At this hour, hobgoblins dance beneath the leaves, avoiding spots where the moon shines. Lutins hide in the knots of tree trunks and may work their magic for ill or for good. And in the damp darkness of caves or beneath bridges, the Dames Blanches await travelers and unsuspecting passersby. Their spirits can slip into any crack of rock, any cliffside. You may turn a corner and come face-to-face with a hooded woman dressed in white, her body glowing, her face pale. She will ask you to dance or to stand on your head and walk on your hands, to pick her some fresh flowers and sing your favorite song, and you must oblige her if you want to avoid a curse.

In the gathering dark, as they stand in this field, anything feels possible. The dark is for imagining. And you can see horrors. You can scare yourself with tricks of the mind and dancing devils. Or you can plan out your whole future in the pitch of night. You can dream with your eyes open.

The key is to stay alive. If you still have breath in you, there is every chance tomorrow will be better. One day, she thinks, I’ll leave Domrémy. Some people are born in a place, and they are never able to see past its fences, its hedgerows, and its fields. They reach the last furrow of the last acre, the edge of the forest, and turn around, go home. They live beneath the same patch of sky and wait for clouds or good weather or rain to come to them. But not me. She tells herself, I’ll search out my own weather. I’ll plunge into the unknown wood.

In the dark, she smiles. She will live to a ripe old age. She will say, when she is old, I survived this and this and this, but first, before anything else, I survived my father’s fists.