“We don’t have to read the entire library,” Klaus said, as they reached the door to the Queequeg’s brig. “I know just where to look.”
Sunny coughed again, and then began to wheeze, a word which here means “make a hoarse, whistling sound indicating that her throat was almost completely closed up.” The elder Baudelaires could hardly stop themselves from opening the helmet to comfort their sister, but they didn’t want to risk getting poisoned themselves. “I hope you’re right,” Violet said, pressing a metal eye on the wall. The door slid open and children hurried toward the broken porthole of the submarine. “Sunny’s hour must almost be up.”
Klaus nodded grimly, and jumped through the porthole onto the large wooden table. Although it had only been a short while since the children had left the Queequeg, the Main Hall felt as if it had been abandoned for years. The three balloons tied to the table legs were beginning to sag, the tidal charts Klaus had studied had fallen to the floor, and the glass circle Count Olaf had cut in the porthole still lay on the floor. But the middle Baudelaire ignored all of these objects, and picked up Mushroom Minutiae from the floor.
“This book should have information on the antidote,” he said, and turned immediately to the table of contents as Violet carried Sunny through the porthole into the submarine. “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.”
“That’s it!” Violet said. “Chapter Forty.”
Klaus flipped pages as Sunny gave another desperate wheeze, although I wish the middle Baudelaire could have had the time to return to some of those pages he flipped past. “‘The Gorgonian Grotto,’” he read, “‘located in propinquity to Anwhistle Aquatics, has appropriately wraithlike nomenclature—’”
“We know all that,” Violet said hurriedly. “Skip to the part about the mycelium.”
Klaus’s eyes scanned the page easily, having had much practice in skipping the parts of books he found less than helpful. “‘The Medusoid Mycelium has a unique conducive strategy of waxing—’”
“‘And waning,’” interrupted Violet, as Sunny’s wheezing continued to wax. “Skip to the part about the poison.”
“‘As the poet says,’” Klaus read, “‘A single spore has such grim power/That you may die within the hour. Is dilution simple? But of course!/Just one small dose of root of horse.’”
“‘Root of horse’?” Violet repeated. “How can a horse have a root?”
“I don’t know,” Klaus said. “Usually antidotes are certain botanical extractions, like pollen from a flower, or the stem of a plant.”
“Does ‘dilution’ mean the same thing as ‘antidote’?” Violet asked, but before her brother could answer, Sunny wheezed again, and the diving helmet rocked back and forth as she struggled against the fungus. Klaus looked at the book he was holding, and then at his sister, and then reached into the waterproof pocket of his uniform.
“What are you doing?” Violet asked.
“Getting my commonplace book,” Klaus replied. “I wrote down all the information on the history of Anwhistle Aquatics that we found in the grotto.”
“We don’t have time to look at your research!” Violet said. “We need to find an antidote this very minute! Fiona’s right—He or she who hesitates is lost.”
Klaus shook his head. “Not necessarily,” he said, and flipped a page of his dark blue notebook. “If we take one moment to think, we might save our sister. Now, what did Kit Snicket write in that letter? Here it is: ‘The poisonous fungus you insist on cultivating in the grotto will bring grim consequences for all of us. Our factory at Lousy Lane can provide some dilution of the mycelium’s destructive respiratory capabilities….’ That’s it! V.F.D. was making something in a factory near Lousy Lane that could dilute the effects of the mycelium.”
“Lousy Lane?” Violet said. “That was the road to Uncle Monty’s house. It had a terrible smell, remember? It smelled like black pepper. No, not black pepper…”
Klaus looked at his commonplace book, and then at Mushroom Minutiae. “Horseradish,” he said quietly. “The road smelled like horseradish! ‘Root of horse’! Horseradish is the antidote!”
Violet was already striding to the kitchen. “Let’s hope Phil likes to cook with horseradish,” she said, and pushed open the door. Klaus picked up the wheezing helmet and followed her into the tiny kitchen. There was scarcely enough room for the children to stand in the small space between the stove, the refrigerator, and two wooden cabinets.
