CHAPTER
Twelve
When the Baudelaire orphans finally opened their eyes, they found that they had stumbled to the entrance of Madame Lulu’s fortune-telling tent, with the initials V.F.D. still staring out at them. Most of the carnival visitors had walked over to the lion pit to see the show, so the siblings were alone in the fading afternoon, and once again there was no one watching over them as they stood in front of the tent, trembling and crying quietly. The last time they had stood for so long at the tent’s entrance, the decoration had seemed to change before their very eyes until they saw that it was not a painting of an eye, but the insignia of an organization that might help them. Now they stood and stared again, hoping that something would change before their very eyes until they saw what it was that they could do. But nothing seemed to change no matter how hard they looked. The carnival remained silent, and the afternoon continued to creep toward evening, and the insignia on the tent simply stared back at the weeping Baudelaires.
“I wonder where the fan belt is,” Violet said finally. Her voice was faint and almost hoarse, but her tears had stopped at last. “I wonder if it fell to the ground, or was thrown onto the tracks of the roller coaster, or if it ended up—”
“How can you think about a fan belt at a time like this?” Klaus asked, although his voice was not angry. Like his sister, he was still trembling inside the shirt they shared, and felt very tired, as is often the case after a long cry.
“I don’t want to think about anything else,” Violet said. “I don’t want to think about Madame Lulu and the lions, and I don’t want to think about Count Olaf and the crowd, and I don’t want to think about whether or not we did the right thing.”
“Right,” Sunny said gently.
“I agree,” Klaus said. “We did the best we could.”
“I’m not so sure,” Violet replied. “I had the fan belt in my hand. It was all we needed to finish the invention and escape from this awful place.”
“You couldn’t finish the invention,” Klaus said. “We were surrounded by a crowd of people who wanted to see someone thrown to the lions. It’s not our fault that she fell in instead.”
“And bald,” Sunny added.
“But we made the crowd even more frantic,” Violet said. “First we stalled the show, and then we used mob psychology to get them excited about throwing somebody into the pit.”
“Count Olaf is the one who thought up this whole ghastly scheme,” Klaus said. “What happened to Madame Lulu is his fault, not ours.”
“We promised to take her with us,” Violet insisted. “Madame Lulu kept her promise and didn’t tell Count Olaf who we were, but we didn’t keep ours.”
“We tried,” Klaus said. “We tried to keep ours.”
“Trying’s not good enough,” Violet said. “Are we going to try to find one of our parents? Are we going to try to defeat Count Olaf?”
“Yes,” Sunny said firmly, and wrapped her arms around Violet’s leg. The eldest Baudelaire looked down at her sister and her eyes filled with tears.
“Why are we here?” she asked. “We thought we could put on disguises and get ourselves out of trouble, but we’re worse off than when we began. We don’t know what V.F.D. stands for. We don’t know where the Snicket file is. And we don’t know if one of our parents is really alive.”
“There are some things we might not know,” Klaus said, “but that doesn’t mean we should give up. We can find out what we need to know. We can find out anything.”
Violet smiled through her tears. “You sound like a researcher,” she said.
The middle Baudelaire reached into his pocket and pulled out his glasses. “I am a researcher,” he said, and stepped toward the entrance to the tent. “Let’s get to work.”
“Ghede!” Sunny said, which meant something like, “I almost forgot about the archival library!” and she followed her siblings through the flap in the tent.
As soon as the Baudelaire orphans stepped inside, they saw that Madame Lulu had made quite a few preparations for her escape with the children, and it made them very sad to think that she would never return to the fortune-telling tent to collect the things she had waiting for her. Her disguise kit was all packed up again, and waiting by the door so she could take it with her. There was a cardboard box standing next to the cupboard, filled with food that could be eaten on the journey. And laid out on the table, next to Madame Lulu’s replacement crystal ball and various parts of the lightning device she had dismantled, was a large piece of paper that was badly torn and looked very old, but the Baudelaires saw at once that it could help them.
“It’s a map,” Violet said. “It’s a map of the Mortmain Mountains. She must have had it among her papers.”
Klaus put his glasses on and peered at it closely. “Those mountains must be very cold this time of year,” he said. “I didn’t realize the altitude was so high.”
“Never mind the altitude,” Violet said. “Can you find the headquarters Lulu was talking about?”
“Let’s see,” Klaus said. “There’s a star next to Plath Pass, but the key says that a star indicates a campground.”
“Key?” Sunny asked.
“This chart in the corner of the map is called a key,” Klaus explained. “You see? The mapmaker explains what each symbol means, so the map doesn’t get too cluttered.”
“There’s a black rectangle there in the Richter Range,” she said. “See? Over in the east?”
“A black rectangle indicates hibernation grounds,” Klaus said. “There must be quite a few bears in the Mortmain Mountains. Look, there are five hibernation grounds near Silent Springs, and a large cluster of them at the top of Paucity Peak.”
“And here,” Violet said, “in the Valley of Four Drafts, where it looks like Madame Lulu spilled coffee.”
“Valley of Four Drafts!” Klaus said.
