The Vile Village

by Lemony Snicket

  There are many expressions to describe someone who is going about something in the wrong way. "Making a mistake" is one way to describe this situation. "Screwing up" is another, although it is a bit rude, and "Attempting to rescue Lemony Snicket by writing letters to a congressman, instead of digging an escape tunnel" is a third way, although it is a bit too specific. But Sunny calling out "Bark!" brings to mind an expression that, sadly enough, describes the situation perfectly.

  By "Bark!" Sunny meant "If you're up there, Quagmires, just hang on, and we'll get you out first thing in the morning," and I'm sorry to say that the expression which best describes her circumstances is "barking up the wrong tree." It was a kind gesture of Sunny's, to try to reassure Isadora and Duncan that the Baudelaires would help them escape from Count Olaf's clutches, but the youngest Baudelaire was going about it the wrong way. "Bark!" she cried one more time, as Hector began to dish up the chicken enchiladas, and led the Baudelaires to the front porch so they could eat at the picnic table and keep an eye on Nevermore Tree, but Sunny was making a mistake. The Baudelaires did not realize the mistake as they finished their dinner and kept their eye on the immense, muttering tree. They did not realize the mistake as they sat on the porch for the rest of the night, taking turns at squinting at the flat horizon for any sign of someone approaching and dozing beside Hector using the picnic table as a pillow. But when the sun began to rise, and one V.F.D. crow left Nevermore Tree and began to fly in a circle, and three more crows followed, and then seven more, and then twelve more, and soon the morning sky was filled with the sound of fluttering wings as the thousands of crows circled and circled above the children's heads as they rose from the wooden chairs and walked quickly toward the tree to look for any sign of the Quagmires, the Baudelaires saw at once how deeply mistaken they had been.

  Without the murder of crows roosting in its branches, Nevermore Tree looked as bare as a skeleton. There was not a single leaf among the hundreds and hundreds of the tree's branches. Standing on its scraggly roots and looking up into the empty branches, the Baudelaires could see every last detail of Nevermore Tree, and they could see at once that they would not find Duncan and Isadora Quagmire no matter how far they climbed. It was an enormous tree, and it was a sturdy tree, and it was apparently very comfortable to roost in, but it was the wrong tree. Klaus had been barking up the wrong tree when he'd said that their kidnapped friends were probably up there, and Violet had been barking up the wrong tree when she'd said that they should climb up and look for them, and Sunny had been barking up the wrong tree when she'd said "Bark!" The Baudelaire orphans had been barking up the wrong tree all evening, because the only thing the children found that morning was another scrap of paper, rolled into a scroll, among all the black feathers that the crows had left behind.

  Chapter Five

  Until dawn comes we cannot speak.

  No words can come from this sad beak.

  My head is spinning again," Violet said, holding the scrap of paper so Klaus and Sunny could see what was written on it. "And my legs are all wobbly and my body is buzzing, like I've been struck by lightning. How in the world did Isadora get another poem here? We made sure that one of us was watching the tree at every moment."

  "Maybe it was here yesterday, but Hector didn't see it," Klaus said.

  Violet shook her head. "A white scrap of paper is very easy to see next to all these black feathers. It must have arrived here sometime in the night. But how?"

  "How it got here is the least of our questions," Klaus said. "Where are the Quagmires? That's the question I want answered."

  "But why doesn't Isadora just tell us," Violet said, rereading the couplet and frowning, "instead of leaving us mysterious poems on the ground where anyone could find them?"

  "Maybe that's why," Klaus said slowly. "Anyone could find them here on the ground. If Isadora simply wrote out where they were, and Count Olaf found the scrap of paper, he'd move them — or worse. I'm not that experienced with reading poetry, but I bet Isadora is telling us where she and her brother are. It must be hidden somewhere in the poem."

  "It'll be difficult to find," Violet said, rereading the couplet. "There are so many confusing things about this poem. Why does she say 'beak'? Isadora has a nose and mouth, not a beak."

