A Series of Unfortunate Events Box: The Complete Wreck by Lemony Snicket
“But we’re not troublemakers,” Klaus said. “Count Olaf is the troublemaker.”
Mr. Poe took the newspaper from the children and looked at it carefully. “Well, I’m sure the story in The Daily Punctilio will help the authorities finally capture Olaf, and then your relatives will be less skittish.”
“But the story is full of mistakes,” Violet said. “The authorities won’t even know his real name. The newspaper calls him Omar.”
“The story was a disappointment to me, too,” Mr. Poe said. “The journalist said that the paper would put a photograph of me next to the article, with a caption about my promotion. I had my hair cut for it especially. It would have made my wife and sons very proud to see my name in the papers, so I understand why you’re disappointed that the article is about the Quagmire twins, instead of being about you.”
“We don’t care about having our names in the papers,” Klaus said, “and besides, the Quagmires are triplets, not twins.”
“The death of their brother changes their birth identity,” Mr. Poe explained sternly, “but I don’t have time to talk about this. We need to find—”
Another one of his phones rang, and Mr.Poe excused himself again. “Poe here,” he said into the receiver. “No. No. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don’t care. Good-bye.” He hung up the phone and coughed into his white handkerchief before wiping his mouth and turning once more to the children. “Well, that phone call solved all of your problems,” he said simply.
The Baudelaires looked at one another. Had Count Olaf been arrested? Had the Quagmires been saved? Had someone invented a way to go back in time and rescue their parents from the terrible fire? How could all of their problems have been solved with one phone call to a banker?
“Plinn?” Sunny asked.
Mr.Poe smiled. “Have you ever heard the aphorism,” he said, “‘It takes a village to raise a child’?”
The children looked at one another again, a little less hopefully this time. The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen. An aphorism is merely a small group of words arranged in a certain order because they sound good that way, but oftentimes people tend to say them as if they were saying something very mysterious and wise.
“I know it probably sounds mysterious to you,” Mr. Poe continued, “but the aphorism is actually very wise. ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ means that the responsibility for taking care of youngsters belongs to everyone in the community.”
“I think I read something about this aphorism in a book about the Mbuti pygmies,” Klaus said. “Are you sending us to live in Africa?”
“Don’t be silly,” Mr. Poe said, as if the millions of people who lived in Africa were all ridiculous. “That was the city government on the telephone. A number of villages just outside the city have signed up for a new guardian program based on the aphorism ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ Orphans are sent to these villages, and everyone who lives there raises them together. Normally, I approve of more traditional family structures, but this is really quite convenient, and your parents’ will instructs that you be raised in the most convenient way possible.”
“Do you mean that the entire town would be in charge of us?” Violet asked. “That’s a lot of people.”
“Well, I imagine they would take turns,” Mr. Poe said, stroking his chin. “It’s not as if you would be tucked into bed by three thousand people at once.”
“Snoita!” Sunny shrieked. She meant something like “I prefer to be tucked into bed by my siblings, not by strangers!” but Mr. Poe was busy looking through his papers on his desk and didn’t answer her.
“Apparently I was mailed a brochure about this program several weeks ago,” he said, “but I guess it got lost somewhere on my desk. Oh, here it is. Take a look for yourselves.”
Mr. Poe reached across his desk to hand them a colorful brochure, and the Baudelaire orphans took a look for themselves. On the front was the aphorism ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ written in flowery letters, and inside the brochure were photographs of children with such huge smiles that the Baudelaires’ mouths ached just to look at them. A few paragraphs explained that 99 percent of the orphans participating in this program were overjoyed to have whole villages taking care of them, and that all the towns listed on the back page were eager to serve as guardians for any interested children who had lost their parents. The three Baudelaires looked at the grinning photographs and read the flowery aphorism and felt a little flutter in their stomachs. They felt more than a little nervous about having a whole town for a guardian. It was strange enough when they were in the care of various relatives. How strange would it feel if hundreds of people were trying to act as substitute Baudelaires?
“Do you think we would be safe from Count Olaf,” Violet asked hesitantly, “if we lived with an entire village?”
“I should think so,” Mr. Poe said, and coughed into his handkerchief. “With a whole village looking after you, you’ll probably be the safest you’ve ever been. Plus, thanks to the story in The Daily Punctilio, I’m sure Omar will be captured in no time.”
“Olaf,” Klaus corrected.
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Poe said. “I meant to say ‘Omar.’ Now, what villages are listed in the brochure? You children can choose your new hometown, if you like.”
Klaus turned the brochure over and read from the list of towns. “Paltryville,” he said. “That’s where the Lucky Smells Lumbermill was. We had a terrible time there.”
“Calten!” Sunny cried, which meant something like “I wouldn’t return there for all the tea in China!”
“The next village on the list is Tedia,” Klaus said. “That name is familiar to me.”
“That’s near where Uncle Monty lived,” Violet said. “Let’s not live there—it’ll make us miss Uncle Monty even more than we already do.”
Klaus nodded in agreement. “Besides,” he said, “the town is near Lousy Lane, so it probably smells like horseradish. Here’s a village I’ve never heard of—Ophelia.”
