The Grim Grotto

by Lemony Snicket

  The Baudelaires stared at this new, third shape approaching them in eerie silence, and felt as if they were about to be consumed by the very questions they were trying to answer. Captain Widdershins pointed at the porthole again, and the children watched the octopus stop, as if it too had detected this strange third shape. Then the legs of the octopus began whirring even more furiously, and the strange submarine began to recede from view, a phrase which here means "disappear from the porthole as it hurried away from the Queequeg."

  The Baudelaires looked at the sonar screen, and watched the question mark follow the glowing green eye in silence until both shapes disappeared from the sonar detector and the Queequeg was alone. The six passengers waited a moment and then sighed with relief.

  "It's gone," Violet said. "Count Olaf didn't find us."

  "I knew we'd be safe," Phil said, optimistic as usual. "Olaf is probably in a good mood anyway."

  The Baudelaires did not bother to say that their enemy was only in a good mood when one of his treacherous plans was succeeding, or when the enormous fortune, left behind by the Baudelaire parents, appeared to be falling into his grubby hands.

  "What was that, Stepfather?" Fiona said. "Why did he leave?"

  "What was that third shape?" Violet asked. The captain shook his head again. "Something very bad," he said. "Even worse than Olaf, probably. I told you Baudelaires that there is evil you cannot even imagine."

  "We don't have to imagine it," Klaus said. "We saw it there on the screen."

  "That screen is nothing," the captain said. "It's just a piece of equipment, aye? There was a philosopher who said that all of life is just shadows. He said that people were just sitting in a cave, watching shadows on the cave wall. Aye – shadows of something much bigger and grander than themselves. Well, that sonar detector is like our cave wall, showing us the shape of things much more powerful and terrifying."

  "I don't understand," Fiona said.

  "I don't want you to understand," the captain said, putting his arm around her. "That's why I haven't told you why the sugar bowl is so very crucial. There are secrets in this world too terrible for young people to know, even as those secrets get closer and closer. Aye! In any case, I'm hungry. Aye! Shall we eat?" The captain rang his bell again, and the Baudelaires felt as if they had awoken from a deep sleep.

  "I'll serve the chowder," Phil said. "Come on, Sunny, why don't you help me?"

  "I'll turn the engines back on," Fiona said, and began climbing the rope ladder. "Violet, there's a drawer in the table full of silverware. Perhaps you and your brother could set the table."

  "Of course," Violet said, but then frowned as she turned to her brother. The middle Baudelaire was staring at the tidal chart with a look of utter concentration. His eyes were so bright behind his glasses that they looked a bit like the glowing symbols on the sonar detector. "Klaus?" she said.

  Klaus didn't answer his sister, but turned his gaze from the chart to Captain Widdershins. "I may not know why the sugar bowl's important," he said, "but I've just figured out where it is."

  Chapter Five

  When you are invited to dine, particularly with people you do not know very well, it always helps to have a conversational opener, a phrase which here means "an interesting sentence to say out loud in order to get people talking." Although lately it has become more and more difficult to attend dinner parties without the evening ending in gunfire or tapioca, I keep a list of good and had conversational openers in my commonplace book in order to avoid awkward pauses at the dinner table. "Who would like to see an assortment of photographs taken while I was on vacation?" for instance, is a very poor conversational opener, because it is likely to make your fellow diners shudder instead of talk, whereas good conversational openers are sentences such as "What would drive a man to commit arson?", "Why do so many stories of true love end in tragedy and despair?" and "Madame diLustro, I believe I've discovered your true identity!", all of which are likely to provoke discussions, arguments, and accusations, thus making the dinner party much more entertaining.

  When Klaus Baudelaire announced that he'd discovered the location of the sugar bowl, it was one of the best conversational openers in the history of dinner gatherings, because everyone aboard the Queequeg began talking at once, and dinner had not even been served.

  "Aye?" Captain Widdershins shouted. "You've figured out where the tide took it? Aye? But you just said you didn't know! Aye! You said you were confused by the tidal charts, and that oval marked 'G.G.'! Aye! And yet you've figured it out! Aye! You're a genius! Aye! You're a smarty-pants! Aye! You're a bookworm! Aye! You're brilliant! Aye! You're sensational! Aye! If you find me the sugar bowl, I'll allow you to marry Fiona!"

