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that you will forgive him. This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.”
    “Why?” said Roscuro. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, following the locket.
    “Because,” said Botticelli, “you will promise it — ha — but you will not grant it. You gain his trust. And then you deny him. You refuse to offer the very thing he wants. Forgiveness, freedom, friendship, whatever it is that his heart most desires, you withhold.” At this point in his lecture, Botticelli laughed so hard that he had to sit down and catch his breath. The locket swayed slowly back and forth and then stopped altogether.
    “Ha,” said Botticelli, “ha-ha-ha! You gain his trust, you refuse him and — ha-ha — you become what he knew you were all along, what you knew you were all along, not a friend, not a confessor, not a forgiver, but — ha-ha! — a rat !” Botticelli wiped his eyes and shook his head and sighed a sigh of great contentment. He set the locket in motion again. “At that point, it is most effective to run back and forth over the prisoner’s feet, inducing physical terror along with the emotional sort. Oh,” he said, “it is such a lovely game, such a lovely game! And it is just absolutely chock-full of meaning.”
    “I would like very much to torture a prisoner,” said Roscuro. “I would like to make someone suffer.”
    “Your time will come,” said Botticelli. “Currently, all the prisoners are spoken for. But another prisoner will arrive sooner or later. How do I know this to be true? Because, Roscuro, thankfully there is evil in the world. And the presence of evil guarantees the existence of prisoners.”
    “So, soon, there will be a prisoner for me?”
    “Yes,” said Botticelli Remorso. “Yes.”
    “I’m looking forward to it.”
    “Ha-ha-ha! Of course you are looking forward to it. You are looking forward to it because you are a rat, a real rat.”
    “Yes,” said Roscuro. “I am a real rat.”
    “Concerned not at all with the light,” said Botticelli.
    “Concerned not at all with the light,” repeated Roscuro.
    Botticelli laughed again and shook his head. The locket, suspended from the long nail on his paw, swung back and forth, back and forth.
    “You, my young friend, are a rat. Exactly. Yes. Evil. Prisoners. Rats. Suffering. It all fits together so neatly, so sweetly. Oh, it is a lovely world, a lovely, dark world.”

NOT LONG AFTER this conversation between Botticelli and Roscuro, a prisoner did arrive. The dungeon door slammed and the two rats watched a man being led by a king’s soldier down the stairs into the dungeon.
    “Excellent,” whispered Botticelli. “This one is yours.”
    Roscuro looked at the man closely. “I will make him suffer,” he said.
    But as he stared up at the man, the door to the dungeon was suddenly flung open and a thick and brilliant shaft of afternoon light cut into the dark of the dungeon.
    “Ugh,” said Botticelli. He covered his eyes with one paw.
    Roscuro, however, stared directly into the light.
    Reader, this is important: The rat called Chiaroscuro did not look away. He let the light from the upstairs world enter him and fill him. He gasped aloud with the wonder of it.
    “Give him his small comforts,” shouted a voice at the top of the stairs, and a red cloth was thrown into the light. The cloth hung suspended for a moment, bright red and glowing, and then the door was slammed shut again and the light disappeared and the cloth fell to the floor. It was Gregory the jailer who bent to pick it up.
    “Go on,” said the old man as he held out the cloth to the prisoner, “take it. You’ll need every last bit of warmth down here.”
    And so the prisoner took the cloth and draped it around his shoulders as if it were a cloak, and the soldier of the king said, “Right then, Gregory, he’s all yours.” And the soldier turned and went back up the steps and opened the door to the outside world and some small light