  "Cra!" Sunny said, which meant "She probably means the beak of a V.F.D. crow."

  "You might be right," Violet agreed. "But why does she say that no words can come from it? Of course no words can come from a beak. Birds can't talk."

  "Actually, some birds can talk," Klaus said. "I read an ornithological encyclopedia that discussed the parrot and the myna bird, which both can imitate human speech."

  "But there aren't any parrots or myna birds around here," Violet said. "There are only crows, and crows certainly can't speak."

  "And speaking of speaking," Klaus said, "why does the poem say 'Until dawn comes we cannot speak'?"

  "Well, both these poems arrived in the morning," Violet said. "Maybe Isadora means that she can only send us poems in the morning."

  "None of this makes any sense," Klaus said. "Maybe Hector can help us figure out what's going wrong."

  "Laper!" Sunny said in agreement, and the children went to wake up the handyman, who was still asleep on the front porch. Violet touched his shoulder, and as he yawned and sat up the children could see that his face had lines on it from sleeping on the picnic table.

  "Good morning, Baudelaires," he said, stretching his arms and giving them a sleepy smile. "At least, I hope it's a good morning. Did you find any sign of the Quagmires?"

  "It's more like a strange morning," Violet replied. "We found a sign of them, all right. Take a look."

  Violet handed Hector the second poem, and he read it and frowned. '"Curiouser and curiouser,'" he said, quoting one of the Baudelaires' favorite books. "This is really turning into a puzzle."

  "But a puzzle is just something you do for amusement," Klaus said. "Duncan and Isadora are in grave danger. If we don't figure out what these poems are trying to tell us, Count Olaf will — "

  "Don't even say it," Violet said with a shiver. "We absolutely must solve this puzzle, and that is that."

  Hector stood up to stretch, and looked out on the flat and empty horizon surrounding his home. "Judging by the angle of the sun," he said, "it's just about time to leave. We don't even have time for breakfast."

  "Leave?" Violet asked.

  "Of course," Hector said. "Are you forgetting how many chores we have ahead of us today?" He reached into the pocket of his overalls and pulled out a list. "We begin downtown, of course, so the crows don't get in our way. We have to trim Mrs. Morrow's hedges, wash Mr. Lesko's windows, and polish all the doorknobs at the Verhoogen family's mansion. Plus we have to sweep all the feathers out of the street, and take out everyone's garbage and recyclables."

  "But the Quagmire kidnapping is much more important than any of those things," Violet said.

  Hector sighed. "I agree with you," he said, "but I'm not going to argue with the Council of Elders. They make me too skittish."

  "I'll be happy to explain the situation to them," Klaus said.

  "No," Hector decided. "It will be best to do our chores as usual. Go wash your faces, Baudelaires, and then we'll go."