  "Stepfather!" Fiona cried, blushing behind her triangular glasses.

  "Don't worry," the captain replied, "we'll find a husband for Violet, too! Aye! Perhaps we'll find your long-lost brother, Fiona! He's much older, of course, and he's been missing for years, but if Klaus can locate the sugar bowl he could probably find him! Aye! He's a charming man, so you'd probably fall in love with him, Violet, and then we could have a double wedding! Aye! Right here in the Main Hall of the Queequeg! Aye! I would be happy to officiate! Aye! I have a bow tie I've been saving for a special occasion!"

  "Captain Widdershins," Violet said, "let's try to stick to the subject of the sugar bowl." She did not add that she was not interested in getting married for quite some time, particularly after Count Olaf had tried to marry her in one of his early schemes.

  "Aye!" the captain cried. "Of course! Naturally! Aye! Tell us everything, Klaus! We'll eat while you talk! Aye! Sunny! Cookie! Serve the chowder!"

  "Chowder is served!" announced Phil, as he hurried from the kitchen carrying two steaming bowls of thick soup.

  The youngest Baudelaire trailed behind him. Sunny was still a bit too young to carry hot food by herself, but she had found a pepper grinder, and circled the table offering fresh ground pepper to anyone who wanted some.

  "Double pepper for me, Sunny!" Captain Widdershins cried, snatching the first bowl of chowder, although it is more polite to let one's guests be served first. "A nice hot bowl of chowder! A double helping of pepper! The location of the sugar bowl! Aye! That'll blow the barnacles off me! Aye! I'm so glad I scooped you Baudelaires out of the stream!"

  "I'm glad, too," Fiona said, smiling shyly at Klaus.

  "I couldn't be happier about it," Phil said, serving two more bowls of chowder. "I thought I'd never see you Baudelaires again, and here you are! All three of you have grown up so nicely, even though you've been constantly pursued by an evil villain and falsely accused of numerous crimes!"

  "You certainly have had a harrowing journey," Fiona said, using a word which here means "frantic and extremely distressing."

  "I'm afraid we may have another harrowing journey ahead of us," Klaus said. "When Captain Widdershins was talking about the philosopher who said that all of life is just shadows in a cave, I realized at once what that oval must be."

  "A philosopher?" the captain asked. "That's impossible! Aye!"

  "Absurdio," Sunny said, which meant "Philosophers live at the tops of mountains or in ivory towers, not underneath the sea."

  "I think Klaus means a cave," Violet said quickly, rather than translating. "The oval must mark the entrance to a cave."

  "It begins right near Anwhistle Aquatics," Klaus said, pointing to the chart. "The currents of the ocean would have brought the sugar bowl right to the entrance, and then the currents of the cave would have carried it far inside."

  "But the chart only shows the entrance to the cave," Violet said. "We don't know what it's like inside. I wish Quigley was here. With his knowledge of maps, he might know the path of the cave."

  "But Quigley isn't here," Klaus said gently. "I guess we'll be traveling in uncharted waters."

  "That'll be fun," Phil said.

  The Baudelaires looked at one another. The phrase "uncharted waters" does not only refer to underground locat
ions that do not appear on charts. It is a phrase that can describe any place that is unknown, such as a forest in which every explorer has been lost, or one's own future, which cannot be known until it arrives. You don't have to be an optimist, like Phil, to find uncharted waters fun. I myself have spent many an enjoyable afternoon exploring the uncharted waters of a book I have not read, or a hiding place I discovered in a sideboard, a word which here means "a piece of furniture in the dining room, with shelves and drawers to hold various useful items." But the Baudelaires had already spent a great deal of time exploring uncharted waters, from the uncharted waters of Lake Lachrymose and its terrifying creatures, to the uncharted waters of secrets found in the Library of Records at Heimlich Hospital, to the uncharted waters of Count Olaf's wickedness, which were deeper and darker than any waters of the sea. After all of their uncharted traveling, the Baudelaire orphans were not in the mood to explore any uncharted waters, and could not share Phil's optimistic enthusiasm.

  "It won't be the first time the Queequeg's been in uncharted waters," Captain Widdershins said. "Aye – most of this sea was first explored by V.F.D. submarines."

  "We thought V.F.D. stood for Volunteer Fire Department," Violet said. "Why would a fire department spend so much time underwater?"

