A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village (6 page)

Chapter Seven

In this large and fierce world of ours, there are many, many unpleasant places to be. You can be in a river swarming with angry electric eels, or in a supermarket filled with vicious long-distance runners. You can be in a hotel that has no room service, or you can be lost in a forest that is slowly filling up with water. You can be in a hornet's nest or in an abandoned airport or in the office of a pediatric surgeon, but one of the most unpleasant things that can happen is to find yourself in a quandary, which is where the Baudelaire orphans found themselves that night. Finding yourself in a quandary means that everything seems confusing and dangerous and you don't know what in the world to do about it, and it is one of the worst unpleasantries you can encounter. The three Baudelaires sat in Hector's kitchen as the handyman prepared another Mexican dinner, and compared with the quandary they were in, all their other problems felt like the small potatoes he was chopping into thirds. "Everything seems confusing," Violet said glumly. "The Quagmire triplets are somewhere nearby, but we don't know where, and the only clues we have are two confusing poems. And now, there's a man who isn't Count Olaf, but he has an eye tattooed on his ankle, and he wanted to tell us something about our parents." "It's more than confusing," Klaus said. "It's dangerous. We need to rescue the Quagmires before Count Olaf does something dreadful, and we need to convince the Council of Elders that the man they arrested is really Jacques, otherwise they'll burn him at the stake." "Quandary?" Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "What in the world can we do about it?" "I don't know what we can do about it, Sunny," Violet replied. "We spent all day trying to figure out what the poems meant, and we tried our best to convince the Council of Elders that Officer Luciana made a mistake." She and her siblings looked at Hector, who had certainly not tried his best with the Council of Elders but instead had sat in his folding chair without saying a word. Hector sighed and looked unhappily at the children. "I know I should have said something," he told them, "but I was far too skittish. The Council of Elders is so imposing that I can never say a word in their presence. However, I can think of something that we can do to help." "What is it?" Klaus asked. "We can enjoy these huevos rancheros," he said. "Huevos rancheros are fried eggs and beans, served with tortillas and potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce." The siblings looked at one another, trying to imagine how a Mexican dish would get them out of their quandary. "How will that help?" Violet asked doubtfully. "I don't know," Hector admitted. "But they're almost ready, and my recipe is a delicious one, if I do say so myself. Come on, let's eat. Maybe a good dinner will help you think of something." The children sighed, but nodded their heads in agreement and got up to set the table, and curiously enough, a good dinner did in fact help the Baudelaires think of something. As Violet took her first bite of beans, she felt the gears and levers of her inventing brain spring into action. As Klaus dipped his tortilla into the spicy tomato sauce, he began to think of books he had read that might be helpful. And as Sunny smeared egg yolks all over her face, she clicked her four sharp teeth together and tried to think of a way that they might be useful. By the time the Baudelaires were finishing the meal Hector had prepared for them, their ideas had grown and developed into full-fledged plans, just as Nevermore Tree had grown a long time ago from a tiny seed and Fowl Fountain had been built recently from someone's hideous blueprint. It was Sunny who spoke up first. "Plan!" she said. "What is it, Sunny?" Klaus asked. With a tiny finger covered in tomato sauce, Sunny pointed out the window at Nevermore Tree, which was covered in the V.F.D. crows as it was every evening. "Merganser!" she said firmly. "My sister says that tomorrow morning there will probably be another poem from Isadora in the same spot," Klaus explained to Hector. "She wants to spend the night underneath the tree. She's so small that whoever is delivering the poems probably won't spot her, and she'll be able to find out how the couplets are getting to us." "And that should bring us closer to finding the Quagmires," Violet said. "That's a good plan, Sunny." "My goodness, Sunny," Hector said. "Won't you be frightened spending all night underneath a whole murder of crows?" "Therill," Sunny said, which meant "It won't be any more frightening than the time I climbed up an elevator shaft with my teeth." "I think I have a good plan, too," Klaus said. "Hector, yesterday you told us about the secret library you have in the barn." "Ssh!" Hector said, looking around the kitchen. "Not so loud! You know it's against the rules to have all those books, and I don't want to be burned at the stake." "I don't want anyone to be burned at the stake," Klaus said. "Now, does the secret library contain books about the rules of V.F.D.?" "Absolutely," Hector said. "Lots of them. Because the rule books describe people breaking the rules, they break Rule #108, which clearly states that the V.F.D. library cannot contain any books that break any of the rules." "Well, I'm going to read as many rule books as I can," Klaus said. "There must be a way to save Jacques from being burned at the stake, and I bet I'll find it in the pages of those books." "My word, Klaus," Hector said. "Won't you be bored reading all those rule books?" "It won't be any more boring than the time I had to read all about grammar, in order to save Aunt Josephine," he replied. "Sunny is working to save the Quagmires," Violet said, "and Klaus is working to save Jacques. I've got to work to save us. " "What do you mean?" Klaus asked. "Well, I think Count Olaf must be behind all this trouble," Violet said. "Grebe!" Sunny said, which meant "As usual!" "If the town of V.F.D. burns