One night, the six quietly led every mouse in the land to the cats’ palace. And while the cats slept, the six little mice bade their companions tie the cats’ paws together, front and back. And they carried off every last cat to a place where they would have to answer truthfully for the terrible troubles they had brought on the mice.

The cats, once awake, were angry. And when the six brave mice demanded answers, they refused. They had no fear of the mice, nor tears for their suffering.

The mice decided they did not need the cats in the land anymore. They would make a new land, and their children would no longer hunger, thirst, and die. And so they built a scaffold and made nooses for the cats’ necks.

When the cats saw the scaffolds, they caterwauled so loudly that their brethren in other lands heard them. There came a fierce army of felines, who snuck up on the mice and took over the city. They burned everything in their path, rescued the cats from their nooses, and killed one-third of the mice for reason and one-third for sport.

In the end, they took the six brave little mice whose questions had inflamed the whole land, and they called all the remaining mice to bear witness. Then the cats hanged the six before all of their brethren to teach the mice fear.

Legend says that one of the six survived, a mouse born without a tail. For in the confusion, when the mice knew the cats were coming, one bold young mouse said, “If all of the six die, we’ll forget the truth they have spoken. We’ll forget we were brave once. Let me take your place, brother. I’ll hang from the noose for you, and you will live with my name.”

“How can you take the noose for me?” asked the sixth mouse. “I’m known to all, for I’ve no tail.”

But the bold little mouse cut off his own tail and took the place of the sixth mouse.

And the cats, who could not tell one mouse from another, caught the bold young mouse, saying, “Here’s the one!” They hanged him with his brothers, and all the mice that witnessed it were afraid, and from that day there was a great silence in all the land.

But they say that sometimes on the wind you can still hear a voice whispering about what is good, what is right, and what is just. And that somewhere out in the wilds, a mouse without a tail still lives.

15

The Fountain

It has been two months since I received Thénardier’s hand. And a month since I could walk normally again after the beating.

In that time, Death the Endless has begun to haunt the city, taking the weakest: the old, the frail, the young. The bodies are piled high in the streets. It’s best not to look too hard at them. Especially the ones that are still moving; desperate families have put their sick out on the street to die, no longer able to bear the sight of their suffering.