  The Baudelaires looked at one another in dismay, wishing that the handyman wasn't quite so afraid of a group of old people wearing crow-shaped hats, but without further discussion they walked back into the house, washed their faces, and followed Hector across the flat landscape until they reached the outskirts of town and then through the uptown district, where the V.F.D. crows were roosting, until they reached the downtown house of Mrs. Morrow, who was waiting in her pink robe on her front porch. Without a word she handed Hector a pair of hedge clippers, which are nothing more than large scissors designed to cut branches and leaves rather than paper, and gave each Baudelaire a large plastic bag to gather up the leaves and branches Hector would snip off. Hedge clippers and a plastic bag are not appr
opriate methods of greeting someone, of course, particularly first thing in the morning, but the three siblings were so busy thinking about what the poems could mean that they scarcely noticed. As they gathered up the hedge trimmings they floated several theories — the phrase "floated several theories" here means "talked quietly about the two couplets by Isadora Quagmire" — until the hedge looked nice and neat and it was time to walk down the block to where Mr. Lesko lived. Mr. Lesko — whom the Baudelaires recognized as the man in plaid pants who was worried that the children might have to live with him — was even ruder than Mrs. Morrow. He merely pointed at a pile of window-cleaning supplies and stomped back into his house, but once again the Baudelaires were concentrating on solving the mystery of the two messages they had been left, and scarcely noticed Mr. Lesko's rudeness. Violet and Klaus each began scrubbing dirt off a window with a damp rag, while Sunny stood by with a bucket of soapy water and Hector climbed up to clean the windows on the second floor, but all the children thought of was each line of Isadora's confusing poem, until they were finished with the windows and were ready to go to work on the rest of the chores for the day, which I will not describe for you, not only because they were so boring that I would fall asleep while writing them down on paper, but because the Baudelaire orphans scarcely noticed them. The children thought about the couplets while they polished the Verhoogen doorknobs, and they thought about them when they swept the feathers from the street into a dustpan that Sunny held while crawling in front of her siblings, but they still could not imagine how Isadora managed to leave a poem underneath Nevermore Tree. They thought about the couplets as they carried the garbage and recyclables from all of V.F.D.'s downtown residents, and they thought about them as they ate a lunch of cabbage sandwiches that one of V.F.D.'s restaurant owners had agreed to provide as his part in the village's attempt to raise the children, but they still could not figure out what Isadora was trying to tell them. They thought of the couplets when Hector read out the list of afternoon chores, which included such tedious duties as making citizens' beds, washing townspeople's dishes, preparing enough hot fudge sundaes for the entire Council of Elders to enjoy as an afternoon snack, and polishing Fowl Fountain, but no matter how hard they thought, the Baudelaires got no closer to solving the couplets' mysteries. "I'm very impressed with how hard you three children are working," Hector said, as he and the children began their last afternoon chore. Fowl Fountain was made in the shape of an enormous crow, and stood in the middle of the uptown district, in a courtyard with many different streets leading out of it. The children were scrubbing at the crow's metal body, which was covered in carvings of feather shapes to make it look more realistic. Hector was standing on a ladder scrubbing at the crow's metal head, which was facing straight up and spitting a steady stream of water out of a hole fashioned to look like its mouth, as if the enormous bird were gargling and spitting water all over its own body. The effect was hideous, but the V.F.D. crows must have thought differently, because the fountain was covered in feathers that they had left behind during their uptown morning roost. "When the Council of Elders told me that the village was serving as your guardian," Hector continued, "I was afraid that three small children wouldn't be able to do all these chores without complaining."

  "We're used to strenuous exercise," Violet replied. "When we lived in Paltryville, we debarked trees and sawed them into boards, and at Prufrock Preparatory School we had to run hundreds of laps every night."

  "Besides," Klaus said, "we're so busy thinking about the couplets that we've scarcely noticed our work."

  "I thought that's why you were so quiet," Hector said. "How do the poems go again?"

  The Baudelaires had looked at the two scraps of paper so many times over the course of the day that they could recite both poems from memory.

  "For sapphires we are held in here. Only you can end our fear." Violet said. "Until dawn comes we cannot speak. No words can come from this sad beak."

  Klaus said.

  "Dulch!" Sunny added, which meant something like, "And we still haven't figured out what they really mean."

  "They're tricky, all right," Hector said. "In fact, I..."

  Here his voice trailed off, and the children were startled to see the handyman turn around so he was no longer facing them and begin to scrub the left eye of the metal crow, as if someone had flicked a switch that stopped him from talking.

  "Fowl Fountain still doesn't look completely clean," said a stern voice from behind the children, and the Baudelaires turned around to see three women from the Council of Elders who had entered the courtyard and now stood frowning at them. Hector was so skittish that he didn't even look up to answer, but the children were not nearly as intimidated, a word which here means "made skittish by three older women wearing crow-shaped hats."

  "We're not completely finished cleaning it," Violet explained politely. "I do hope you enjoyed your hot fudge sundaes that we prepared for you earlier."

  "They were O.K.," one of them said, with a shrug that bobbed her crow hat slightly.

  "Mine had too many nuts," another one of them said. "Rule #961 clearly states that the Council of Elders' hot fudge sundaes cannot have more than fifteen pieces of nuts each, and mine might have had more than that."

