Gesturing with his sword, he led the children around a corner into an enormous room—the room they’d had a glimpse of as the Queequeg tumbled inside this terrible place. It was quite dark, with only a few lanterns hanging from the tops of tall pillars scattered around the room, but Violet and Klaus could see two large rows of uncomfortable-looking wooden benches, on which sat a crowd of children, hurriedly working long oars that stretched across the room and even beyond the walls, where they slid through metal holes in order to control the tentacles of the octopus. The elder Baudelaires recognized some of the children from a troop of Snow Scouts they had encountered in the Mortmain Mountains, and a few looked quite a bit like other students at Prufrock Preparatory School, where the siblings had first encountered Carmelita Spats, but some of the others were children with whom the Baudelaires had had no prior experience, a phrase which here means “who had probably been kidnapped by Count Olaf or his associates on another occasion.” The children looked very weary, quite hungry, and more than a little bored as they worked the metal oars back and forth. In the very center of the room appeared to be another octopus—this one made of slippery cloth. Six of the octopus’s arms hung limply at its sides, but two of them were waving high in the air, one of them clutching what looked like a long, damp noodle.
“Row faster, you stupid brats!” the octopus cried in a familiar, wicked voice. “We have to get back to the Hotel Denouement before Thursday, and it’s Monday already! If you don’t hurry up I’m going to hit you with this tagliatelle grande! I warn you, being struck with a large piece of pasta is an unpleasant and somewhat sticky experience! Ho ho sniggle!”
“Hee hee snaggle!” Olaf cried in agreement, and the octopus whirled around.
“Darling!” it cried, and the siblings were not surprised to see that it was Esmé Squalor, Count Olaf’s treacherous girlfriend, in another one of her absurd, stylish outfits. Using the slippery cloth of the submarine’s uniforms, the villainous girlfriend had fashioned an octopus dress, with two large plastic eyes, six extra sleeves, and suction cups stuck all over her boots, just as real octopi have on their tentacles to help them move around. Esmé took a few sticky steps toward Olaf and then peered at the children beneath the slippery hood of the dress. “Are these the Baudelaires?” she asked in astonishment. “How can that be? We already celebrated their deaths!”
“It turns out they survived,” Count Olaf said, “but their good luck is about to come to an end. I’m taking them to the brig!”
“The baby certainly has grown,” Esmé said, peering at Fiona. “But she’s just as ugly as she ever was.”
“No, no,” Olaf said. “The baby’s locked up in that helmet, coughing her little lungs out. This is Fiona, Captain Widdershin’s stepdaughter. The captain abandoned her!”
“Abandoned her?” Esmé repeated. “How in! How stylish! How marvelous! This calls for more of our new laughter! Ha ha hedgehog!”
“Tee hee tempeh!” Olaf cackled. “Life keeps getting better and better!”
“Sniggle ho ho!” Esmé shrieked. “Our triumph is just around the corner!”
“Ha ha Hepplewhite!” Olaf crowed. “V.F.D. will be reduced to ashes forever!”
“Giggle giggle glandular problems!” Esmé cried. “We are going to be painfully wealthy!”
“Heepa deepa ho ho ha!” Olaf shouted. “The world will always remember the name of this wonderful submarine!”
“What is the name of this submarine?” Fiona asked, and to the children’s relief the villains stopped their irritating laughter. Olaf glared at the mycologist and then looked at the ground.
“The Carmelita,” he admitted quietly. “I wanted to call it the Olaf, but somebody made me change it.”
“The Olaf is a cakesniffing name!” cried a rude voice the siblings had hoped never to hear again, and I’m sorry to say that Carmelita Spats skipped into the room, sneering at the Baudelaires as she did so. Carmelita had always been the sort of unpleasant person who believed that she was prettier and smarter than everybody else, and Violet and Klaus saw instantly that she had become even more spoiled under the care of Olaf and Esmé. She was dressed in an outfit perhaps even more absurd than Esmé Squalor’s, in different shades of pink so blinding that Violet and Klaus had to squint in order to look at her. Around her waist was a wide, frilly tutu, which is a skirt used during ballet performances, and on her head was an enormous pink crown decorated with light pink ribbons and dark pink flowers. She had two pink wings taped to her back, two pink hearts drawn on her cheeks, and two different pink shoes on each foot that made unpleasant slapping sounds as she walked. Around her neck was a stethoscope, such as doctors use, with pink puffballs pasted all over it, and in one hand she had a long pink wand with a bright pink star at the end of it.
“Stop looking at my outfit!” she commanded the Baudelaires scornfully. “You’re just jealous of me because I’m a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian!”
“You look adorable, darling,” purred Esmé, patting her on the crown. “Doesn’t she look adorable, Olaf?”
“I suppose so,” Count Olaf muttered. “I wish you would ask me before taking disguises from my trunk.”
“But Countie, I needed your disguises,” Carmelita whined, batting her eyelashes, which were covered in pink glitter. “I needed a special outfit for my special tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital!”
Several of the children groaned at their oars. “Please, no!” cried one of the Snow Scouts. “Her dance recitals last for hours!”