  "V.F.D. isn't just a fire department," the captain said, but his voice was very quiet, as if he were talking more to himself than to his crew. "Aye – it started that way. But the volunteers were interested in every such thing! I was one of the first to sign up for Voluntary Fish Domestication. That was one of the missions of Anwhistle Aquatics. Aye! I spent four long years training salmon to swim upstream and search for forest fires. That was when you were very young, Fiona, but your brother worked right alongside me. You should have seen him sneaking extra worms to his favorites! Aye! The program was a modest success! Aye! But then Café Salmonella came along, and took our entire fleet away. The Snicket siblings fought as best they could. Aye! Historians call it the Snicket Snickersnee! Aye! But as the poet wrote, 'Too many waiters turn out to be traitors.' "

  "The Snicket siblings?" Klaus was quick to ask.

  "Aye," the captain said. "Three of them, each as noble as the next. Aye! Kit Snicket helped build this submarine! Aye! Jacques Snicket proved that the Royal Gardens Fire was arson! Aye! And the third sibling, with the marmosets –"

  "You Baudelaires knew Jacques Snicket, didn't you?" asked Fiona, who wasn't shy about interrupting her stepfather.

  "Very briefly," Violet said, "and we recently found a message addressed to him. That's how we found about Thursday's gathering, at the last safe place."

  "Nobody would write a message to Jacques," Captain Widdershins said. "Aye! Jacques is dead!"

  "Etartsigam!" Sunny said, and her siblings quickly explained that she meant "The initials were J.S."

  "It must be some other J.S.," Fiona said.

  "Speaking of mysterious initials," Klaus said, "I wonder what G.G. stands for. If we knew what the cave was called, we might have a better idea of our journey."

  "Aye!" Captain Widdershins said. "Let's guess! Great Glen! Aye! Green Glade! Aye! Glamorous Glacier! Aye! Gleeful Gameroom! Aye! Glass Goulash! Aye! Gothic Government! Aye! Grandma's Gingivitis! Aye! Girl Getting-up-from-table! Aye!"

  Indeed, the captain's stepdaughter had stood up, wiped her mouth with a napkin embroidered with a portrait of Herman Melville, and walked over to a sideboard tucked into a far corner. Fiona opened a cabinet and revealed a few shelves stuffed with books.

  "Yesterday I started reading a new addition to my mycological library," she said, standing on tiptoes to reach the shelf. "I just remembered reading something that might come in handy."

  The captain fingered his mustache in astonishment. "You and your mushrooms and molds!" the captain said. "I thought I'd never live to see your mycological studies be put to good use," and I'm sorry to say he was right.

  "Let's see," Fiona said, paging through a thick book entitled Mushroom Minutiae, a word which here means "obscure facts."

  "It was in the table of contents – that's all I've read so far. It was about halfway through." She brought the book over to the table, and ran a finger down the table of contents while the Baudelaires leaned over to see. "Chapter Thirty-Six, The Yeast of Beasts. Chapter Thirty-Seven, Morel Behavior in a Free Society. Chapter Thirty-Eight, Fungible Mold, Moldable Fungi. Chapter Thirty-Nine, Visitable Fungal Ditches. Chapter Forty, The Gorgonian Grotto – there!"

  "Grotto?" Sunny asked.

  " 'Grotto' is another word for 'cave'," Klaus explained, as Fiona flipped ahead to Chapter Forty.

  " 'The Gorgonian Grotto,' " she read, " 'located in propinquity to Anwhistle Aquatics, has appropriately wraithlike nomenclature, with roots in Grecian mythology, as this conical cavern is fecund with what is perhaps the bugaboo of the entire mycological pantheon.' "

  "Aye! I told you that book was too difficult!" Captain Widdershins said. "A young child can't unlock that sort of vocabulary."

  "It's a very complicated prose style," Klaus admitted, "but I think I know what it says. The Gorgonian Grotto was named after something in Greek mythology."

  "A Gorgon," Violet said. "Like that woman with snakes instead of hair."

  "She could turn people into stone," Fiona said.

  "She was probably nice, when you got to know her," Phil said.

  "Aye! I think I went to school with such a woman!" the captain said.

  "I don't think she was a real person," Klaus said. "I think she was legendary. The book says it's appropriate that the grotto is named after a legendary monster, because there's a sort of monster living in a cave – a bugaboo."