“The cabinets must serve as a pantry,” Klaus said, using a word which here means “place where antidotes are hopefully stored.” “Horseradish should be there—if he has it.”
The elder Baudelaires shuddered, not wanting to think about what would happen to Sunny if horseradish were not found on the shelves. Within moments, however, Violet and Klaus had to consider that very thing. Violet opened one cupboard, and Klaus opened another, but the children saw immediately that there was no horseradish. “Gum,” Violet said faintly. “Boxes and boxes of gum Phil brought from the lumbermill, and nothing else. Did you find anything, Klaus?”
Klaus pointed to a pair of small cans on one shelf of his cupboard, and held up a small paper bag. “Two cans of water chestnuts,” he said, “and a small bag of sesame seeds.” His fist closed tightly around the bag, and he blinked back tears behind his glasses. “What are we going to do?”
Sunny wheezed once more, a frantic whistle that reminded her siblings of a train’s lonely noise as it disappears into a tunnel. “Let’s check the refrigerator,” Violet said. “Maybe there’s horseradish in there.”
Klaus nodded, and opened the kitchen’s refrigerator, which was almost as bare as the pantry. On the top shelf were six small bottles of lemon-lime soda, which Phil had offered the children on their first night aboard the Queequeg. On the middle shelf was a small piece of white, soft cheese, wrapped up in a bit of wax paper. And on the bottom shelf was a large plate, on which was something that made the two siblings begin to cry.
“I forgot,” Violet said, tears running down her face.
“Me too,” Klaus said, taking the plate out of the refrigerator.
Phil had used the last of the kitchen’s provisions—a word which here means “cooking supplies”—to prepare a cake. It looked like a coconut cream cake, like Dr. Montgomery used to make, and the two siblings wondered if Sunny, even as a baby, had noticed enough about cooking to help Phil concoct such a dessert. The cake was heavily frosted, with bits of coconut mixed into the thick, creamy frosting, and spelled out in blue frosting on the top, in Phil’s perky, optimistic handwriting, were three words.
“Violet’s Fifteenth Date,” Klaus said numbly. “That’s what the balloons were for.”
“It was my fifteenth birthday,” Violet said. “I turned fifteen sometime when we were in the grotto, and I forgot all about it.”
“Sunny didn’t forget,” Klaus said. “She said she was planning a surprise, remember? We were going to return from our mission in the cave, and celebrate your birthday.”
Violet slunk to the floor, and lay her head against Sunny’s diving helmet. “What are we going to do?” she sobbed. “We can’t lose Sunny. We can’t lose her!”
“There must be something we can use,” Klaus said, “as a substitute for horseradish. What could it be?”
“I don’t know!” Violet cried. “I don’t know anything about cooking!”
“Neither do I!” Klaus said, crying as hard as his sister. “Sunny’s the one who knows!”
The two weeping Baudelaires looked at one another, and then steeled themselves, a phrase which here means “summoned up as much strength as they could.” Then, without another word, they opened the tiny door of Sunny’s helmet and quickly dragged their sister out, quickly shutting the door behind her so the fungus would not spread. At first, their sister looked comp
letely unchanged, but when the wheezing young girl opened her mouth, they could see several gray stalks and caps of this horrible mushroom, splotched with black as if someone had poured ink into Sunny’s mouth. Wheezing horribly, Sunny reached out her tiny arms to each of her siblings and grabbed their hands. She did not have to utter a word. Violet and Klaus knew she was begging for help, but there was nothing they could do except ask her one desperate question.
“Sunny,” Violet said, “we’ve researched an antidote. Only horseradish can save you. But there’s no horseradish in the kitchen.”
“Sunny,” Klaus said, “is there a culinary equivalent of horseradish?”
