But then an hour passed. And another. And by the third or fourth hour, she had sweated out all of her fear. Her eyes grew heavy, and she made a pillow of the grassy floor.

She learned: Everything changes when you enter a forest. There is no conception of a past or future; there is no sense of time. Each moment carries with it the same urgency as the moment that came directly before. You cannot see beyond your next step, and sometimes, you cannot see even that much. Yet you feel alive, your body measuring its chances of survival not in days, weeks, or years but by the second.

As she moves, she can no longer hear the stream. She puts her trust in her body, the voice that tells her to turn left, move forward, and now right. Do you remember this clearing? Yes, yes, I remember. And here, her mind flicks back. We circled at this point, which means…It takes her only a moment to work through the labyrinth of steps and turn them backward into a sequence, like a dance.

But the journey is long. She traveled here on horse, and now she is on foot.

The dark is for reflection. She had told the Dauphin what she knew of the war. But she didn’t tell His Majesty: since Catherine died and her uncle left, whole days have gone by where she has felt purposeless. She wonders if he feels that way, too. She hates the English, the Burgundians, any enemy of France, but her heart is tired. And she has asked herself since arriving at Chinon what she is doing, why she is even here. It’s not the horse manure she minds. It’s these games.

She stops to rest and to take another drink, holding the cold water in her mouth before swallowing. Her hands feel out a solid trunk, and she sinks to the ground.