“Have mercy on us!” cried another child.
“Carmelita Spats is the most talented dancer in the entire universe!” Esmé growled, snapping the noodle over the rower’s heads. “You brats should be grateful that she is performing for you! It’ll help you row!”
“Ugh,” Sunny could not help saying from inside her helmet, as if the idea of Carmelita’s dance recital were making her even sicker. The elder Baudelaires looked at one another and tried to imagine how they could help their young sibling. “I think we have a pink cape aboard the Queequeg,” Klaus said hurriedly. “It would look perfect on Carmelita. I’ll just run back to the submarine, and—”
“I don’t want your old clothes, you cakesniffer!” Carmelita said scornfully. “A tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian doesn’t wear hand-me-downs!”
“Isn’t she precious?” Esmé cooed. “She’s like the adopted child I never had—except for you Baudelaires, of course. But I never liked you much.”
“Are you going to stay and watch me, Countie?” Carmelita asked. “This is going to be the most special dance recital in the whole wide world!”
“There’s too much work to do,” Count Olaf said hastily. “I have to throw these children in the brig, so my associate can force them to reveal the location of the sugar bowl.”
“You like that sugar bowl more than me,” Carmelita pouted.
“Of course we don’t, darling,” Esmé said. “Olaf, tell her that sugar bowl doesn’t mean a thing to you! Tell her she’s like a wonderful marshmallow in the middle of our lives!”
“You’re a marshmallow, Carmelita,” Olaf said, and pushed the children out of the enormous room. “I’ll see you later.”
“Tell Hooky to be extra vicious with those brats!” Esmé cried, whipping the tagliatelle grande over her fake octopus head. “And now, on with the show!”
Count Olaf ushered the children out of the room as Carmelita Spats began tapping and twirling in front of the rowers. The elder Baudelaires were almost grateful to go to the brig, rather than being forced to watch a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital. Olaf dragged them down another hallway that twisted every which way, curving to the right and to the left as if it were a snake the mechanical octopus had eaten, and finally stopped in front of a small door, with a metal eye where the doorknob ought to have been.
“This is the brig!” Count Olaf cried. “Ha ha haberdashery!”
&n
bsp; Sunny coughed once more from inside her helmet—a rough, loud cough that sounded worse than before. The Medusoid Mycelium was clearly continuing its ghastly growth, and Violet tried one more time to convince the villain to let them help her. “Please let us go back to the Queequeg,” she said. “Can’t you hear her coughing?”
“Yes,” Count Olaf said, “but I don’t care.”
“Please!” Klaus cried. “This is a matter of life and death!”
“It certainly is,” Olaf sneered, turning the knob. “My associate will make you reveal the location of the sugar bowl if he has to tear you apart to do it!”
“Listen to my friends!” Fiona said. “Aye! We’re in a terrible situation!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Count Olaf said, with a wicked smile, as the door creaked open to reveal a small, bare room. There was nothing in it but a small stool, at which a man sat, shuffling a deck of cards with quite a bit of difficulty. “How can a family reunion be a terrible situation?” Olaf said, and shoved the children inside the room, slamming the door behind them.
Violet and Klaus faced Olaf’s associate, and turned the diving helmet so Sunny could face him, too. The siblings were not surprised, of course, that the person shuffling the cards was the hook-handed man, and they were not at all happy to see him, and they were quite scared that their time in the brig would make it impossible to save Sunny from the mushrooms growing inside her helmet. But when they looked at Fiona, they saw that the mycologist was quite surprised at who she saw in the brig, and quite happy to see the man who stood up from his stool and waved his hooks in amazement.
“Fiona!” the hook-handed man cried.
“Fernald!” Fiona said, and it seemed they just might save Sunny after all.
CHAPTER
Ten
The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. The Baudelaire orphans, of course, had had a great sadness in their life from the moment they first heard of their parents’ death, and sometimes it felt as if they had to wave smoke away from their eyes to see even the happiest of moments. As Violet and Klaus watched Fiona and the hook-handed man embrace one another, they felt as if the smoke of their own unhappiness had filled the brig. They could not bear to think that Fiona had found her long-lost brother when they themselves, in all likelihood, would never see their parents again, and might even lose their sister as the poisonous spores of the Medusoid Mycelium made her coughing sound worse and worse inside the helmet.
“Fiona!” the hook-handed man cried. “Is it really you?”
“Aye,” the mycologist said, taking off her triangular glasses to wipe away her tears. “I never thought I would see you again, Fernald. What happened to your hands?”
“Never mind that,” the hook-handed man said quickly. “Why are you here? Did you join Count Olaf, too?”
“Certainly not,” Fiona said firmly. “He captured the Queequeg, and threw us into the brig.”
“So you’ve joined the Baudelaire brats,” the hook-handed man said. “I should have known you were a goody-goody!”
“I haven’t joined the Baudelaires,” Fiona said, just as firmly. “They’ve joined me. Aye! I’m the captain of the Queequeg now.”
