The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events) (8 page)

Thinking
about something is like picking up a stone when taking a walk, either while skipping rocks on the beach, for example, or looking for a way to shatter the glass doors of a museum. When you think about something, it adds a bit of weight to your walk, and as you think about more and more things you are liable to feel heavier and heavier, until you are so burdened you cannot take any further steps, and can only sit and stare at the gentle movements of the ocean waves or security guards, thinking too hard about too many things to do anything else. As the sun set, casting long shadows on the coastal shelf, the Baudelaire orphans felt so heavy from their thoughts they could scarcely move. They thought about the island, and the terrible storm that had brought them there, and the boat that had taken them through the storm, and their own treachery at the Hotel Denouement that had led them to escape in the boat with Count Olaf, who had stopped calling out to the Baudelaires and was now snoring loudly in the bird cage. They thought about the colony, and the cloud the islanders had put them under, and the peer pressure that had led the islanders to decide to abandon them, and the facilitator who started the peer pressure, and the secret apple core of the facilitator that seemed no different than the secret items that had gotten the Baudelaires in trouble in the first place. They thought about Kit Snicket, and the storm that had left her unconscious on top of the strange library raft, and their friends the Quagmire triplets, who may also have been caught in the same stormy sea, and Captain Widdershins's submarine that lay under the sea, and the mysterious schism that lay under everything like an enormous question mark. And the Baudelaires thought, as they did every time they saw the sky grow dark, of their parents. If you've ever lost someone, then you know that sometimes when you think of them you try to imagine where they might be, and the Baudelaires thought of how far away their mother and father seemed, while all the wickedness in the world felt so close, locked in a cage just a few feet from where the children sat. Violet thought, and Klaus thought, and Sunny thought, and as the afternoon drew to evening they felt so burdened by their thoughts that they felt they could scarcely hold another thought, and yet as the last rays of the sun disappeared on the horizon they found something else to think about, for in the darkness they heard a familiar voice, and they had to think of what to do.

"Where am I?" asked Kit Snicket, and the children heard her body rustle on the top layer of books over the snoring.

"Kit!" Violet said, standing up quickly. "You're awake!"

"It's the Baudelaires," Klaus said.

"Baudelaires?" Kit repeated faintly. "Is it really you?"

"Anais," Sunny said, which meant "In the flesh."

"Where are we?" Kit said. The Baudelaires were silent for a moment, and realized for the first time that they did not even know the name of the place where they were. "We're on a coastal shelf," Violet said finally, although she decided not to add that they had been abandoned there.

"There's an island nearby," Klaus said. The middle Baudelaire did not explain that they were not welcome to set foot on it.

"Safe," Sunny said, but she did not mention that Decision Day was approaching, and that soon the entire area would be flooded with seawater. Without discussing the matter, the Baudelaires decided not to tell Kit the whole story, not yet.

"Of course," Kit murmured. "I should have known I'd be here. Eventually, everything washes up on these shores."

"Have you been here before?" Violet asked.

"No," Kit said, "but I've heard about this place. My associates have told me stories of its mechanical wonders, its enormous library, and the gourmet meals the islanders prepare. Why, the day before I met you, Baudelaires, I shared Turkish coffee with an associate who was saying that he'd never had better Oysters Rockefeller than during his time on the island. You must be having a wonderful time here."

"Janiceps," Sunny said, restating an earlier opinion.

"I think this place has changed since your associate was here," said Klaus.

"That's probably true," Kit said thoughtfully. "Thursday did say that the colony had suffered a schism, just as V.F.D. did."

"Another schism?" Violet asked.

"Countless schisms have divided the world over the years," Kit replied in the darkness.

"Do you think the history of V.F.D. is the only story in the world? But let's not talk of the past, Baudelaires. Tell me how you made your way to these shores."

"The same way you did," Violet said. "We were castaways. The only way we could leave the Hotel Denouement was by boat."

"I knew you ran into danger there," Kit said. "We were watching the skies. We saw the smoke and we knew you were signaling us that it wasn't safe to join you. Thank you, Baudelaires. I knew you wouldn't fail us. Tell me, is Dewey with you?"