  "I'm very sorry to hear that," Klaus said, not adding that anyone who is so picky about a hot fudge sundae should make it themselves.

  "We've stacked up the dirty ice cream dishes in the Snack Hut," the third one said. "Tomorrow afternoon you'll wash them as part of your uptown chores. But we came to tell Hector something."

  The children looked up to the top of the ladder, thinking that Hector would have to turn around and speak to them now, no matter how skittish he was. But he merely gave a little cough, and continued to scrub at Fowl Fountain. Violet remembered what her father had taught her to say when he was unable to come to the phone, and she spoke up.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "Hector is occupied at the moment. May I give him a message?"

  The Elders looked at one another and nodded, which made it look like their hats were pecking at one another. "I suppose so," one of them said. "If we can trust a little girl like you to deliver it."

  "The message is very important," the second one said, and once again I find it necessary to use the expression "bolt from the blue." You would think, after the mysterious appearance of not one but two poems by Isadora Quagmire at the base of Nevermore Tree, that no more bolts from the blue would appear in the village of V.F.D. A bolt of lightning, after all, rarely comes down from a clear blue sky and strikes the exact same place more than once. But for the Baudelaire orphans, life seemed to be little else than bolt after unfortunate bolt from the blue, ever since Mr. Poe had delivered the first bolt from the blue in telling them that their parents had been killed, and no matter how many bolts from the blue they experienced, their heads never spun any less, and their legs never got less wobbly, and their bodies never buzzed any less with astonishment when another bolt arrived from the blue. So when the Baudelaires heard the Elders' message, they almost had to sit down in Fowl Fountain, because the message was such an utter surprise. It was a message that they thought they might never hear, and it is a message that only reaches me in my most pleasant dreams, which are few and far between.

  "The message is this," said the third member of the Council of Elders, and she leaned her head in close so that the children could see every felt feather of her crow hat. "Count Olaf has been captured," she said, and the Baudelaires felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck them once more.

  Chapter Six

  Although "jumping to conclusions" is an expression, rather than an activity, it is as dangerous as jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a moving train, and jumping for joy. If you jump off a cliff, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful landing unless there is something below you to cushion your fall, such as a body of water or an immense pile of tissue paper. If you jump in front of a moving train, you have a very good chance of experiencin
g a painful voyage unless you are wearing some sort of train-proof suit. And if you jump for joy, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful bump on the head, unless you make sure you are standing someplace with very high ceilings, which joyous people rarely do. Clearly, the solution to anything involving jumping is either to make sure you are jumping to a safe place, or not to jump at all.

  But it is hard not to jump at all when you are jumping to conclusions, and it is impossible to make sure that you are jumping to a safe place, because all "jumping to conclusions" means is that you are believing something is true even though you don't actually know whether it is or not. When the Baudelaire orphans heard from the three members of V.F.D.'s Council of Elders that Count Olaf had been captured, they were so excited that they immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was true.

  "It's true," said one of the Elders, which didn't help things any. "A man arrived in town this morning, with one eyebrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle."

  "It must be Olaf," Violet said, jumping to conclusions.

  "Of course it is," the second Council member said. "He matched the description that Mr. Poe gave us, so we arrested him immediately."

  "So it's true," Klaus said, joining his sister in the jump. "You've really captured Count Olaf."

  "Of course it's true," the third woman said impatiently. "We've even contacted The Daily Punctilio, and they'll write a story about it. Soon the whole world will know that Count Olaf has been captured at last."

  "Hooray!" cried Sunny, the last Baudelaire to jump to conclusions.

  "The Council of Elders has called a special meeting," said the woman who appeared to be the eldest Elder. Her crow hat bobbed in excitement as she spoke. "All citizens are required to go to Town Hall immediately, to discuss what is to be done with him. After all, Rule #19,833 clearly states that no villains are allowed within the city limits. The usual punishment for breaking a rule is burning at the stake."