Jacques at the stake," Violet continued, "then everyone will think Count Olaf is dead. I bet The Daily Punctilio will even have a story that says so. It will be very good news for Olaf, the real one, that is. If everyone thinks he's dead, Olaf can be as treacherous as he likes, and the authorities won't come looking for him." "That's true," Klaus said. "Count Olaf must have found Jacques, whoever he is, and brought him into town. He knew that Officer Luciana would think he was Olaf. But what does that have to do with saving us?" "Well, if we rescue the Quagmires and prove that Jacques is innocent," Violet said, "Count Olaf will come after us, and we can't rely on the Council of Elders to protect us." "Poe!" Sunny said. "Or Mr. Poe," Violet agreed. "That's why we'll need a way to save ourselves." She turned to Hector. "Yesterday, you also told us about your self-sustaining hot air mobile home." Hector looked around the kitchen again, to sure no one was listening. "Yes," he said, "but I think I'm going to stop work on it. If the Council of Elders learns that I'm breaking Rule #67, I could be burned at the stake. Anyway, I can't seem to get the engine to work." "If you don't mind, I'd like to take a look at it " Violet said. "Maybe I could help finish it. You wanted to use the self-sustaining hot air mobile home to escape from V.F.D. and the Council of Elders and everything else that makes you skittish, but it would also make an excellent escape vehicle." "Maybe it could be both," Hector said shyly, and reached across the table to pat Sunny on the shoulder. "I very much enjoy the company of you three children, and it would be delightful to share a mobile home with you. There's plenty of room in the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, and once we get it to work we could launch it and never come down. Count Olaf and his associates would never be able to bother you again. What do you think?" The three Baudelaires listened closely to Hector's suggestion, but when they tried to tell him what they thought, it felt like they were in a quandary all over again. On one hand, it would be exciting to live in such an unusual way, and the thought of being safe forever from Count Olaf's evil clutches was very appealing, to say the least. Violet looked at her baby sister and thought about the promise she had made, when Sunny was born, that she would always look after her younger siblings and make sure they wouldn't get into trouble. Klaus looked at Hector, who was the only citizen in this vile village who really seemed to care about the children, as a guardian should. And Sunny looked out the window at the evening sky, and remembered the first time she and her siblings saw the V.F.D. crows fly in superlative circles and wished that they, too, could escape from all their worries. But on the other hand, the Baudelaires felt that flying away from all their trouble, and living forever up in the sky, didn't seem to be a proper way to live one's life. Sunny was a baby, Klaus was only twelve, and even Violet, the eldest, was fourteen, which is not really so old. The Baudelaires had many things they hoped to accomplish on the ground, and they weren't sure that they could simply abandon all those hopes so early in their lives. The Baudelaires sat at the table and thought about Hector's plan, and it seemed to the children that if they spent the rest of their lives floating around the heavens, they simply wouldn't be in their element, a phrase which here means "in the sort of home the three siblings would prefer." "First things first," Violet said finally, hoping that she wasn't hurting Hector's feelings. "Before we make a decision about the rest of our lives, let's get Duncan and Isadora out of Olaf's clutches." "And make sure Jacques won't be burned at the stake," Klaus said. "Albico!" Sunny added, which meant something like, "And let's solve the mystery of V.F.D. that the Quagmires told us about!" Hector sighed. "You're right," he said. "Those things are more important, even if they do make me skittish. Well, let's take Sunny to the tree and then it's off to the barn, where the library and inventing studio are. It looks like it's going to be another long night, but hopefully this time we won't be barking up the wrong tree." The Baudelaires smiled at the handyman and followed him out into the night, which was cool and breezy and filled with the sounds of the murder of crows settling down for the night. They kept on smiling as they separated, with Sunny crawling toward Nevermore Tree and the two older Baudelaires following Hector to the barn, and they continued to smile as they began to put each of their plans into action. Violet smiled because Hector's inventing studio was very well-equipped, with plenty of pliers and glue and wire and everything her inventing brain needed, and because Hector's self-sustaining hot air mobile home was an enormous, fascinating mechanism, just the sort of challenging invention she loved to work on. Klaus smiled because Hector's library was very comfortable, with some good sturdy tables and cushioned chairs just perfect for reading in, and because the books on the rules of V.F.D. were very thick and full of difficult words, just the sort of challenging reading he enjoyed. And Sunny smiled because there were several dead branches of Nevermore Tree that had fallen to the ground, so she would have something to gnaw on as she hid and waited for the next couplet to arrive. The children were in their elements. Violet was in her element at the inventing studio, and Klaus was in his element at the library, and Sunny was in hers just from being low to the ground and near something she could bite. Violet tied her hair up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes, and Klaus polished his glasses, and Sunny stretched her mouth to get her teeth ready for the task ahead of her, and the three siblings smiled more than they had since their arrival in town. The Baudelaire orphans were in their elements, and they hoped that being in their elements would lead them out of their quandary.