Kit's words were almost more than the Baudelaires could stand. The smoke she had seen, of course, was from the fire the children had set in the hotel's laundry room, which had quickly spread to the entire building, interrupting Count Olaf's trial and endangering the lives of all the people inside, villains and volunteers alike. And Dewey, I'm sad to remind you, was not with the Baudelaires, but lying dead at the bottom of a pond, still clutching the harpoon that the three siblings had fired into his heart. But Violet, Klaus, and Sunny could not bring themselves to tell Kit the whole story, not now. They could not bear to tell her what had happened to Dewey, and to all the other noble people they had encountered, not yet. Not now, not yet, and perhaps not ever.

"No," Violet said. "Dewey isn't here."

"Count Olaf is with us," Klaus said, "but he's locked up."

"Viper," Sunny added.

"Oh, I'm glad Ink is safe," Kit said, and the Baudelaires thought they could almost hear her smile. "That's my special nickname for the Incredibly Deadly Viper. Ink kept me good company on this raft after we were separated from the others."

"The Quagmires?" Klaus asked. "You found them?"

"Yes," Kit said, and coughed a bit. "But they're not here."

"Maybe they'll wash up here, too," Violet said.

"Maybe," Kit said uncertainly. "And maybe Dewey will join us, too. We need as many associates as we can if we're going to return to the world and make sure that justice is served.

But first, let's find this colony I've heard so much about. I need a shower and a hot meal, and then I want to hear the whole story of what happened to you." She started to lower herself down from the raft, but then stopped with a cry of pain.

"You shouldn't move," Violet said quickly, glad for an excuse to keep Kit on the coastal shelf. "Your foot's been injured."

"Both my feet have been injured," Kit corrected ruefully, lying back down on the raft.

"The telegram device fell on my legs when the submarine was attacked. I need your help, Baudelaires. I need to be someplace safe."

"We'll do everything we can," Klaus said.

"Maybe help is on the way," Kit said. "I can see someone coming."

The Baudelaires turned to look, and in the dark they saw a very tiny, very bright light, skittering toward them from the west. At first the light looked like nothing more than a firefly, darting here and there on the coastal shelf, but gradually the children could see it was a flashlight, around which several figures in white robes huddled, walking carefully among the puddles and debris. The shine of the flashlight reminded Klaus of all of the nights he spent reading under the covers in the Baudelaire mansion, while outside the night made mysterious noises his parents always insisted were nothing more than the wind, even on windless evenings. Some mornings, his father would come into Klaus's room to wake him up and find him asleep, still clutching his flashlight in one hand and his book in the other, and as the flashlight drew closer and closer, the middle Baudelaire could not help but think that it was his father, walking across the coastal shelf to come to his children's aid after all this time.

But of course it was not the Baudelaires' father. The figures arrived at the cube of books, and the children could see the faces of two islanders: Finn, who was holding the flashlight, and Erewhon, who was carrying a large, covered basket.

"Good evening, Baudelaires," Finn said. In the dim light of the flashlight she looked even younger than she was.

"We brought you some supper," Erewhon said, and held out the basket to the children.

"We were concerned that you might be quite hungry out here."

"We are," Violet admitted. The Baudelaires, of course, wished that the islanders had expressed their concern in front of Ishmael and the others, when the colony was deciding to abandon the children on the coastal shelf, but as Finn opened the basket and the children smelled the island's customary dinner of onion soup, the children did not want to look a gift horse in the mouth, a phrase which here means "turn down an offer of a hot meal, no matter how disappointed they were in the person who was offering it."

"Is there enough for our friend?" Klaus asked. "She's regained consciousness."

"I'm glad to hear it," Finn said. "There's enough food for everyone."

"As long as you keep the secret of our coming here," Erewhon said. "Ishmael might not think it was proper."

"I'm surprised he doesn't forbid the use of flashlights," Violet said, as Finn handed her a coconut shell full of steaming soup.

