Theirs is a small village, so no face remains a stranger for very long. She has seen Guillaume sitting on the threshold of his cottage while his mother tends to her garden, considered the best in Domrémy. She has seen him pick up a gray cat, which their family keeps to fend off mice, and rub his cheeks, first one, and then the other, against the scruff of its neck. For his age, he is small, and the cat must be heavy to carry for long periods at a time, but he is always draping it, like a sack of flour, over his shoulder, always petting its ears and trying to cradle it like a baby, though the animal won’t let itself be cradled. She thinks: A boy who is so tender with animals can’t be a bad person, can he? From her skirts, she tears a strip of wool and presses the cloth to his head, and the wool turns dark, nearly black, until her own fingers are sticky. The patch of grass, from the back of his skull to the bottom of his neck, is leaking red, as though the ground itself were being dyed, a bolt of mossy-green fabric dipped in a tub of scarlet. She hears a strangled sound catch in his throat, which she feels echoed in her own throat. It is as if they are, the two of them, linked together in this brief moment; what he feels, she also feels, this dizzy and dazed confusion, a growing nausea that can’t be vomited up. Her hands, now cold, now hot, now cold again, tear a bigger piece off her dress, and she presses, pushing it against the wound. To keep from gagging at the smell of blood, she tells him words she knows are empty before they have even left her mouth. It is only a small cut. Hold on. Help is coming.

She wants to ask Guillaume how it happened. Was it a rock, a piece of wood, or just fists? Did the boy who did this have a weapon concealed? But she doesn’t ask. She is thinking, because she knows he will die, My face shouldn’t be the last one he sees in this world. It should be his mother or father or sister here. Even the cat. Not me, someone he barely knows.