Chapter Eight

The next morning began with a colorful and lengthy sunrise, which Sunny saw from her hiding place at the bottom of Nevermore Tree. It continued with the sounds of awakening crows, which Klaus heard from the library in the barn, and followed with the sight of the birds making their familiar circle in the sky, which Violet saw just as she was leaving the inventing studio. By the time Klaus joined his sister outside the barn, and Sunny crawled across the flat landscape to reach them, the birds had stopped circling and were flying together uptown, and the morning was so pretty and peaceful that as I describe it I can almost forget that it was a very, very sad morning for me, a morning that I wish I could strike forever from the Snicket calendar. But I can't erase this day, any more than I can write a happy ending to this book, for the simple reason that the story does not go that way. No matter how lovely the morning was, or how confident the Baudelaires felt about what they had discovered over the course of the night, there isn't a happy ending on the horizon of this story, any more than there was an elephant on the horizon of V.F.D. "Good morning," Violet said to Klaus, and yawned. "Good morning," Klaus replied. He was holding two books in his arms, but nevertheless he managed to wave at Sunny, who was still crawling toward them. "How did everything go with Hector in the inventing studio?" "Well, Hector fell asleep a few hours ago," Violet said, "but I discovered a few small flaws in the selfsustaining hot air mobile home. The engine conductivity was low, due to some problems with the electromagnetic generator Hector built. This meant that the inflation rate of the balloons was often uneven, so I reconfigured some key conduits. Also, the water circulation system was run on ill-fitting pipes, which meant that the self-sustaining aspect of the food center probably wouldn't last as long as it should, so I rerouted some of the aquacycling." "Ning!" Sunny called, as she reached her siblings. "Good morning, Sunny," Klaus said. "Violet was just telling me that she noticed a few things wrong with Hector's invention, but she thinks she fixed them." "Well, I'd like to test the whole device out before we go up in it, if there's time," Violet said, picking up Sunny and holding her, "but I think everything should work pretty well. It's a fantastic invention. A small group of people could really spend the rest of their lives safely in the air. Did you discover anything in the library?" "Well, first I discovered that books about V.F.D. rules are actually quite fascinating," Klaus said. "Rule #19, for instance, clearly states that the only pens that are acceptable within the city limits are ones made from the feathers of crows. And yet Rule #39 clearly states that it is illegal to make anything out of crow feathers. How can the townspeople obey both rules at once?" "Maybe they don't have any pens at all," Violet said, "but that's not important. Did you discover anything helpful in the rule books?" "Yes," Klaus said, and opened one of the books he was carrying. "Listen to this: Rule #2,493 clearly states that any person who is going to be burned at the stake has the opportunity to make a speech right before the fire is lit. We can go to the uptown jail this morning and make sure Jacques gets that opportunity. In his speech, he can tell people who he really is, and why he has that tattoo." "But he tried to do that yesterday at the meeting," Violet said. "Nobody believed him. Nobody even listened to him." "I was thinking the same thing," Klaus said, opening the second book, "until I read this." "Towhee?" Sunny asked, which meant something like "Is there a rule that clearly states that people must listen to speeches?" "No," Klaus replied. "This isn't a rule book. This is a book about psychology, the study of the mind. It was removed from the library because there's a chapter about the Cherokee tribe of North America. They make all sorts of things out of feathers, which breaks Rule #39." "That's ridiculous," Violet said. "I agree," Klaus said, "but I'm glad this book was here, instead of in town, because it gave me an idea. There's a chapter here about mob psychology." "Wazay?" Sunny asked. 