At the mention of the sugar bowl, Klaus gave his glasses a quick polish and began to page through his commonplace book, while Sunny picked up her whisk and bit it thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s hidden in one of the other spice jars,” the middle Baudelaire said.
“We smelled them all,” Violet said, between wheezes. “None of them smelled like horseradish.”
“Maybe the scent was disguised by another spice,” Klaus said. “Something that was even more bitter than horseradish would cover the smell. Sunny, what are some of the bitterest spices?”
“Cloves,” said Sunny, and wheezed. “Cardamom, arrowroot, wormwood.”
“Wormwood,” Klaus said thoughtfully, and flipped the pages of his commonplace book. “Kit mentioned wormwood once,” he said, thinking of poor Kit alone on the coastal shelf. “She said tea should be as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a two-edged sword. We were told the same thing when we were served tea right before our trial.”
“No wormwood here,” Sunny said.
“Ishmael also said something about bitter tea,” Violet said. “Remember? That student of his was afraid of being poisoned.”
“Just like we are,” Klaus said, feeling the mushrooms growing inside him. “I wish we’d heard the end of that story.”
“I wish we’d heard every story,” Violet said, her voice sounding hoarse and rough from the poison. “I wish our parents had told us everything, instead of sheltering us from the treachery of the world.”
“Maybe they did,” Klaus said, his voice as rough as his sister’s, and the middle Baudelaire walked to the reading chairs in the middle of the room and picked up A Series of Unfortunate Events. “They wrote all of their secrets here. If they hid the horseradish, we’ll find it in this book.”
“We don’t have time to read that entire book,” Violet said, “any more than we have time to search the entire arboretum.”
“If we fail,” Sunny said, her voice heavy with fungus, “at least we die reading together.”
The Baudelaire orphans nodded grimly, and embraced one another. Like most people, the children had occasionally been in a curious and somewhat morbid mood, and had spent a few moments wondering about the circumstances of their own deaths, although since that unhappy day on Briny Beach when Mr. Poe had first informed them about the terrible fire, the children had spent so much time trying to avoid their own deaths that they preferred not to think about it in their time off. Most people do not choose their final circumstances, of course, and if the Baudelaires had been given the choice they would have liked to live to a very old age, which for all I know they may be doing. But if the three children had to perish while they were still three children, then perishing in one another’s company while reading words written long ago by their mother and father was much better than many other things they could imagine, and so the three Baudelaires sat together in one of the reading chairs, preferring to be close to one another rather than having more room to sit, and together they opened the enormous book and turned back the pages until they reached the moment in history when their parents arrived on the island and began taking notes. The entries in the book alternated between the handwriting of the Baudelaire father and the handwriting of the Baudelaire mother, and the children could imagine their parents sitting in these same chairs, reading out loud what they had written and suggesting things to add to the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind that comprised A Series of Unfortunate Events. The children, of course, would have liked to savor each word their parents had written—the word “savor,” you probably know, here means “read slowly, as each sentence in their parents’ handwriting was like a gift from beyond the grave”—but as the poison of the Medusoid Mycelium advanced further and further, the siblings had to skim, scanning each page for the words “horseradish” or “wasabi.” As you know if you’ve ever skimmed a book, you end up getting a strange view of the story, with just glimpses here and there of what is going on, and some authors insert confusing sentences in the middle of a book just to confuse anyone who might be skimming. Three very short men were carrying a large, flat piece of wood, painted to look like a living room. As the Baudelaire orphans searched for the secret they hoped they would find, they caught glimpses of other secrets their parents had kept, and as Violet, Klaus, and Sunny spotted the names of people the Baudelaire parents had known, things they had whispered to these people, the codes hidden in the whispers, and many other intriguing details, the children hoped they would have the opportunity to reread A Series of Unfortunate Events on a less frantic occasion. On that afternoon, however, they read faster and faster, looking desperately for the one secret that might save them as the hour began to pass and the Medusoid Mycelium grew faster and faster inside them, as if the deadly fungus also did not have time to savor its treacherous path. As they read more and more, it grew harder and harder for the Baudelaires to breathe, and when Klaus finally spotted one of the words he had been looking for, he thought for a moment it was just a vision brought on by all the stalks and caps growing inside him.
“Horseradish!” he said, his voice rough and wheezy. “Look: ‘Ishmael’s fearmongering has stopped work on the passageway, even though we have a plethora of horseradish in case of any emergency.’”
Violet started to speak, but then choked on the fungus and coughed for a long while. “What does ‘fearmongering’ mean?” she said finally.
“‘Plethora’?” Sunny’s voice was little more than a mushroom-choked whisper.
“‘Fearmongering’ means ‘making people afraid,’” said Klaus, whose vocabulary was unaffected by the poison, “and ‘plethora’ means ‘more than enough.’” He gave a large, shuddering wheeze, and continued to read. “‘We’re attempting a botanical hybrid through the tuberous canopy, which should bring safety to fruition despite its dangers to our associates in utero. Of course, in case we are banished, Beatrice is hiding a small amount in a vess—’”
The middle Baudelaire interrupted himself with a cough that was so violent he dropped the book to the floor. His sisters held him tightly as his body shook against the poison and one pale hand pointed at the ceiling. “‘Tuberous canopy,’” he wheezed finally. “Our father means the roots above our heads. A botanical hybrid is a plant made from the combination of two other plants.” He shuddered, and his eyes, behind his glasses, filled with tears. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he said finally.
