A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village (9 page)

won't be able to rescue our friends even if we do escape from this cell." "Psst!" came an unexpected voice from the window, startling the children so much that they almost dropped everything and wrecked the mortar-dissolver. The Baudelaires looked up and saw the faint shape of somebody's face behind the bars of the window. "Psst! Baudelaires!" the voice whispered. "Who is it?" Violet whispered back. "We can't see you." "It's Hector," Hector whispered. "I'm supposed to be downtown doing the morning chores, but I sneaked over here instead." "Can you get us out of here?" Klaus whispered. For a few seconds, the children heard nothing but the sounds of the V.F.D. crows muttering and splashing in Fowl Fountain. Then Hector sighed. "No," he admitted. "Officer Luciana has the only key, and this jail is made of solid brick. I don't think there's a way I can get you out." "Dala?" Sunny asked. "My sister means, did you tell the Council of Elders that we were with you the night Jacques was murdered, so we couldn't have committed the crime?" There was another pause. "No," Hector said. "You know that the Council makes me too skittish to talk. I wanted to speak up for you when Detective Dupin was accusing you, but one look at those crow hats and I couldn't open my mouth. But I thought of one thing I can do to help." Klaus put down the pitcher of water and felt the mortar on the far wall. Violet's invention seemed to be working quite well, but there was still no guarantee that it would get them out of there before the mob of citizens arrived in the afternoon. "What's that?" he asked Hector. "I'm going to get the self-sustaining hot air mobile home ready to go," he said. "I'll wait at the barn all afternoon, and if you somehow manage to escape, you can float away with me " "O.K.," Violet said, although she had been hoping for something a little more helpful from a fully grown adult. "We're trying to break out of this cell right now, so maybe we'll make it." "Well, if you're breaking out now, I'd better go," Hector said. "I don't want to get in trouble. I just want to say that if you don't make it and you are burned at the stake, it was very nice making your acquaintance. Oh, I almost forgot." Hector's fingers reached through the bars and dropped a rolled scrap of paper down to the waiting Baudelaires. "It's another couplet," he said. "It doesn't make sense to me, but maybe you'll find it helpful. Good-bye, children. I do hope I see you later." "Good-bye, Hector," Violet said glumly. "I hope so too." '"Bye," Sunny muttered. Hector waited for a second, expecting Klaus say good-bye, but then walked off without another word, his footsteps fading into the sounds of the muttering, splashing crows. Violet and Sunny turned to look at their brother, surprised that he had not said good-bye, although Hector's visit had been such a disappointment that they could understand if Klaus was too annoyed to be polite. But when they looked at the middle Baudelaire, he did not look annoyed. Klaus was looking at the latest couplet from Isadora, and in the growing light of the Deluxe Cell his sisters could see a wide grin on his face. Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don't care for spill orange soda all over himself. But there weren't any books in the uptown jail, and the Baudelaires had been careful not to spill a drop of the water as they operated the mortardissolver, so the Baudelaire sisters knew that their brother was grinning for another reason. L He was grinning because he was entertaining a notion, and as Klaus showed them the poem he was holding, Violet and Sunny had a very good idea of what notion it was.