1 "A mob is a crowd of people," Klaus explained, "usually an angry one." "Like the townspeople and the Council of Elders yesterday," Violet said, "in Town Hall. They were incredibly angry." "Exactly," Klaus said. "Now listen to this." The middle Baudelaire opened the second book and began to read out loud. "'The subliminal emotional tenor of a mob's unruliness lies in solitary opinions, expressed emphatically at various points in the stereo field.'" "Tenor? Stereo?" Violet asked. "It sounds like you're talking about opera." "The book uses a lot of complicated words," Klaus said, "but luckily there was a dictionary in Hector's library. It had been removed from V.F.D. because it defined the phrase 'mechanical device.' All that sentence means is that if a few people, scattered throughout the crowd, begin to shout their opinions, soon the whole mob will agree with them. It happened in the council meeting yesterday, a few people said angry things, and soon the whole room was angry-" "Vue," Sunny said, which meant "Yes, I remember." "When we get to the jail," Klaus said, "we'll make sure that Jacques is allowed to give his speech. Then, as he explains himself, we'll scatter ourselves throughout the crowd and shout things like, 'I believe him!' and 'Hear, hear!' Mob psychology should make everyone demand Jacques's freedom." "Do you really think that will work?" Violet asked. "Well, I'd prefer to test it first," Klaus said, "just like you'd prefer to test the self-sustaining hot air mobile home. But we don't have time. Now, Sunny, what did you discover from spending the night under a tree?" Sunny held up one of her small hands to show them another scrap of paper. "Couplet!" she cried out triumphantly, and her siblings gathered around to read it. The first thing you read contains the clue: An initial way to speak to you. "Good work, Sunny," Violet said. "This is definitely another poem by Isadora Quagmire." "And it seems to lead us back to the first poem," Klaus said. "It says 'The first thing you read contains the clue.'" "But what does 'An initial way to speak to you' mean?" Violet asked. "Initials, like V.F.D.?" "Maybe," Klaus replied, "but the word 'initial' can also mean 'first.' I think Isadora means that this is the first way she can speak to us, through these poems." "But we already know that," Violet said. "The Quagmires wouldn't have to tell us. Let's look at all the poems together. Maybe it will give us a complete picture." Violet took the other two poems out of her pocket, and the three children looked at them together. For sapphires we are held in here. Only you can end our fear. Until dawn comes we cannot speak. No words can come from this sad beak. The first thing you read contains the clue: An initial way to speak to you. "The part about the beak is still the most confusing," Klaus said. "Leucophrys!" Sunny said, which meant "I think I can explain that, the crows are delivering the couplets." "How can that be possible?" Violet asked. "Loidya!" Sunny answered. She meant something like "I'm absolutely sure that nobody approached the tree all night, and at dawn the note dropped down from the branches of the tree." "I've heard of carrier pigeons," Klaus said "Those are birds that carry messages for a living But I've never heard of carrier crows." "Maybe they don't know that they're carrier crows," Violet said. "The Quagmires could be attaching the scraps of paper to the crows in some way, putting them in their beaks, or in their feathers and then the poems come loose when they sleep in Nevermore Tree. The triplets must be somewhere in town. But where?" "Ko!" Sunny cried, pointing to the poems. "Sunny's right," Klaus said excitedly. "It says 'Until dawn comes we cannot speak.' That means they're attaching the poems in the morning, when the crows roost uptown." "Well, that's one more reason to get uptown," Violet replied. "We can save Jacques before he's burned at the stake, and search for the Quagmires. Without you, Sunny, we wouldn't know where to look for the Quagmires." "Hasserin," Sunny said, which meant "And without you, Klaus, we wouldn't know how to save Jacques." "And without you, Violet," Klaus said, "we'd have no chance of escaping from this town." "And if we keep standing here," Violet said, "we won't save anybody. Let's go wake up Hector, and get moving. The Council of Elders said they'd burn Jacques at the stake right after breakfast." "Yikes!" Sunny said, which meant "That doesn't give us much time," so the Baudelaires didn't take much time walking into the barn and through Hector's library, which was so massive that the two Baudelaire sisters could not believe Klaus had managed to find helpful information among the shelves and shelves of books. There were bookshelves so tall you had to stand on a ladder to reach their highest shelves, and ones so short that you had to crawl on the floor to read their titles. There were books that looked too heavy to move, and books that looked too light to stay in one place, and there were books that looked so dull that the sisters could not imagine anyone reading them but these were the books that were still stacked in huge heaps spread out on the tables after Klaus's all-night reading session. Violet and Sunny wanted to pause for a moment and take it all in, but they knew that they didn't have much time. Behind the last bookshelf of the library was Hector's inventing studio, where Klaus and Sunny got their first glimpse of the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, which was a marvelous contraption. Twelve enormous baskets, each about the size of a small room, were stacked up in the corner, connected by all sorts of different tubes, pipes, and wires, and circled around the baskets were