Sunny opened her mouth as if trying to say something, but the elder Baudelaires only heard the hoarse, whistling sound of air trying to make its way past the mushrooms. Her tiny hands curled into fists, and her body twisted back and forth in pain and fear. Finally, she managed to utter one word—a word that many might not have understood. Some might have thought it was part of Sunny’s personal vocabulary—perhaps her way of saying “I love you,” or even “Farewell, siblings.” Some might have thought it was pure nonsense, just the noises one might make when a deadly fungus has defeated you. But there are many others who would have understood it immediately. A person from Japan would have known she was talking about a condiment often served with raw fish and pickled ginger. A chef would have known that Sunny was referring to a strong, green root, widely considered the culinary equivalent of horseradish. And Violet and Klaus knew that their sister was naming her salvation, a phrase which here means “something that would save her life,” or “something that would rescue her from the Medusoid Mycelium,” or, most importantly, “an item the eldest Baudelaire still had in the waterproof pocket of her uniform, sealed in a tin Sunny had found in an underwater cavern.”
“Wasabi,” Sunny said, in a hoarse, mushroom-choked whisper, and she did not have to say anything more.
CHAPTER
Twelve
The expression “the tables have turned” is not one the Baudelaire orphans had much occasion to use, as it refers to a situation that has suddenly been reversed, so that those who were previously in a powerless position could suddenly find themselves in a powerful one, and vice versa. For the Baudelaires, the tables had turned at Briny Beach, when they received news of the terrible fire, and Count Olaf suddenly became a powerful and terrifying figure in their lives. As time went on, the siblings waited and waited for the tables to turn back, so that Olaf might be defeated once and for all and they could find themselves free of the sinister and mysterious forces that threatened to engulf them, but the tables of the Baudelaires’ lives seemed stuck, with the children always in a position of misery and sorrow while wickedness seemed to triumph all around them. But as Violet hurriedly opened the tin of wasabi she had been keeping in her pocket, and spooned the green, spicy mixture into Sunny’s wheezing mouth, it seemed like the tables might turn after all. Sunny gasped when the wasabi hit her tongue, and the stalks and caps of the Medusoid Mycelium shivered, and seemed to shrink back from the powerful Japanese condiment. In moments, the fungus began to wither and fade away, and Sunny’s wheezing faded into coughing, and her coughing faded into deep breaths as the youngest Baudelaire rallied, a word which here means “regained her strength, and ability to breathe.” The youngest Baudelaire hung on tight to her siblings’ hands, and her eyes filled with tears, but Violet and Klaus could see that the Medusoid Mycelium would not triumph over their sister.
“It’s working,” Violet said. “Sunny’s breathing is getting stronger.”
“Yes,” Klaus said. “We’ve turned the tables on that ghastly fungus.”
“Water,” Sunny said, and her brother stood up from the kitchen floor and quickly got his sister a glass of water. Weakly, the youngest Baudelaire sat up and drank deeply from the glass, and then hugged both her siblings as tightly as she could.
“Thank you,” she said. “Saved me.”
“You saved yourself,” Violet pointed out. “We had the wasabi this whole time, but we didn’t think of giving it to you until you told us.”
Sunny coughed again, and lay back down on the floor. “Tuckered,” she murmured.
“I’m not surprised you’re exhausted,” Violet said. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal. Shall we carry you to the barracks so you can rest?”
“Rest here,” Sunny said, curling up at the foot of the stove.
“Will you really be comfortable on the kitchen floor?” Klaus asked.
Sunny opened one exhausted eye and smiled at her siblings. “Near you,” she said.
“All right, Sunny,” Violet said, grabbing a dish towel from the kitchen counter, and folding it into a pillow for her sister. “We’ll be in the Main Hall if you need us.”
“What next?” she murmured.
“Shh,” Klaus said, putting another dish towel on top of her. “Don’t worry, Sunny. We’ll figure out what to do next.”
The Baudelaires tiptoed out of the kitchen, carrying the tin of wasabi. “Do you think she’ll be all right?” Violet asked.
“I’m sure she will,” Klaus said. “After a nap she’ll be as good as new. But we should eat some of that wasabi ourselves. When we opened the diving helmet, we were exposed to the Medusoid Mycelium, and we’ll need all of our strength to get away from Olaf.”