Chapter Eleven

Inside these letters, the eye will see Nearby are your friends, and V.F.D. Isn't it marvelous?" Klaus said with a grin, as his sisters read the fourth couplet. "Isn't it absolutely superlative?" "Wibeon," Sunny said, which meant "It's more confusing than superlative, we still don't know where the Quagmires are." "Yes we do," Klaus said, taking the other couplets out of his pocket. "Think about all four poems in order, and you'll see what I mean." 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. Inside these letters the eye will see Nearby are your friends, and V.F.D. "I think you're much better at analyzing poetry than I am," Violet said, and Sunny nodded in agreement. "This poem doesn't make it any clearer." "But you're the one who first suggested the solution," Klaus said. "When we received the third poem, you thought that 'initial' meant 'initials,' like V.F.D." "But you said that it probably meant 'first,'" Violet said. "The poems are the first way the Quagmires can speak to us from where they are hidden." "I was wrong," Klaus admitted. "I've never been so happy to be wrong in my life. Isadora meant 'initials' all along. I didn't realize it until I read the part that said 'Inside these letters the eye will see.' She's hiding the location inside the poem, like Aunt Josephine hid her location inside her note, remember?" "Of course I remember," Violet said, "but I still don't understand." "The first thing you read contains the clue,'" Klaus recited. "We thought that Isadora meant the first poem. But she meant the first letter. She couldn't tell us directly where she and her brother were hidden, in case someone else got the poems from the crows before we did, so she had to use a sort of code. If we look at the first letter of each line, and we can see the triplets' location." "'For sapphires we are held in here.' That's F," Violet said. '"Only you can end our fear' That's O." "'Until dawn comes we cannot speak,'" Klaus said. "That's U. 'No words can come from this sad beak.' That's N." "'The first thing you read contains the clue' " " T," Violet said excitedly. "'An initial way to speak to you', A." "I! N!" Sunny cried triumphantly, and the three Baudelaires cried out the solution together: "FOUNTAIN!" "Fowl Fountain!" Klaus said. "The Quagmires are right outside that window." "But how can they be in the fountain?" Violet asked. "And how could Isadora give her poems to the V.F.D. crows?" "We'll answer those questions," Klaus replied, "as soon as we get out of jail. We'd better get back to the mortar-dissolver before Detective Dupin comes back." "Along with a whole town of people who want to burn us at the stake, thanks to mob psychology," Violet said with a shudder. Sunny crawled over to the loaf of bread and placed her tiny hand against the wall. "Mush!" she cried, which meant something like, "The mortar is almost dissolved, just a little bit longer!" Violet took the ribbon out of her hair and then retied it, which was something she did when she needed to rethink, a word which here means "Think even harder about the Baudelaire orphans' terrible situation." "I'm not sure we have even a little bit longer," she said, looking up at the window. "Look at how bright the sunlight is. The morning must be almost over." "Then we should hurry," Klaus said. "No," Violet corrected. "We should rethink. And I've been rethinking this bench. We can use it in another way, besides as a ramp. We can use it as a battering ram." "Honz?" Sunny asked. "A battering ram is a large piece of wood or metal used to break down doors or walls " Violet explained. "Military inventors used it in medieval times to break into walled cities, and we're going to use it now, to break out of jail." Violet picked up the bench so it was resting on her shoulder. "The bench should be pointing as evenly as possible," she said. "Sunny, get on Klaus's shoulders. If the two of you hold the other end together, I think this battering ram will work." Klaus and Sunny scrambled into the position Violet had suggested, and in a moment the siblings were ready to operate Violet's latest invention. The two Baudelaire sisters had a firm hold on the wood, and Klaus had a firm hold on Sunny so she wouldn't fall to the floor of the Deluxe Cell as they battered. "Now," Violet said, "let's step back as far as we can, and at the count of three, run quickly toward the wall. Aim the battering ram for the spot where the mortar-dissolver was working. Ready? One, two, three!" Thunk! The Baudelaires ran forward and smacked the bench against the wall as hard as they could. The battering ram made a noise so loud that it felt as if the entire jail would collapse, but they left only a small dent in a few of the bricks, as if the wall had been bruised slightly. "Again!" Violet commanded. "One, two, three!" Thunk! Outside the children could hear a few crows flutter