"Ishmael doesn't forbid anything," Finn said. "He'd never force me to throw this flashlight away. However, he did suggest that I let the sheep take it to the arboretum. Instead I slipped it into my robe, as a secret, and Madame Nordoff has been secretly supplying me with batteries in exchange for my secretly teaching her how to yodel, which Ishmael says might frighten the other islanders."

"And Mrs. Caliban secretly slipped me this picnic basket," Erewhon said, "in exchange for my secretly teaching her the backstroke, which Ishmael says is not the customary way to swim."

"Mrs. Caliban?" said Kit, in the darkness. "Miranda Caliban is here?"

"Yes," Finn said. "Do you know her?"

"I know her husband," Kit said. "He and I stood together in a time of great struggle, and we're still very good friends."

"Your friend must be a little confused after her difficult journey," Erewhon said to the Baudelaires, standing on tiptoes so she could hand Kit some soup. "Mrs. Caliban's husband perished many years ago in the storm that brought her here."

"That's impossible," Kit said, reaching down to take the bowl from the young girl. "I just had Turkish coffee with him."

"Mrs. Caliban is not the sort to keep secrets," Finn said. "That's why she lives on the island. It's a safe place, far from the treachery of the world."

"Enigmorama," Sunny said, putting her coconut shell of soup on the ground so she could share it with the Incredibly Deadly Viper.

"My sister means that it seems this island has plenty of secrets," Klaus said, thinking wistfully of his commonplace book and all the secrets its pages contained.

"I'm afraid we have one more secret to discuss," Erewhon said. "Turn the flashlight off, Finn. We don't want to be seen from the island."

Finn nodded, and turned the flashlight off. The Baudelaires had one last glimpse of each other before the darkness engulfed them, and for a moment everyone stood in silence, as if afraid to speak.

Many, many years ago, when even the great-great-grandparents of the oldest person you know were not even day-old infants, and when the city where the Baudelaires were born was nothing more than a handful of dirt huts, and the Hotel Denouement nothing but an architectural sketch, and the faraway island had a name, and was not considered very faraway at all, there was a group of people known as the Cimmerians. They were a nomadic people, which meant that they traveled constantly, and they often traveled at night, when the sun would not give them sunburn and when the coastal shelves in the area in which they lived were not flooded with water. Because they traveled in shadows, few people ever got a good look at the Cimmerians, and they were considered sneaky and mysterious people, and to this day things done in the dark tend to have a somewhat sinister reputation. A man digging a hole in his backyard during the afternoon, for instance, looks like a gardener, but a man digging a hole at night looks like he's burying some terrible secret, and a woman who gazes out of her window in the daytime appears to be enjoying the view, but looks more like a spy if she waits until nightfall. The nighttime digger may actually be planting a tree to surprise his niece while the niece giggles at him from the window, and the morning window watcher may actually be planning to blackmail the so-called gardener as he buries the evidence of his vicious crimes, but thanks to the Cimmerians, the darkness makes even the most innocent of activities seem suspicious, and so in the darkness of the coastal shelf, the Baudelaires suspected that the question Finn asked was a sinister one, even though it could have been something one of their teachers might have asked in the classroom.

"Do you know the meaning of the word mutiny'?" she asked, in a calm, quiet voice.

Violet and Sunny knew that Klaus would answer, although they were pretty sure themselves what the word meant. "A mutiny is when a group of people take action against a leader."

"Yes," Finn said. "Professor Fletcher taught me the word."

"We are here to tell you that a mutiny will take place at breakfast," said Erewhon. "More and more colonists are getting sick and tired of the way things are going on the island, and Ishmael is the root of the trouble."

"Tuber?" Sunny asked.

'"Root of the trouble' means 'the cause of the islanders' problems,'" Klaus explained.

"Exactly," Erewhon said, "and when Decision Day arrives we will finally have the opportunity to get rid of him."

"Rid of him?" Violet repeated, the phrase sounding sinister in the dark.

"We're going to force him aboard the outrigger right after breakfast," Erewhon said, "and push him out to sea as the coastal shelf floods."