“V.F.D.!” Sunny cried.
The Baudelaires peered together at the spot on the map. The Valley of Four Drafts was high up in the Mortmain Mountains, where it would be very cold. The Stricken Stream began there, and wound its way down to the sea in sagging curves through the hinterlands, and the map showed many, many hibernation grounds along the way. There was a small brown stain in the center of the valley, where four gaps in the mountains came together and where Lulu had probably spilled coffee, but there were no markings for a headquarters or for anything else.
“Do you think it means something?” Violet asked. “Or is it just a coincidence, like all the V.F.D.s we’ve come across?”
“I thought the V in V.F.D. stood for ‘volunteer,’” Klaus said. “That’s what we found written on a page of the Quagmire notebooks, and it’s what Jacques Snicket said.”
“Winnow?” Sunny asked, which meant “But where else could the headquarters be? There’s no other marking on the map.”
“Well, if V.F.D. is a secret organization,” Violet said, “they might not put their headquarters on a map.”
“Or it could be marked secretly,” Klaus said, and leaned in to take a good look at the stain. “Maybe this isn’t just a stain,” he said. “Maybe it’s a secret marking. Maybe Madame Lulu put some coffee here on purpose, so she could find the headquarters, but nobody else could.”
“I guess we’ll have to travel there,” Violet said with a sigh, “and find out.”
“How are we going to travel there?” Klaus said. “We don’t know where the fan belt is.”
“We might be missing some parts,” Violet replied, “but that doesn’t mean we should give up. I can build something else.”
“You sound like an inventor,” he said.
Violet smiled, and took her hair ribbon out of her pocket. “I am an inventor,” she said. “I’ll look around here and see if there’s anything else we can use. Klaus, you look under the table at the archival library.”
“We’d better get out of the clothes we’re sharing,” Klaus said, “or we can’t do two things at once.”
“Ingred
i,” Sunny said, which meant “Meanwhile, I’ll look through all this food and make sure we have everything we need to prepare meals.”
“Good idea,” Violet said. “We’d better hurry before someone finds us.”
“There you are!” called a voice from the entrance to the tent, and the Baudelaires jumped. Violet hurriedly stuffed her ribbon back into her pocket, and Klaus removed his glasses, so they could turn around without revealing their disguise. Count Olaf and Esmé Squalor were standing together in the doorway of the tent, with their arms around one another, looking tired but happy, as if they were two parents coming home after a long day at work, instead of a vicious villain and his scheming girlfriend coming into a fortune-teller’s tent after an afternoon of violence. Esmé Squalor was clutching a small bouquet of ivy her boyfriend had apparently given her, and Count Olaf was holding a flaming torch, which was shining as brightly as his wicked eyes.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you two,” he said. “What are you doing in here?”
“We decided to let all of you freaks join us,” Esmé said, “even though you weren’t very courageous at the lions’ pit.”
“That’s very kind of you to offer,” Violet said quickly, “but you don’t want cowards like us in your troupe.”
“Sure we do,” Count Olaf said, with a nasty smile. “We keep losing assistants, and it’s always good to have a few to spare. I even asked the woman who runs the gift caravan to join us, but she was too worried about her precious figurines to know that opportunity was knocking.”
“Besides,” Esmé said, stroking Olaf’s hair, “you don’t really have any choice. We’re going to burn this carnival down to eliminate all the evidence that we’ve been here. Most of the tents are already on fire, and the carnival visitors and carnival workers are running for their lives. If you don’t join us, where can you possibly go?”
The Baudelaires looked at one another in dismay. “I guess you’re right,” Klaus said.
“Of course we’re right,” Esmé said. “Now get out of here and help us pack up the trunk.”
“Wait a minute,” Count Olaf said, and strode over to the table. “What’s this?” he demanded. “It looks like a map.”
“It is a map,” Klaus admitted with a sigh, wishing he had hidden it in his pockets. “A map of the Mortmain Mountains.”
“The Mortmain Mountains?” Count Olaf said, examining the map eagerly. “Why, that’s where we’re heading! Lulu said that if there was a parent alive, they’d be hiding up there! Does the map show any headquarters on it?”
“I think these black rectangles indicate headquarters,” Esmé said, peering over Olaf’s shoulder. “I’m pretty good at reading maps.”
“No, they represent campgrounds,” Olaf said, looking at the key, but then his face broke out into a smile. “Wait a minute,” he said, and pointed to the stain the Baudelaires had been examining. “I haven’t seen one of these in a long time,” he said, stroking his scraggly chin.
“A small brown stain?” Esmé asked. “You saw that this morning.”
“This is a coded stain,” Count Olaf explained. “I was taught to use this on maps when I was a little boy. It’s to mark a secret location without anyone else noticing.”
“Except a smashing genius,” Esmé said. “I guess we’re heading for the Valley of Four Drafts.”
“V.F.D.,” Count Olaf said, and giggled. “That’s appropriate. Well, let’s go. Is there anything else useful in here?”