“No, no,” Mr. Poe said. “I won’t have you living in the same town as the Ophelia Bank. It’s one of my least favorite banks, and I don’t want to have to walk by it when I visit you.”
“Zounce!” Sunny said, which meant “That’s ridiculous!” but Klaus nudged her with his elbow and pointed to the next village listed on the brochure, and Sunny quickly changed her tune, a phrase which here means “immediately said ‘Gounce!’ instead, which meant something along the lines of ‘Let’s live there!’”
“Gounce indeed,” Klaus agreed, and showed Violet what he and Sunny were talking about. Violet gasped, and the three siblings looked at one another and felt a little flutter in their stomachs again. But this was less of a nervous flutter and more of a hopeful one—a hope that maybe Mr. Poe’s last phone call really had solved all their problems, and that maybe what they read right here in the brochure would turn out to be more important than what they didn’t read in the newspaper. For at the bottom of the list of villages, below Paltryville and Tedia and Ophelia, was the most important thing they had read all morning. Printed in the flowery script, on the back page of the brochure Mr. Poe had given them, were the letters V.F.D.
CHAPTER
Two
When you are traveling by bus, it is always difficult to decide whether you should sit in a seat by the window, a seat on the aisle, or a seat in the middle. If you take an aisle seat, you have the advantage of being able to stretch your legs whenever you like, but you have the disadvantage of people walking by you, and they can accidentally step on your toes or spill something on your clothing. If you take a window seat, you have the advantage of getting a clear view of the scenery, but you have the disadvantage of watching insects die as they hit the glass. If you take a middle seat, you have neither of these advantages, and you have the added disadvantage of people leaning all over you when they fall asleep. You can see
The Baudelaire orphans, however, did not have the money to hire a limousine, and it would have taken them several weeks to reach V.F.D. by mule, so they were traveling to their new home by bus. The children had thought that it might take a lot of effort to convince Mr. Poe to choose V.F.D. as their new village guardian, but right when they saw the three initials on the brochure, one of Mr. Poe’s telephones rang, and by the time he was off the phone he was too busy to argue. All he had time to do was make arrangements with the city government and take them to the bus station. As he saw them off—a phrase which here means “put the Baudelaires on a bus, rather than doing the polite thing and taking them to their new home personally”—he instructed them to report to the Town Hall of V.F.D., and made them promise not to do anything that would ruin his bank’s reputation. Before they knew it, Violet was sitting in an aisle seat, brushing dirt off her coat and rubbing her sore toes, and Klaus was sitting in a window seat gazing at the scenery through a layer of dead bugs. Sunny sat between them, gnawing on the armrest.
“No lean!” she said sternly, and her brother smiled.
“Don’t worry, Sunny,” he said. “We’ll make sure not to lean on you if we fall asleep. We don’t have much time for napping, anyway—we should be at V.F.D. any minute now.”
“What do you think it could stand for?” Violet asked. “Neither the brochure nor the map at the bus station showed anything more than the three initials.”
“I don’t know,” Klaus said. “Do you think we should have told Mr. Poe about the V.F.D. secret? Maybe he could have helped us.”
“I doubt it,” Violet said. “He hasn’t been very helpful before. I wish the Quagmires were here. I bet they could help us.”
“I wish the Quagmires were here even if they couldn’t help us,” Klaus said, and his sisters nodded in agreement. No Baudelaire had to say anything more about how worried they were about the triplets, and they sat in silence for the rest of the ride, hoping that their arrival at V.F.D. would bring them closer to saving their friends.
“V.F.D.!” the bus driver finally called out. “Next stop V.F.D.! If you look out the window, you can see the town coming up, folks!”
“What does it look like?” Violet asked Klaus.
Klaus peered out the window past the layer of dead bugs. “Flat,” he said.
Violet and Sunny leaned over to look and saw that their brother had spoken the truth. The countryside looked as if someone had drawn the line of the horizon—the word “horizon” here means “the boundary where the sky ends and the world begins”—and then forgot to draw in anything else. The land stretched out as far as the eye could see, but there was nothing for the eye to look at but flat, dry land and the occasional sheet of newspaper stirred up by the passing of the bus.
“I don’t see any town at all,” Klaus said. “Do you suppose it’s underground?”
“Novedri!” Sunny said, which meant “Living underground would be no fun at all!”
“Maybe that’s the town over there,” Violet said, squinting to try and see as far as she could. “You see? Way out by the horizon line, there’s a hazy black blur. It looks like smoke, but maybe it’s just some buildings seen from far away.”
“I can’t see it,” Klaus said. “That smushed moth is blocking it, I think. But a hazy blur could just be fata morgana.”
“Fata?” Sunny asked.
“Fata morgana is when your eyes play tricks on you, particularly in hot weather,” Klaus explained. “It’s caused by the distortion of light through alternate layers of hot and cool air. It’s also called a mirage, but I like the name ‘fata morgana’ better.”
“Me too,” Violet agreed, “but let’s hope it’s not a mirage or fata morgana. Let’s hope it’s V.F.D.”
