Someone is standing in the lane, waiting for them not far from the cottage door. A glimpse tells her it’s Catherine. In a village this small, it is hard not to be a creature of habit. Her sister knows where she would run to for help.

When she takes Catherine’s hand, the joints of her sister’s fingers are stiff from cold. How long has she been standing here? It is summer, but the nights when the skies are starless and black as pitch can still make one shiver.

Tonight, there is a moon, like a perfect Eucharist wafer, pressed into the sky. It seems almost reachable, as though if you stuck your tongue out far enough, you might taste the body of Christ in the air. What would He taste like? Joan guesses: whatever the opposite of pottage is, that boiled, viscous mush, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, that makes up nearly every meal. Whatever the opposite of dry black bread and curdling milk is. She has heard, from her uncle Durand, of a spice called cinnamon. He says no one knows where cinnamon comes from. But a merchant once told him there is a creature—adept, despite its great size, at hiding itself—called the cinnamon bird that builds its nests from cinnamon sticks. People have disappeared off the face of the earth trying to follow these birds. The cinnamon the merchant sells passes through many hands, nameless and secret, before it finally comes to him, and there is never a great quantity to be sold; he must fight and argue for the honor of transporting it and showing it off among his wares. So, Joan thinks, perhaps the body of Christ has the flavor of this spice, rare and desired among men: of cinnamon.

They can’t go home, at least not tonight. This is understood between them, for if she is a fugitive, flying from her father’s justice, then Catherine, too, has betrayed him by slipping out in the darkness to find her.

Instead they walk, silent, to their usual spot, beneath the great tree of Domrémy, known in the village as the Faerie Tree. The elders say tiny winged creatures live in the branches, and they may do mischief or they may grant wishes, depending on their mood, which one should never take for granted.

Joan settles against Catherine’s body, exhales, and recalls the two pieces of bread Jehanne gave her. She offers one to her sister, who shakes her head, so Salaud gets both.