The Baudelaires looked quickly at the table, where the archival library was hidden. Underneath the black tablecloth decorated with silver stars was all the crucial information Madame Lulu had gathered to give her visitors what they wanted. The children knew that all sorts of important secrets could be found in the gathering of paper, and they shuddered to think what Count Olaf would do if he discovered all those secrets.
“No,” Klaus said finally. “Nothing else useful.”
Count Olaf frowned, and kneeled down so that his face was right next to Klaus’s. Even without his glasses, the middle Baudelaire could see that Olaf had not washed his one eyebrow for quite some time, and could smell his breath as he spoke. “I think you’re lying to me,” the villain said, and waved the lit torch in Klaus’s face.
“My other head is telling the truth,” Violet said.
“Then what is that food doing there?” Count Olaf demanded, pointing at the cardboard box. “Don’t you think food would be useful for a long journey?”
The Baudelaires sighed in relief. “Grr!” Sunny growled.
“Chabo compliments you on your cleverness,” Klaus said, “and so do we. We hadn’t noticed that box.”
“That’s why I’m the boss,” Count Olaf said, “because I’m smart and I have good eyesight.” He laughed nastily, and put the torch in Klaus’s hand. “Now then,” he said, “I want you to light this tent on fire, and then bring the box of food over to the car. Chabo, come with me. I’m sure I’ll find something for you to sink your teeth into.”
“Grr,” Sunny said doubtfully.
“Chabo would prefer to stay with us,” Violet said.
“I couldn’t care less what Chabo would prefer,” Olaf snarled, and picked up the youngest Baudelaire as if she were a watermelon. “Now get busy.”
Count Olaf and Esmé Squalor walked out of the tent with Chabo, leaving the elder Baudelaires alone with the flaming torch.
“We’d better pick up the box first,” Klaus said, “and light the tent from the outside. Otherwise we’ll be surrounded by flames in no time.”
“Are we really going to follow Olaf’s orders?” Violet asked, looking at the table again. “The archival library might have the answers to all our questions.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Klaus said. “Olaf is burning down the whole carnival, and riding with him is our only chance to get to the Mortmain Mountains. You don’t have time to invent something, and I don’t have time to look through the library.”
“We could find one of the other carnival employees,” Violet said, “and ask them if they would help us.”
“Everyone either thinks that we’re freaks or murderers,” Klaus said. “Sometimes even I think so.”
“If we join Count Olaf,” Violet said, “we might become even more freakish and murderous.”
“But if we don’t join him,” Klaus asked, “where can we possibly go?”
“I don’t know,” Violet said sadly, “but this can’t be the right thing to do, can it?”
“Maybe it’s harum-scarum,” Klaus said, “like Olivia said.”
“Maybe it is,” Violet said, and walked awkwardly with her brother to the cardboard box and picked it up. Klaus held the torch, and the two Baudelaires walked out of the fortune-telling tent for the last time.
When they first stepped out, still wearing the same pair of pants, it seemed as if night had already fallen, although the air was black and not the blue of the famous hinterlands sunsets. But then Violet and Klaus realized that the air was filling with smoke. Looking around, they saw that many of the tents and caravans were already on fire, as Count Olaf had said, and the flames were billowing black smoke up into the sky. Around them, the last of the carnival visitors were rushing to escape from Olaf’s treachery, and in the distance the siblings could hear the panicked roars of the lions, who were still trapped in the pit.
“This isn’t the kind of violence I like!” shouted the man with pimples on his face, coughing in the smoke as he ran by. “I prefer it when other people are in danger!”
“Me, too!” said the reporter from The Daily Punctilio, running alongside him. “Olaf told me that the Baudelaires are responsible! I can see the headline now: ‘BAUDELAIRES CONTINUE THEIR LIVES OF CRIME!’”
“What kind of children would do such a terrible thing?” asked the man with the pimpled chin, but Violet and Klaus could not hear the answer over the voice of Count Olaf.
“Hurry up, you two-headed freak!” he called from around the corn
er. “If you don’t come here right this minute, we’re leaving without you!”
“Grr!” Sunny growled frantically, and at the sound of their baby sister’s disguised voice, the older Baudelaires threw the lit torch into the fortune-telling tent, and ran toward Olaf’s voice without looking back, although it wouldn’t have mattered if they had looked. There was so much fire and smoke around them one more burning tent wouldn’t have made the carnival look any different. The only difference was that they would have known that part of the fire was of their own devising, a phrase which here means “because of their part in Count Olaf’s treachery,” and although neither Violet nor Klaus saw this with their own eyes, they knew it in their hearts, and I doubt that they would ever forget it.
When the older Baudelaires rounded the corner, they saw that all of Olaf’s other henchmen were already waiting at the long, black automobile, which was parked in front of the freaks’ caravan. Hugo, Colette, and Kevin were crowded in the back seat with the two white-faced women, while Esmé Squalor sat in the front, with Sunny on her lap. The hook-handed man took the box out of the older Baudelaires’ hands and threw it into the trunk while Count Olaf pointed to the caravan with his whip, which looked much shorter, and rough around the edges.