Violet nodded, and put a spoonful of wasabi into her mouth, shuddering violently as the condiment hit her tongue. “There’s one last spoonful,” Violet said, handing the tin to her brother. “We’d better make sure that diving helmet stays closed until we get our hands on some horseradish and destroy that fungus for good.”
Klaus nodded in agreement, closed his eyes, and ate the last of the Japanese condiment. “If we ever invent that food code we talked about with Fiona,” he said, “the word ‘wasabi’ should mean ‘powerful.’ No wonder this cured our sister.”
“But now that we’ve cured her,” Violet said, remembering Sunny’s question as she fell asleep, “what next?”
“Olaf is next,” Klaus said firmly. “He said he has everything he needs to defeat V.F.D. forever—except the sugar bowl.”
“You’re right,” Violet said. “We have to turn the tables on him, and find it before he does.”
“But we don’t know where it is,” Klaus said. “Someone must have taken it from the Gorgonian Grotto.”
“I wonder—” Violet said, but she never said what she wondered, because a strange noise interrupted her. The noise was a sort of whir, followed by a sort of beep, followed by all sorts of noises, and they seemed to be coming from deep within the machinery of the Queequeg. Finally, a green light lit up on a panel in the wall, and a flat, white object began to slither out of a tiny slit in the panel.
“It’s paper,” Klaus said.
“It’s more than paper,” Violet said, and walked over to the panel. The sheet of paper curled into her hand as it emerged from the slit, as if the machine were impatient for the eldest Baudelaire to read it. “This is the telegram device. We must be receiving—”
“A Volunteer Factual Dispatch,” Klaus finished.
Violet nodded, and scanned the paper quickly. Sure enough, the words “Volunteer Factual Dispatch” were printed on the top, and as more and more of the paper appeared, the eldest Baudelaire saw that it was addressed “To the Queequeg,” with the date printed below, as well as the name of the person who was sending the telegram, miles and miles away on dry land. It was a name Violet almost dared not say out loud, even though she had felt as if she had been whispering it to herself for days, ever since the icy waters of the Stricken Stream had carried away a young man who meant very much to her.
“It’s from Quigley Quagmire,” she said quietly.
Klaus’s eyes widened in astonishment. “What does he say?” he asked.
Violet smiled as the telegram finished printing, her finger touching the Q in her friend’s name. It was almost as if knowing that Quigley was alive was enough of a message.
“‘It is my understanding that you have three additional volunteers on board STOP,’” she read, remembering that “STOP” indicates the end of a sentence in a telegram. “‘We are in desperate need of their services for a most urgent matter STOP. Please deliver them Tuesday to the location indicated in the rhymes below STOP.’” She scanned the paper and frowned thoughtfully. “Then there are two poems,” she said. “One by Lewis Carroll and the other by T. S. Eliot.”
Klaus took his commonplace book out of his pocket, and flipped pages until he found what he was looking for. “Verse Fluctuation Declaration,” he said. “That’s the code we learned in the grotto. Quigley must have changed some of the words in the poems, so no one else would know where we’re supposed to meet him. Let’s see if we can recognize the changes.”
Violet nodded, and read the first poem out loud:
“‘O Oysters, come and walk with us!’
The Walrus did beseech.
‘A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the movie theater.’”
“That last part sounds wrong,” Violet said.
“There were no movie theaters when Lewis Carroll was alive,” Klaus said. “But what are the real words to the poem?”
“I don’t know,” Violet said. “I’ve always found Lewis Carroll too whimsical for my taste.”
“I like him,” Klaus said, “but I haven’t memorized his poems. Read the other one. Maybe that will help.”
Violet nodded, and read aloud:
“At the pink hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a pony throbbing party…”
The voice of the eldest Baudelaire trailed off, and she looked at her brother in confusion. “That’s all,” she said. “The poem stops there.”
Klaus frowned. “There’s nothing else in the telegram?”
“Only a few letters at the very bottom,” she said. “‘CC: J.S.’ What does that mean?”
A Series of Unfortunate Events Collection: Books 1-13 with Bonus Material Page 128