It stood in the Meeting Hall, a massive painting
measuring more than twenty spans across. As far as anyone was aware, no one now
living in Peacefield knew its provenance, for it was an old masterpiece indeed
— but Timothy, a little gray pygmy mouse, loved to visit it as often as he
could.
Timothy, you see, was an artist’s apprentice. He
loved the feel of charcoal on his paws — loved the smell of the pigments Master
John mixed in the studio every morning before their daily lessons. For Timothy,
it was a sort of meditation to paint twenty versions of the same fallen apple,
revising and revising until he - and Master John - felt he had truly captured
its essence.
Each time Timothy viewed the painting in the
Hall, he knew he was looking at the work of a creature just like him. He could
see the painstaking effort the mysterious artist had put into his celebration
of the Truce — could see the thought put into each individual brush stroke.
What’s more, each cat and mouse depicted was rendered so distinctively that Timothy,
at times, imagined them jumping right off the canvas to tell him their stories.
“I want to learn how to do that,” Timothy said
to Master John just one harvest before. “I want to learn how to make my
pictures come alive.”
That day, the usually stern Master John actually
purred with pride. “Then let us continue our examinations of light and shadow,
my dear mouse.” And with a feline grace that belied his dumpy appearance, he
leapt upon a nearby shelf and threw open the window sash to admit the sun.
At the present moment, Timothy was sitting on a
bench before the great painting, his notebook and pencil in paw, his tongue
protruding from his mouth as he concentrated on his sketch of Old Sage, the
regal tabby who’d been instrumental in ending the conflict between cats and
mice. In the painting, Old Sage dominated the center of the composition, and
Timothy wanted to see if he could adequately capture the swirls of the king’s
long fur — or the piercing wisdom of his gaze.
Timothy eventually got so absorbed in this task
he’d assigned himself that he almost didn’t notice the crowd that had started
to gather in the Hall. But then someone began to speak above the others in a
loud, commanding voice, breaking Timothy’s focus.
“Proud mice,” she said. “Hear my words. For
centuries, you suffered under the domination of the cats. And yes, you suffer
even now. Cats no longer hunt you and kill you for their food, but ask
yourself: is the work of liberation really done when a cat still reigns as
king? Is the work of liberation really done when the richest, most powerful
citizens of Peacefield are mostly cats — and not mice such as yourselves? Is
the work of liberation really done when cats still win most of our prizes in
science and art?”
As the assembly of mice muttered in discontent,
Timothy scurried to the front to get a better look at their chosen orator. What
he hadn’t expected to see was a lithe, glistening Siamese, who paced before her
audience as she spoke, her long black tail swishing through the air in agitation.
Timothy knew this cat. She was Anastasia, the
daughter of the present king.
“And what are you to make of displays such as
this?” Anastasia continued, gesturing to the painting behind her. “Old Sage ate
mice! Oh yes, he did! Years before the Truce, he was as cruel a hunter as any
cat of his age. So why do we memorialize him here? Why do we keep this painting
in our Hall? Why would you tolerate such a thing? Look! Look at the mice who
are groveling at that killer’s feet!”
“Excuse me, please, but that’s not right.”
All of a sudden, the room fell silent.
Timothy hadn’t planned to say that out loud —
but he’d studied that painting for many years, and he was certain Anastasia had
read it wrong.
“And who are you, citizen?” Anastasia asked, her
jade eyes bright with anger.
“Timothy. I’m apprenticed to Master John, the
icon painter.”
“And why, pray, do you dissent? Are you not a
mouse?”
“I am. But I also know the mice in this painting
aren’t groveling. They’re standing tall and rebuilding their village.”
“And why does Old Sage loom so large? Why is he
given such a place of honor?”
“Not because he once ate mice, your majesty —
but because he stopped. And because he decreed that other cats
should stop as well.”
Anastasia scoffed. “You have spent too much time
with cats. It has clouded your mind.”
“Oh? Do you know, then, why this was painted?
And do you know who painted it?”
“A pointless question. Your kind feel degraded
when they see it now. That’s all that matters. Now come, mice. Let us go to the
palace and demand this painting be destroyed.”
Once Anastasia swept out of the hall with her
backers, Timothy sat back down on the bench and sighed heavily, his paws
running over his unfinished drawing. He hated that he’d failed — hated to think
that such a beautiful work may soon be erased in total ignorance.
And most of all, he hated that he was benighted too — that he still didn’t know the identity or the heart of Old Sage’s painter. Clearly, he needed to do some research. Because if there was one thing Timothy did know, it was that context did matter — that context, in fact, was everything.
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