wildly, frightened by the noise. A few more bricks were bruised, and one had a long crack down the middle. "It's working!" Klaus cried. "The battering ram is working!" "One, two, minga!" Sunny shrieked, and the children smacked the battering ram against the wall again. "Ow!" Klaus cried, and stumbled a little bit, almost dropping his baby sister. "A brick fell on my toe!" "Hooray!" Violet cried. "I mean, sorry about your toe, Klaus, but if bricks are falling it means the wall is definitely weakening. Let's put down the battering ram and get a better look." "We don't need a better look," Klaus said. "We'll know it's working when we see Fowl Fountain. One, two, three!" Thunk! The Baudelaires heard the sound of more pieces of brick hitting the filthy floor of the Deluxe Cell. But they also heard another sound, a familiar one. It began with a faint rustling, and then grew and grew until it sounded like a million pages were being flipped. It was the sound of the V.F.D. crows, flying in circles before departing for their afternoon roost, and it meant that the children were running out of time. "Hurol!" Sunny cried desperately, and then, as loudly as she could, "One! Two! Minga!" At the count of "Minga!" which of course meant something along the lines of "Three!" the children raced toward the wall of the Deluxe Cell and smacked their battering ram against the bricks with the mightiest Thunk! yet, a noise that was accompanied by an enormous cracking sound as the invention snapped in two. Violet staggered in one direction, and Klaus and Sunny staggered in another, as each separate half made them lose their balance, and a huge cloud of dust sprang from the point where the battering ram had hit the wall. A huge cloud of dust is not a beautiful thing to look at. Very few painters have done portraits of huge clouds of dust or included them in their landscapes or still lifes. Film directors rarely choose huge clouds of dust to play the lead roles in romantic comedies, and as far as my research has shown, a huge cloud of dust has never placed higher than twenty-fifth in a beauty pageant. Nevertheless, as the Baudelaire orphans stumbled around the cell, dropping each half of the battering ram and listening to the sound of the crows flying in circles outside, they stared at the huge cloud of dust as if it were a thing of great beauty, because this particular huge dust cloud was made of pieces of brick and mortar and other building materials that are needed to build a wall, and the Baudelaires knew that they were seeing it because Violet's invention had worked. As the huge cloud of dust settled on the cell floor, making it even dirtier, the children gazed around them with big dusty grins on their faces, because they saw an additional beautiful sight, a big, gaping hole in the wall of the Deluxe Cell, perfect for a speedy escape. "We did it!" Violet said, and stepped through the hole in the cell into the courtyard. She looked up at the sky just in time to see the last few crows departing for the downtown district. "We escaped!" Klaus, still holding Sunny on his shoulders, paused to wipe the dust off his glasses before stepping out of the cell and walking past Violet Fowl Fountain. "We're not out of the woods yet," he said, using a phrase which here means "There's still plenty of trouble on the horizon." He looked up at the sky and pointed to the distant blur of the departing crows. "The crows are heading downtown for their afternoon roost. The townspeople should arrive any minute now." "But how can we get the Quagmires out any minute now?" Violet asked. "Wock!" Sunny cried from Klaus's shoulders. She meant something like, "The fountain looks as solid as can be," and her siblings nodded in disappointed agreement. Fowl Fountain looked as impenetrable, a word which here means "impossible to break into and rescue kidnapped triplets", as it did ugly. The metal crow sat and spat water all over itself as if the idea of the Baudelaires rescuing the Quagmires made it sick to its stomach. "Duncan and Isadora must be trapped inside the fountain," Klaus said. "Perhaps there's a mechanism someplace that opens up a secret entrance." "But we cleaned every inch of this fountain for our afternoon chores," Violet said. "We would have noticed a secret mechanism while we were scrubbing all those carved feathers." "Jidu!" Sunny said, which meant something like, "Surely Isadora has given us a hint about how to rescue her!" Klaus put down his baby sister, and took the four scraps of paper out of his pocket. "It's time to rethink again," he said, spreading out the couplets on the ground. "We need to examine these poems as closely as we can. There must be another clue about getting into the fountain." 