“V.F.D.!” the bus driver called, as the bus came to a stop. “V.F.D.! Everyone off for V.F.D.!”
The Baudelaires stood up, gathered their belongings, and walked down the aisle, but when they reached the open door of the bus they stopped and stared doubtfully out at the flat and empty landscape.
“Is this really the stop for V.F.D.?” Violet asked the driver. “I thought V.F.D. was a town.”
“It is,” the driver replied. “Just walk toward that hazy black blur out there on the horizon. I know it looks like—well, I can’t remember the phrase for when your eyes play tricks on you—but it’s really the town.”
“Couldn’t you take us a little closer?” Violet asked shyly. “We have a baby with us, and it looks like a long way to walk.”
“I wish I could help you,” the bus driver said kindly, looking down at Sunny, “but the Council of Elders has very strict rules. I have to let off all passengers for V.F.D. right here; otherwise I could be severely punished.”
“Who are the Council of Elders?” Klaus asked.
“Hey!” a voice called from the back of the bus. “Tell those kids to hurry up and get off the bus! The open door is letting bugs in!”
“Off you go, kids,” the bus driver said, and the Baudelaires stepped out of the bus onto the flat land of V.F.D. The doors shut, and with a little wave the bus driver drove off and left the children alone on the empty landscape. The siblings watched the bus get smaller and smaller as it drove away, and then turned toward the hazy black blur of their new home.
“Well, now I can see it,” Klaus said, squinting behind his glasses, “but I can’t believe it. It’s going to take the rest of the afternoon to walk all that way.”
“Then we’d better get started,” Violet said, hoisting Sunny up on top of her suitcase. “This piece of luggage has wheels,” she said to her sister, “so you can sit on top of it and I can pull you along.”
“Sanks!” Sunny said, which meant “That’s very considerate of you!” and the Baudelaires began their long walk toward the hazy black blur on the horizon. After even the first few steps, the disadvantages of the bus ride seemed like small potatoes. “Small potatoes” is a phrase which has nothing to do with root vegetables that happen to be tiny in size. Instead, it refers to the change in one’s feelings for something when it is compared with something else. If you were walking in the rain, for instance, you might be worried about getting wet, but if you turned the corner and saw a pack of vicious dogs, getting wet would suddenly become small potatoes next to getting chased down an alley and barked at, or possibly eaten. As the Baudelaires began their long journey toward V.F.D., dead bugs, stepped-on toes, and the possibility of someone leaning on them became small potatoes next to the far more unpleasant things they were encountering. Without anything else on the flat land to blow up against, the wind concentrated its efforts on Violet, a phrase which here means that before long her hair was so wildly tangled that it looked like it had never seen a comb. Because Klaus was standing behind Violet, the wind didn’t blow on him much, but without anything else in the empty landscape to cling to, the dust on the ground concentrated its efforts on the middle Baudelaire, and soon he was dusty from head to toe, as if it had been years since he’d had a shower. Perched on top of Violet’s luggage, Sunny was out of the way of the dust, but without anything else in the desolate terrain to shine on, the sun concentrated its efforts on her, which meant that she was soon as sunburned as a baby who had spent six months at the seashore, instead of a few hours on top of a suitcase.
But even as they approached the town, V.F.D. still looked as hazy as it did from far away. As the children drew closer and closer to their new home, they could see a number of buildings of different heights and widths, separated by streets both narrow and wide, and the Baudelaires could even see the tall skinny shapes of lampposts and flagpoles stretching out toward the sky. But everything they saw—from the tip of the highest building to the curve of the narrowest street—was pitch black, and seemed to be shaking slightly, as if the entire town were painted on a piece of cloth that was trembling in the wind. The buildings were trembling, a
The town was covered in crows. Nearly every inch of nearly every object had a large black bird roosting on it and casting a suspicious eye on the children as they stood at the very edge of the village. There were crows sitting on the roofs of all the buildings, perching on the windowsills, and squatting on the steps and on the sidewalks. Crows were covering all of the trees, from the very top branches to the roots poking out of the crow-covered ground, and were gathered in large groups on the streets for crow conversations. Crows were covering the lampposts and flagpoles, and there were crows lying down in the gutters and resting between fence posts. There were even six crows crowded together on the sign that read “Town Hall,” with an arrow leading down a crow-covered street. The crows weren’t squawking or cawing, which is what crows often do, or playing the trumpet, which crows practically never do, but the town was far from silent. The air was filled with the sounds the crows made as they moved around. Sometimes one crow would fly from one perch to another, as if it had suddenly become bored roosting on the mailbox and thought it might be more fun to perch on the doorknob of a building. Occasionally, several crows would flutter their wings, as if they were stiff from sitting together on a bench and wanted to stretch a little bit. And almost constantly, the crows would shift in their places, trying to make themselves as comfortable as they could in such cramped quarters. All this motion explained why the town had looked so shivery in the distance, but it certainly didn’t make the Baudelaires feel any better, and they stood together in silence for quite some time, trying to find the courage to walk among all the fluttering black birds.