  "Bugaboo?" Sunny asked.

  "A bugaboo can be any kind of monster," Klaus said. "We could call Count Olaf a bugaboo, if we felt so inclined."

  "I'd rather not speak of him at all," Violet said.

  "This bugaboo is a fungus of some sort," Fiona said, and continued reading from Mushroom Minutiae. " 'The Medusoid Mycelium has a unique conducive strategy of waxing and waning: first a brief dormant cycle, in which the mycelium is nearly invisible, and then a precipitated flowering into speckled stalks and caps of such intense venom that it is fortunate the grotto serves as quarantine.' "

  "I didn't understand all of that scientific terminology," Klaus said.

  "I did," Fiona said. "There are three main parts to a mushroom. One is the cap, which is shaped like an umbrella, and the second is the stalk, which holds the umbrella up. Those are the parts you can see."

  "There's part of a mushroom you can't see?" Violet asked.

  "It's called the mycelium," Fiona replied. "It's like a bunch of thread, branching out underneath the ground. Some mushrooms have mycelia that go on for miles."

  "How do you spell 'mycelium'?" Klaus asked, reaching into his waterproof pocket. "I want to write this down in my commonplace book." Fiona pointed the word out on the page.

  "The Medusoid Mycelium waxes and wanes," she said, "which means that the caps and stalks spring up from the mycelium, and then wither away, and then spring up again. It sounds like you wouldn't know the mushrooms are there until they poke up out of the ground."

  The Baudelaires pictured a group of mushrooms suddenly springing up under their feet, and felt a bit queasy, as if they already knew of the dreadful encounter they would soon have with this terrible fungus.

  "That sounds unnerving," Violet said.

  "It gets worse," Fiona said. "The mushrooms are exceedingly poisonous. Listen to this: 'As the poet says, "A single spore has such grim power / That you may die within the hour." ' A spore is like a seed – if it has a place to grow, it will become another mycelium. But if someone eats it, or even breathes it in, it can cause death."

  "Within the hour?" Klaus said. "That's a fast-acting poison."

  "Most fungal poisons have cures," Fiona said. "The poison of a deadly fungus can be the source of some wonderful medicines. I've been working on a few myself. But this book says it's lucky the grotto acts
as quarantine."

  "Quarwa?" Sunny asked.

  "Quarantine is when something dangerous is isolated, so the danger cannot spread," Klaus explained. "Because the Medusoid Mycelium is in uncharted waters, very few people have been poisoned. If someone brought even one spore to dry land, who knows what would happen?"

  "We won't find out!" Captain Widdershins said. "We're not going to take any spores! Aye! We're just going to grab the sugar bowl and be on our way! Aye! I'll set a course right now!" The captain bounded up from the table and began climbing the rope ladder to the Queequeg's controls.

  "Are you sure we should continue our mission?" Fiona asked her stepfather, shutting the book. "It sounds very dangerous."

  "Dangerous? Aye! Dangerous and scary! Aye! Scary and difficult! Aye! Difficult and mysterious! Aye! Mysterious and uncomfortable! Aye! Uncomfortable and risky! Aye! Risky and noble! Aye!"

  "I suppose the fungus can't hurt us if we're inside the submarine," Phil said, struggling to remain optimistic.

  "Even if it could!" the captain cried, standing at the top of the rope ladder and gesturing dramatically as he delivered an impassioned oratory, a phrase which here means "emotional speech that the Baudelaires found utterly convincing, even if they did not quite agree with every word."

  "The amount of treachery in this world is enormous!" he cried. "Aye! Think of the crafts we saw on the sonar screen! Think of Count Olaf's enormous submarine, and the even more enormous one that chased it away! Aye! "There's always something more enormous and more terrifying on our tails! Aye! And so many of the noble submarines are gone! Aye! You think the Herman Melville suits are the only noble uniforms in the world? There used to be volunteers with P G. Wodehouse on their uniforms, and Carl Van Vechten. There was Comyns and Cleary and Archy and Mehitabel. But now volunteers are scarce! So the best we can do is one small noble thing! Aye! Like retrieving the sugar bowl from the Gorgonian Grotto, no matter how grim it sounds! Aye! Remember my personal philosophy! He who hesitates is lost!"