“You?” said Olaf’s henchman. “What happened to Widdershins?”
“He disappeared from the submarine,” Fiona replied. “We don’t know where he is.”
“I don’t care where he is,” the hook-handed man sneered. “I couldn’t care less about that mustached fool! He’s the reason I joined Count Olaf in the first place! The captain was always shouting ‘Aye! Aye! Aye!’ and ordering me around! So I ran away and joined Olaf’s acting troupe!”
“But Count Olaf is a terrible villain!” Fiona cried. “He has no regard for other people. He dreams up treacherous schemes, and lures others into becoming his cohorts!”
“Those are just the bad aspects of him,” the hook-handed man said. “There are many good parts, as well. For instance, he has a wonderful laugh.”
“A wonderful laugh is no excuse for villainous behavior!” Fiona said.
“Let’s just agree to disagree,” the hook-handed man replied, using a tiresome expression which here means “You’re probably right, but I’m too embarrassed to admit it.” He waved one hook carelessly at his sister. “Step aside, Fiona. It’s time for the orphans to tell me where the sugar bowl is.”
Olaf’s henchman scraped his hooks together to give them a quick sharpening, and took one threatening step toward the Baudelaires. Violet and Klaus looked at one another in fear, and then at the diving helmet, where they heard their sister give another shuddering cough, and knew that it was time to lay their cards on the table, a phrase which here means “reveal themselves honestly to Olaf’s wicked henchman.”
“We don’t know where the sugar bowl is,” Violet said.
“My sister is telling the truth,” Klaus said. “Do with us what you will, but we won’t be able to tell you anything.”
The hook-handed man glared at them, and scraped his hooks together once more. “You’re liars,” he said. “Both of you are rotten orphan liars.”
“It’s true, Fernald,” Fiona said. “Aye! Finding the sugar bowl was the Queequeg’s mission, but so far we’ve failed.”
“If you don’t know where the sugar bowl is,” the hook-handed man said angrily, “then putting you in the brig is completely pointless!” He turned around and kicked his small stool, toppling it over, and then kicked the wall of the brig for good measure. “What am I supposed to do now?” he sulked.
Fiona put her hand on her brother’s hook. “Take us back to the Queequeg,” she said. “Sunny is in that helmet, along with a growth of Medusoid Mycelium.”
“Medusoid Mycelium?” Olaf’s henchman repeated in horror. “That’s a very dangerous fungus!”
“She’s in great danger,” Violet said. “If we don’t find a cure very, very soon, she’ll die.”
The hook-handed man frowned, but then looked at the helmet and gave the children a shrug. “Why should I care if she dies?” he asked. “She’s made my life miserable from the time I met her. Every time we fail to get the Baudelaire fortune, Count Olaf yells at everyone!”
“You’re the one who made the Baudelaires’ lives miserable,” Fiona said. “Count Olaf has performed countless treacherous schemes, and you helped him time and time again. Aye! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
The hook-handed man sighed, and looked down at the floor of the brig. “Sometimes I am,” he admitted. “Life in Olaf’s troupe sounded like it was going to be glamorous and fun, but we’ve ended up doing more murder, arson, blackmail, and assorted violence than I would have preferred.”
“This is your chance to do something noble,” Fiona said. “You don’t have to remain on the wrong side of the schism.”
“Oh, Fiona,” the hook-handed man said, and put one hook awkwardly around her shoulder. “You don’t understand. There is no wrong side of the schism.”
“Of course there is,” Klaus said. “V.F.D. is a noble organization, and Count Olaf is a terrible villain.”
220
“A noble organization?” the hook-handed man said. “Is that so? Tell that to your baby sister, you four-eyed fool! If it weren’t for Volatile Fungus Deportation, you never would have encountered those deadly mushrooms!”
The children looked at one another, remem
bering what they had read in the Gorgonian Grotto. They had to admit that Olaf’s henchman was right. But Violet reached into her pocket and drew out the newspaper clipping Sunny had found in the cave. She held it out so everyone could see the Daily Punctilio article that the eldest Baudelaire had kept hidden for so long.
“‘VERIFYING FERNALD’S DEFECTION,’” she said, reading the headline out loud, and then continued by reading the byline, a word which here means “name of the person who wrote the article.” “‘By Jacques Snicket. It has now been confirmed that the fire that destroyed Anwhistle Aquatics, and took the life of famed ichnologist Gregor Anwhistle, was set by Fernald Widdershins, the son of the captain of the Queequeg submarine. The Widdershins family’s participation in a recent schism has raised several questions regarding…’” Violet looked up and met the glare of Olaf’s henchman. “The rest of the article is blurry,” she said, “but the truth is clear. You defected—you abandoned V.F.D. and joined up with Olaf!”
“The difference between the two sides of the schism,” Klaus said, “is that one side puts out fires, and the other starts them.”
The hook-handed man reached forward and speared the article on one of his hooks, and then turned the clipping around so he could read it again. “You should have seen the fire,” he said quietly. “From a distance, it looked like an enormous black plume of smoke, rising straight out of the water. It was like the entire sea was burning down.”