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. Inside these letters the eye will see Nearby are your friends, and V.F.D. "'This sad beak'!" Violet exclaimed. "We jumped to the conclusion that she meant the V.F.D. crows, but maybe she means Fowl Fountain. The water comes out of the crow's beak, so there must be a hole there." "We'd better climb up and see," Klaus said. "Here, Sunny, get on my shoulders again, and then I'll get on Violet's shoulders. We're going to have to be very tall to reach all the way up there." Violet nodded, and knelt at the base of the fountain. Klaus put Sunny back on his shoulders, and then got on the shoulders of his older sister, and then carefully, carefully, Violet stood up, so all three Baudelaires were balancing on top of one another like a troupe of acrobats the children had seen once when their parents had taken them to the circus. The key difference, however, is that acrobats rehearse their routines over and over, in rooms with safety nets and plenty of cushions so that when they make a mistake they will not injure themselves, but the Baudelaire orphans had no time to rehearse, or to find cushions to lay out on V.F.D.'s streets. As a result, the Baudelaire balancing act was a wobbly one. Violet wobbled from holding up both her siblings, and Klaus wobbled from standing on his wobbling sister, and poor Sunny was wobbling so much that she was just barely able to sit up on Klaus's shoulder and peer into the beak of the gargling metal crow. Violet looked down the street, to watch for any arriving townspeople, and Klaus gazed down at the ground, where Isadora's poems were still spread out. "What do you see, Sunny?" asked Violet, who had spotted a few very distant figures walking quickly toward the fountain. "Shize!" Sunny called down. "Klaus, the beak isn't big enough to get inside the fountain," Violet said desperately. The streets of the town appeared to be shaking up and down as she wobbled more and more. "What can we do?" "'Inside these letters the eye will see,'" Klaus muttered to himself, as he often did when he was thinking hard about something he was reading. It took all of his concentration to read the couplets Isadora had sent them while he was teetering back and forth. "That's a strange way to put it. Why didn't she write 'Inside these letters I hope you'll see,' or 'Inside these letters you just might see'?" "Sabisho!" Sunny cried. From the top of her two wobbling siblings, Sunny was waving back and forth like a flower in the breeze. She tried to hang on to Fowl Fountain, but the water rushing out of the crow's beak made the metal too slippery. Violet tried as hard as she could to steady herself, but the sight of two figures wearing crow-shaped hats coming around a nearby corner did not help her find her balance "Klaus," she said, "I don't mean to rush you, but please rethink as quickly as you can. The citizens are approaching, and I'm not sure how much longer I can hang on." "'Inside these letters the eye will see,'" Klaus muttered again, closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the world wobbling around him. "Took!" Sunny shrieked, but no one heard her over Violet's scream as her legs gave out, a phrase which here means that she toppled to the ground, skinning her knee and dropping Klaus in the process. Klaus's glasses dropped off, and he fell to the ground of the courtyard elbows first, which is a painful way to fall, and as he rolled on the ground both of his elbows received nasty scrapes. But Klaus was far more concerned about his hands, which were no longer clasping the feet of his baby sister. "Sunny!" he called, squinting without his glasses. "Sunny, where are you?" "Heni!" Sunny screamed, but it was even more difficult than usual to understand what she meant. The youngest Baudelaire had managed to cling to the beak of the crow with her teeth, but as the fountain kept spitting out water, her mouth began to slip off the slick metal surface. "Heni!" she screamed again, as one of her upper teeth started to slip. Sunny began to slide down, down, scrambling desperately to find something to hang on to, but the only other feature carved into the head was the staring eye of the crow, which was flat and provided no sort of toothhold. She slipped down farther, farther, and Sunny closed her eyes rather than watch herself fall. "Heni!" she screamed one last time, gnashing her teeth against the eye in frustration, and as she bit the eye, it depressed. "Depressed" is a word that often describes someone who is feeling sad and gloomy, but in this case it describes a secret button, hidden in a crow statue, that is feeling just fine, thank you. With a great creaking noise, the button depressed and the beak of Fowl Fountain opened as wide as it could, each part of the beak flipping slowly down and bringing Sunny down with it. Klaus found his glasses and put them on just in time to see his little sister drop safely into Violet's outstretched arms The three Baudelaires looked at one another with relief, and then looked at the