No one talks about this: how a girl is born into the world, knowing nothing of its evils or what dangers lie in wait for her as she grows. When she is young, she is taught to keep still, to hold her tongue, to be good. She is chided if her voice is too loud, if she is too forward with her opinions. If she swings her legs under the table at dinner, or is found daydreaming instead of working hard at her chores, her mother and godmothers will take her by the arm and shake her. “Wake up!” they will say. “Wake up, recite your prayers, and work hard. Obey!” Yet her body is free. She delights in beauty; she skips down hills and runs through open fields. When she is older, she learns practical tasks: the patching of tunics, the baking of bread, the tending of gardens. She is taught the various uses of the sheep she is sometimes called upon to watch. She laughs easily, makes friends, enjoys good company, says her prayers, and into her prayers, she whispers the secret wishes of her heart. In the hours of her deep and untroubled sleep, she dreams of love, of her unformed destiny. Yet nothing in her upbringing prepares her for the world as it is. Nothing trains her for sudden death, war, hunger, the burning of homes, the pillaging of towns. She does not know until disaster strikes how ill-equipped she is to face danger; the watching of sheep won’t help her now. If she has never felt pain, then she can’t understand the desire others have to inflict it upon her, how her body, its very shape, form, and beauty, is a target for enemies she has never met and cannot name or even describe. It isn’t every girl who has a father like Jacques d’Arc to acquaint her early on with violence and with pain. By the time Joan was ten, her skin was tough as leather. In a better world, she thinks, you wouldn’t need a Jacques d’Arc. But we don’t live in a better world. At least, not yet.