She looks something like Joan of Arc must have looked at a moment of mortal change. Was it at her death?

Or was it at that particular moment when, locked in her cell, she’d had to consider which way she should go? Abjure her visions? Deny the messages she’d received? Those messages from the Archangel Michael – he of the seductive voice and the soft, vague wings. His brown eyes. Warm eyes they were but also, she thought for the first time, a little crafty at that moment when he glanced away, looking perhaps for a different girl over her shoulder. Someone less ignorant, less clumsy. A comely girl in a silken gown, perhaps, not she of the nubby homespun dress that was more like a sack she’d donned for modesty’s sake. Donned to cover, not to please.

Abjure him? Abjure those visions of him. Deny those messages? Turn toward that word “heretic?” Turn toward it – was that it?

Or should she turn toward the fire? That, at least, would take her outside her cell.

To turn away from the fire, to recant, meant more of the same. The same dirt floor that muddied whenever it rained, the same wooden slats at night, the same dim days. The same, the same, the same.

Should she choose the fire, then? The ride to the square in a crude wagon drawn by oxen, ropes around her wrists, her waist? She sensed a wispy hope of a warm day, a blue sky. A friendly face. Or two.

There would be a platform under the blue sky, faggots piled high on a mound of straw. A pillar to hold her there. She’d been told about the pillar. It would burn down as she burned down.

Was this the moment of change? In that cell, with those choices?

Toward what would she turn? The visions, the victories in battle? Or the fire and the blue sky?

Yes, she had been changed. In what way, she would know soon.

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