The Vile Village

by Lemony Snicket

  "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 w
hen 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 widening beak of the crow. Through the rushing water, the three siblings could see two pairs of hands appear on the beak as two people climbed out of Fowl Fountain. Each person was wearing a thick wool sweater, so dark and heavy with water that they both looked like huge, misshapen monsters. The two dripping figures climbed carefully out of the crow and lowered themselves to the ground, and the Baudelaires ran to clasp them in their arms.

  I do not have to tell you how overjoyed the children were to see Duncan and Isadora Quagmire shivering in the courtyard, and I do not have to tell you how grateful the Quagmires were to be out of the confines of Fowl Fountain. I do not have to tell you how happy and relieved the five youngsters were to be reunited after all this time, and I do not have to tell you all the joyous things the triplets said as they struggled to take off their heavy sweaters and wring them out. But there are things I do have to tell you, and one of those things is the distant figure of Detective Dupin, holding a torch and heading straight toward the Baudelaire orphans.

  Chapter Twelve

  If you have reached this far in the story, you must stop now. If you take one step back and look at the book you are reading, you can see how little of this miserable story there is to go, but if you could know how much grief and woe are contained in these last few pages, you would take another step back, and then another, and keep stepping back until The Vile Village was just as small and distant as the approaching figure of Detective Dupin was as the Baudelaire orphans embraced their friends in relief and joy. The Baudelaire orphans, I'm sorry to say, could not stop now, and there is no way for me to travel backward in time and warn the Baudelaires that the relief and joy they were experiencing at Fowl Fountain were the last bits of relief and joy they would experience for a very long time. But I can warn you. You, unlike the Baudelaire orphans and the Quagmire triplets and me and my dear departed Beatrice, can stop this wretched story at this very moment, and see what happens at the end of The Littlest Elf instead.

  "We can't stay here," Violet warned. "I don't mean to cut short this reunion, but it's already afternoon, and Detective Dupin is coming down that street."

  The five children looked in the direction Violet was pointing, and could see the turquoise speck of Dupin's approaching blazer, and the tiny point of light his flaming torch made as he drew near the courtyard.

  "Do you think he sees us?" Klaus asked.

  "I don't know," Violet said, "but let's not stick around to find out. The V.F.D. mob will only get worse when they discover we've broken out of jail."

  "Detective Dupin is the latest disguise of Count Olaf," Klaus explained to the Quagmires, "and — "

  "We know all about Detective Dupin," Duncan said quickly, "and we know what's happened to you."

  "We heard everything that happened yesterday, from inside the fountain," Isadora said. "When we heard you cleaning the fountain we tried to make as much noise as we could, but you couldn't hear us over the sound of all that water."

  Duncan squeezed a whole puddle out of the soaked stitches of his left sweater sleeve. Then he reached under his shirt and brought out a dark green notebook. "We tried to keep our notebooks as dry as possible," he explained. "After all, there's crucial information in here."

  "We have all the information about V.F.D.," Isadora said, taking out her notebook, which was pitch black. "The real V.F.D., that is not the Village of Fowl Devotees."

  Duncan opened his notebook and blew on some of the damp pages. "And we know the complete story of poor Jac — "

  Duncan was interrupted by a shriek behind him, and the five children turned to see two members of the Council of Elders staring at the hole in the uptown jail. Quickly, the Baudelaires and Quagmires ducked behind Fowl Fountain so they wouldn't be seen.

  One of the Elders shrieked again, and removed his crow hat to dab at his brow with a tissue. "They've escaped!" he cried. "Rule #1,742 clearly states that no one is allowed to escape from jail. How dare they disobey this rule!"

  "We should have expected this from a murderer and her two accomplices," the oth
er Elder said. "And look — they've damaged Fowl Fountain. The beak is split wide open. Our beautiful fountain is ruined!"

  "Those three orphans are the worst criminals in history," the first replied. "Look — there's Detective Dupin, walking down that street. Let's go tell him what's happened. Maybe he'll figure out where they've gone."

  "You go tell Dupin," the second Elder said, "and I'll go call The Daily Punctilio. Maybe they'll put my name in the newspaper."

  The two members of the Council hurried off to spread the news, and the children sighed in relief. "Cose," Sunny said.

  "That was too close," Klaus replied. "Soon this whole district will be full of citizens hunting us down."

  "Well, nobody's hunting us" Duncan said. "Isadora and I will walk in front of you, so you won't be spotted."

  "But where can we go?" Isadora asked. "This vile village is in the middle of nowhere."

  "I helped Hector finish his self-sustaining hot air mobile home," Violet said, "and he promised to have it waiting for us. All we have to do is make it to the outskirts of town, and we can escape."

  "And live forever up in the air?" Klaus said frowning.

  "Maybe it won't be forever," Violet replied.

  "Scylla!" Sunny said, which meant "It's either the self-sustaining hot air mobile home or being burned at the stake!"

  "When you say it like that," Klaus said, "I'm convinced."

  Everyone agreed, and Violet looked around the courtyard to see if anyone else had arrived yet. "In a place as flat as this one," she said, "you can see people coming from far away, and we're going to use that to our advantage. We'll walk along any empty street we can find, and if we see anyone coming, we'll turn a corner. We won't be able to get there as the crow flies, but eventually we'll be able to reach Nevermore Tree."

  "Speaking of the crows," Klaus said to the two triplets, "how did you manage to deliver those poems by crow? And how did you know that we would receive them?"

  "Let's get moving," Isadora replied. "We'll tell you the whole story as we go along."