretary?"

Allen had to work to keep his expression non-committal. "Did, Sir?"

"Yes, 'did'. As in, did you like her, did you find her attractive, did you ever..." his voice trailed off as his tongue curled around his front teeth.

"Not as in 'do', Sir?"

"Well, you see, Mr. Allen, I had taken her off Herr Geis' hands on a lark. I thought I might like her more for myself. But, I am sorry to say, that with only the shortest of trial periods I find I do, in point of fact, not care much for her, nor her brand of rebellion."

"Rebellion, Sir?"

"Yes," he did not elaborate. "I've arranged to have her transferred to Jersey under Oberseer Jarl Derheim."

Allen worked hard to sound conversational. "Operation Todt needs another in their secretarial pool, then?"

"Goodness me, no!" Vaiser chuckled. "They are simply in constant need of mindless, unskilled labor. Bodies to throw at placing their mines. It is a pity, though."

Allen had to swallow back, 'nice to hear you say it', as he knew the Kommandant too well to think those words' sentiment was genuine in a humane way.

"I should very much have liked to see you two become friends." Vaiser's mind reverted to its old proclivities, and he took a moment to envision the now-banished secretary in the front seat with his Driver, nearly on her stomach, face-down, her head all but colliding with the steering wheel. His driver, tightly sprung from the waist down, attempting to still successfully pilot the auto. He restrained himself, just barely, from chortling.

In lieu of answering Vaiser (grateful to be excused from such) as they had arrived, Allen pulled up the car, turned off the engine and got out to open the Kommandant's door.

As Vaiser was getting out, he withdrew a small sheaf of Reichmarks from his black SS overcoat, stuffing them without looking inside the front placket of Allen's chauffeur's uniform. With his other hand he gave them a firm, thumping pat.

"Do not think I am unaware," he cautioned Allen, looking over beyond the driver's shoulder, "or unsympathetic to the fact that such information about the Sarkese fisherman, or any other prisoner - if shared with the proper people - might yield you considerable revenues, further increase your standing in the present culture of Occupation. Do know that I value you in your position here. And, by all means, Mr. Allen, find yourself a woman. Take her to that particular shop in St. Peter Port..."

"Wot? Ginny...Glasson's?" Allen asked, curiously.

"Yes. The very one. Yes. Have her polished and primped - money no object. And see that the service is placed on my tab. By all means. I owe you that much."

Not aware of the Kommandant's bent-of-mind about himself and Anya Grigorovna, and awash in an inner dialogue of both hope for Mitch and growing despair for the transferred (lost-to-him) Annie, Allen found there was nothing to do but thank the architect of his divided mind, close the car door behind him, and begin the long, solitary wait until he was called upon to drive Herr Vaiser somewhere else.

...TBC...

A/N: Porajmos - Romany for the systematic genocide of the Roma people, on par (I think) with the word Holocaust or Shoah; Einsatzgruppen - mobile German killing units on the Eastern Front, tasked with carrying out the Porajmos; marime - Hindu purity laws still respected and followed by Roma peoples.