Violet looked at the roots over their heads, where the periscope disappeared into the network of the tree. To her horror she found that her vision was becoming blurry, as if the fungus was growing over her eyes. “It sounds like they put the horseradish into the roots of the plant, in order to make everyone safe,” she said. “That’s what ‘bringing safety to fruition’ would be, the way a tree brings its crop to fruition.”
“Apples!” cried Sunny in a strangled voice. “Bitter apples!”
“Of course!” Klaus said. “The tree is a hybrid, and its apples are bitter because they contain horseradish!”
“If we eat an apple,” Violet said, “the fungus will be diluted.”
“Gentreefive,” Sunny agreed in a croak, and lowered herself off her siblings’ laps, wheezing desperately as she tried to get to the gap in the roots. Klaus tried to follow her, but when he stood up the poison made him so dizzy that he had to sit back down and clasp his throbbing head. Violet coughed painfully, and gripped her brother’s arm.
“Come on,” she said, in a frantic wheeze.
Klaus shook his head. “I’m not sure we can make it,” he said.
Sunny reached toward the gap in the roots and then curled to the floor in pain. “Kikbucit?” she asked, her voice weak and faint.
“We can’t die here,” Violet said, her voice so feeble her siblings could scarcely hear her. “Our parents saved our lives in this very room, many years ago, without even knowing it.”
“Maybe not,” Klaus said. “Maybe this is the end of our story.”
“Tumurchap,
” Sunny said, but before anyone could ask what she meant, the children heard another sound, faint and strange, in the secret space beneath the apple tree their parents had hybridized with horseradish long ago. The sound was sibilant, a word which might appear to have something to do with siblings, but actually refers to a sort of whistle or hiss, such as a steam engine might make as it comes to a stop, or an audience might make after sitting through one of Al Funcoot’s plays. The Baudelaires were so desperate and frightened that for a moment they thought it might be the sound of Medusoid Mycelium, celebrating its poisonous triumph over the three children, or perhaps just the sound of their hopes evaporating. But the sibilance was not the sound of evaporating hope or celebrating fungus, and thank goodness it was not the sound of a steam engine or a disgruntled theatrical audience, as the Baudelaires were not strong enough to confront such things. The hissing sound came from one of the few inhabitants of the island whose story contained not one but two shipwrecks, and perhaps because of its own sad history, this inhabitant was sympathetic to the sad history of the Baudelaires, although it is difficult to say how much sympathy can be felt by an animal, no matter how friendly. I do not have the courage to do much research on this matter, and my only herpetological comrade’s story ended quite some time ago, so what this reptile was thinking as it slid toward the children is a detail of the Baudelaires’ history that may never be revealed. But even with this missing detail, it is quite clear what happened. The snake slithered through the gap in the roots of the tree, and whatever the serpent was thinking, it was quite clear from the sibilant sound that came hissing through the reptile’s clenched teeth that the Incredibly Deadly Viper was offering the Baudelaire orphans an apple.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
It is a well-known but curious fact that the first bite of an apple always tastes the best, which is why the heroine of a book much more suitable to read than this one spends an entire afternoon eating the first bite of a bushel of apples. But even this anarchic little girl—the word “anarchic” here means “apple-loving”—never tasted a bite as wonderful as the Baudelaire orphans’ first bite of the apple from the tree their parents had hybridized with horseradish. The apple was not as bitter as the Baudelaire orphans would have guessed, and the horseradish gave the juice of the apple a slight, sharp edge, like the air on a winter morning. But of course, the biggest appeal of the apple offered by the Incredibly Deadly Viper was its immediate effect on the deadly fungus growing inside them. From the moment the Baudelaire teeth bit down on the apple—first Violet’s, and then Klaus’s, and then Sunny’s—the stalks and caps of the Medusoid Mycelium began to shrink, and within moments all traces of the dreaded mushroom had withered away, and the children could breathe clearly and easily. Hugging one another in relief, the Baudelaires found themselves laughing, which is a common reaction among people who have narrowly escaped death, and the snake seemed to be laughing, too, although perhaps it was just appreciating the youngest Baudelaire scratching behind its tiny, hooded ears.
“We should each have another apple,” Violet said, standing up, “to make sure we’ve consumed enough horseradish.”
“And we should collect enough apples for all of the islanders,” Klaus said. “They must be just as desperate as we were.”
“Stockpot,” Sunny said, and walked to the rack of pots on the ceiling, where the snake helped her take down an enormous metal pot that could hold a great number of apples and in fact had been used to make an enormous vat of applesauce a number of years previously.
“You two start picking apples,” Violet said, walking to the periscope. “I want to check on Kit Snicket. The flooding of the coastal shelf must have begun by now, and she must be terrified.”