a series of large metal tanks, wooden grates, glass jugs, paper bags, plastic containers, and rolls of twine, along with a number of large mechanical devices with buttons, switches, and gears, and a big pile of deflated balloons. The self-sustaining hot air mobile home was so immense and complicated that it reminded the two younger Baudelaires of what they thought of when they pictured Violet's inventive brain, and every piece of it looked so interesting that Klaus and Sunny could scarcely decide what to look at first. But the Baudelaires knew that they didn't have much time, so rather than explain the invention to her siblings, Violet walked quickly over to one of the baskets, which Klaus and Sunny were surprised to see contained a bed, which in turn contained a sleeping Hector. "Good morning," the handyman said, when Violet gently shook him awake. "It is a good morning," she replied. "We've discovered some marvelous things. We'll explain everything on our way uptown." "Uptown?" Hector said, stepping out of the basket. "But the crows are roosting uptown. We do the downtown chores in the morning, remember?" "We're not doing any chores this morning," Klaus said firmly. "That's one of the things we need to explain." Hector yawned, stretched and rubbed his eyes, and then smiled at the three children "Well, fire away," he said, using a phrase which here means "begin telling me about your plans." The siblings led Hector back through his inventing studio and secret library and waited while he locked up the barn. Then, as they took their first few steps across the flat landscape toward the uptown district, the Baudelaire orphans fired away. Violet told Hector about the improvements she had made on his invention, and Klaus told him about what he had learned in Hector's library, and Sunny told him, with some translation help from her siblings, about her discovery of how Isadora's poems were being delivered. By the time the Baudelaires were unrolling the last scrap of paper and showing Hector the third couplet, they had already reached the crow-covered outskirts of V.F.D.'s uptown district. "So the Quagmires are somewhere in the uptown district," Hector said. "But where?" "I don't know," Violet admitted, "but we'd better try to save Jacques first. Which way is the uptown jail?" Violet asked Hector. "It's across from Fowl Fountain," the handyman replied, "but it looks like we won't need directions. Look what's ahead of us." The children looked, and could see some of the townspeople holding flaming torches and walking about a block ahead of them. "It must be after breakfast," Klaus said. "Let's hurry." The Baudelaires walked as quickly as they could between the muttering crows roosting on the ground, with Hector trailing skittishly behind them, and soon they rounded a corner and reached Fowl Fountain or at least what they could see of it. The fountain was swarming with crows who were fluttering their wings in the water in order to give themselves a morning bath, and the Baudelaires could scarcely see one metal feather of the hideous landmark Across the courtyard was a building with bars on the windows and crows on the bars, and the torch-carrying citizens were standing in a half circle around the door of the building. More of V.F.D.'s citizens were arriving from every direction, and the three children could see a few crow-hatted members of the Council of Elders standing together and listening to something Mrs. Morrow was saying. "It seems we arrived in the nick of time," Violet said. "We'd better scatter ourselves throughout the crowd. Sunny, you move to the far left. I'll take the far right." "Roger!" Sunny said, and began crawling her way through the half circle of people. "I think I'll just stay here," Hector said quietly, looking down at the ground, but the children had no time to argue with him. Klaus began to walk straight down the middle of the crowd. "Wait!" Klaus called, moving with difficulty through the people. "Rule #2,493 clearly states that any person who is going to be burned at the stake has the opportunity to make a speech right before the fire is lit!" "Yes!" Violet cried, from the right-hand side of the crowd. "Let Jacques be heard!" Officer Luciana stepped right in front of Violet, who almost bumped her head on the Chief's shiny helmet. Beneath the visor of the helmet Violet could see Luciana's lipsticked mouth rise in a very small smile. "It's too late for that," she said, and a few townspeople around her murmured in agreement. With a clunk! of one boot, she stepped aside and let Violet see what had happened. From the left-hand side of the crowd, Sunny crawled over the shoes of the person standing closest to the jail, and Klaus peered over Mr. Lesko's shoulder to get a good look at what everyone was staring at. Jacques was lying on the ground with his eyes closed, and two members of the Council of Elders were pulling a white sheet over him, as if they were tucking him in for a nap. But as dearly as I wish I