“I hope she avoided the Medusoid Mycelium,” Klaus said. “I hate to think of what that would do to her child.”
“Phearst,” Sunny said, which meant something like, “We should rescue her promptly.”
“The islanders are in worse shape than Kit,” Klaus said. “We should go to Ishmael’s tent first, and then go rescue Kit.”
Violet peered through the periscope and frowned. “We shouldn’t go to Ishmael’s tent,” she said. “We need to fill that stockpot with apples and get to the coastal shelf as quickly as we can.”
“What do you mean?” Klaus said.
“They’re leaving,” Violet said, and I’m sorry to say it was true. Through the periscope, the eldest Baudelaire could see the shape of the outrigger and the figures of its poisoned passengers, who were pushing it along the coastal shelf toward the library raft where Kit Snicket still lay. The three children each peered through the periscope, and then looked at one another. They knew they should be hurrying, but for a moment none of the Baudelaires could move, as if they were unwilling to travel any farther in their sad history, or see one more part of their story come to an end.
If you have read this far in the chronicle of the Baudelaire orphans—and I certainly hope you have not—then you know we have reached the thirteenth chapter of the thirteenth volume in this sad history, and so you know the end is near, even though this chapter is so lengthy that you might never reach the end of it. But perhaps you do not yet know what the end really means. “The end” is a phrase which refers to the completion of a story, or the final moment of some accomplishment, such as a secret errand, or a great deal of research, and indeed this thirteenth volume marks the completion of my investigation into the Baudelaire case, which required much research, a great many secret errands, and the accomplishments of a number of my comrades, from a trolley driver to a botanical hybridization expert, with many, many typewriter repairpeople in between. But it cannot be said that The End contains the end of the Baudelaires’ story, any more than The Bad Beginning contained its beginning. The children’s story began long before that terrible day on Briny Beach, but there would have to be another volume to chronicle when the Baudelaires were born, and when their parents married, and who was playing the violin in the candlelit restaurant when the Baudelaire parents first laid eyes on one another, and what was hidden inside that violin, and the childhood of the man who orphaned the girl who put it there, and even then it could not be said that the Baudelaires’ story had not begun, because you would still need to know about a certain tea party held in a penthouse suite, and the baker who made the scones served at the tea party, and the baker’s assistant who smuggled the secret ingredient into the scone batter through a very narrow drainpipe, and how a crafty volunteer created the illusion of a fire in the kitchen simply by wearing a certain dress and jumping around, and even then the beginning of the story would be as far away as the shipwreck that left the Baudelaire parents as castaways on the coastal shelf is far away from the outrigger on which the islanders would depart. One could say, in fact, that no story really has a beginning, and that no story really has an end, as all of the world’s stories are as jumbled as the items in the arboretum, with their details and secrets all heaped together so that the whole story, from beginning to end, depends on how you look at it. We might even say that the world is always in medias res—a Latin phrase which means “in the midst of things” or “in the middle of a narrative”—and that it is impossible to solve any mystery, or find the root of any trouble, and so The End is really the middle of the story, as many people in this history will live long past the close of Chapter Thirteen, or even the beginning of the story, as a new child arrives in the world at the chapter’s close. But one cannot sit in the midst of things forever. Eventually one must face that the end is near, and the end of The End is quite near indeed, so if I were you I would not read the end of The End, as it contains the end of a notorious villain but also the end of a brave and noble sibling, and the end of the colonists’ stay on the island, as they sail off the end of the coastal shelf. The end of The End contains all these ends, and that does not depend on how you look at it, so it might be best for you to stop looking at The End before the end of The End arrives, and to stop reading The End before y
ou read the end, as the stories that end in The End that began in The Bad Beginning are beginning to end now.
The Baudelaires hurriedly filled their stockpot with apples and ran to the coastal shelf, hurrying over the brae as quickly as they could. It was past lunchtime, and the waters of the sea were already flooding the shelf, so the water was much deeper than it had been since the children’s arrival. Violet and Klaus had to hold the stockpot high in the air, and Sunny and the Incredibly Deadly Viper climbed up on the elder Baudelaires’ shoulders to ride along with the bitter apples. The children could see Kit Snicket on the horizon, still lying on the library raft as the waters rose to soak the first few layers of books, and alongside the strange cube was the outrigger. As they drew closer, they saw that the islanders had stopped pushing the boat and were climbing aboard, pausing from time to time to cough, while at the head of the outrigger was the figure of Ishmael, seated in his clay chair, gazing at his poisoned colonists and watching the children approach.
“Stop!” Violet cried, when they were close enough to be heard. “We’ve discovered a way to dilute the poison!”
“Baudelaires!” came the faint cry of Kit high atop the library raft. “Thank goodness you’re here! I think I’m going into labor!”
As I’m sure you know, “labor” is the term for the process by which a woman gives birth, and it is a Herculean task, a phrase which here means “something you would rather not do on a library raft floating on a flooding coastal shelf.” Sunny could see, from her stockpot perch, Kit holding her belly and giving the youngest Baudelaire a painful grimace.
“We’ll help you,” Violet promised, “but we need to get these apples to the islanders.”