The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events) (7 page)

"I've always wanted to meet a herpetologist," said Friday, who of course did not know the whole story of Monty and his murder. "The island doesn't have an expert on snakes. There's so much of the world I'm missing by living here."

"The world is a wicked place," Count Olaf said quietly, and now it was the Baudelaires who shuddered. Even with the hot sun beating down on them, and the weight of the Incredibly Deadly Viper in their laps, the children felt a chill at the villain's words, and everyone was silent, watching the islanders approach along with the sheep, who had Ishmael in tow, a phrase which here means "dragged along on the sleigh behind them, sitting on his white chair as if he were a king, with his feet still covered in hunks of clay and his woolly beard billowing in the wind." As the colonists and sheep walked closer and closer, the children could see that the sheep had something else in tow, too, which sat on the sleigh behind the facilitator's chair. It was the large, ornate bird cage that had been found after the previous storm, shining in the sunlight like a small fire.

"Count Olaf," Ishmael said in a booming voice, as soon as his chair arrived. He stared down at the villain scornfully but also carefully, as if memorizing his face.

"Ishmael," Count Olaf said, in his disguised tone.

"Call me Ish," Ishmael said.

"Call me Kit Snicket," Olaf said.

"I'm not going to call you anything," Ishmael growled. "Your reign of treachery is over, Olaf." In one swift motion, the facilitator leaned down and snatched the seaweed wig off Olaf's head. "I've been told of your schemes and disguises, and we won't stand for it. You'll be locked up immediately."

Jonah and Sadie lifted the bird cage from the sleigh, set it on the ground, and pushed open its door, glaring meaningfully at Count Olaf. With a nod from Ishmael, Weyden and Ms.

Marlow stepped toward the villain, wrestled the harpoon gun from his hands, and dragged him toward the bird cage, as the Baudelaire orphans looked at one another, unsure exactly how they felt. On one hand, it seemed as if the children had been waiting their entire lives for someone to utter precisely the words Ishmael had uttered, and they were eager for Olaf to finally be punished for his dreadful acts, from his recent kidnapping of Justice Strauss to the time, long ago, when he had thrown Sunny into a bird cage and dangled her from his tower window. But they weren't convinced that Count Olaf should be locked in a cage himself, even a cage as large as the one that had washed ashore. It wasn't clear to the children If what was happening now, on the coastal shelf, was the arrival of justice at last, or just another unfortunate event. Throughout their history the Baudelaires had always hoped that Count Olaf would end up in the hands of the authorities, and would be punished by the High Court after a trial. But members of the High Court had turned out to be as corrupt and sinister as Olaf himself, and the authorities were far, far away from the island, and looking for the Baudelaires in order to charge them with arson and murder. It was difficult to say, so far from the world, how the three children felt about Count Olaf being dragged into a bird cage, but as was so often the case, it did not matter how the three children felt about it, because it happened anyway. Wey-den and Ms. Marlow dragged the struggling villain to the door of the bird cage and forced him to duck inside. He snarled, and wrapped his arms around his false pregnancy, and rested his head against his knees, and hunched his back, and the Bellamy siblings shut the door of the cage and latched it securely. The villain fit in the cage, but just barely, and you had to look closely to see that the mess of limbs and hair and orange and yellow cloth was a person at all. "This isn't fair," Olaf said. His voice was muffled from inside the cage, although the children noticed that he was still using a high-pitched tone, as if he could not help pretending to be Kit Snicket. "I'm an innocent pregnant woman, and these children are the real villains. You haven't heard the whole story."

"It depends on how you look at it," Ishmael said firmly. "Friday told me you were unkind, and that's all we need to hear. And this seaweed wig is all we need to see!"

"Ishmael's right," Mrs. Caliban said firmly. "You've been nothing but treacherous, Olaf, and the Baudelaires have been nothing but good!"

"'Nothing but good,'" Olaf repeated. "Ha! Why don't you look in the baby's pockets if you think she's so good. She's hiding a kitchen implement that one of your precious islanders gave her!"

Ishmael peered down at the youngest Baudelaire from his vantage point, a phrase which here means "chair perched on a sleigh dragged by sheep." "Is that true, Sunny?" he asked.

"Are you keeping a secret from us?"

Sunny looked up at the facilitator, and then at the bird cage, remembering how uncomfortable was to be locked up. "Yes," she admitted, and took the whisk out of her pocket as the islanders gasped.

"Who gave this to you?" Ishmael demanded.

"Nobody gave it to her," Klaus said quickly, not daring to look at Friday. "It's just something that survived the storm along with us." He reached into his pocket and brought out his commonplace book. "Each of us has something, Ishmael. I have this notebook, and my sister has a ribbon she likes to use to tie up her hair."

There was another gasp from the assembled colonists, and Violet took the ribbon out of her pocket.

"We didn't mean any harm," she said.

"You were told of the island's customs," the facilitator said sternly, "and you chose to ignore them. We were very kind to you, giving you food and clothing and shelter, and even letting you keep your glasses. And in turn, you were unkind to us."

"They made a mistake," Friday said, swiftly gathering the forbidden items from the Baudelaires and giving Sunny a brief and grateful look. "We'll let the sheep take these things away, and forget all about it."

"That seems fair," said Sherman.

"I agree," Professor Fletcher said.

"Me too," Omeros said, who had picked up the harpoon gun.

Ishmael frowned, but as more and more islanders expressed their agreement, he succumbed to peer pressure and gave the orphans a small smile. "I suppose they can stay," he said, "if they don't rock the boat any further." He sighed, and then suddenly frowned down at a puddle. During the conversation, the Incredibly Deadly Viper had decided to take a brief swim, and was now staring up at the facilitator from a pool of seawater.

"What is that?" Mr. Pitcairn asked, with a frightened gasp.

"It's a friendly snake we found," Friday said.

"Who told you it was friendly?" demanded Ferdinand.

Friday shared a quick dismayed look with the Baudelaires. After all that had happened, they knew there was no hope of convincing Ishmael that keeping the snake was a good idea.

"Nobody told me," Friday said quietly. "It just seems friendly."

"It looks incredibly deadly," Erewhon said with a frown. "I say we dump it in the arboretum."

"We don't want a snake slithering around the arboretum," Ishmael said, stroking his beard quickly. "It might hurt the sheep. I won't force you, but I think we should abandon it here with Count Olaf. Come along now, it's almost lunchtime. Baudelaires, please push that cube of books to the arboretum, and—"

"Our friend shouldn't be moved," Violet interrupted, with a gesture to Kit's unconscious figure. "We need to help her."

"I didn't realize there was a castaway up there," Mr. Pitcairn said, peering at the bare foot that was still hanging over the side of the cube. "Look, she has the same tattoo as the villain!"

"She's my girlfriend," said Olaf from the bird cage. "You should either punish us both or set us both free."

"She's not your girlfriend!" Klaus cried. "She's our friend, and she's in trouble!"

"It seems that from the moment you joined us, the island is threatened with secrecy and treachery," Ishmael said, with a weary sigh. "We've never had to punish anyone here before you arrived, and now there's another suspicious person lurking around the island."

"Dreyfuss?" Sunny said, which meant "What precisely are you accusing us of?" but the facilitator kept talking as if she had not said a word.

"I won't force you," Ishmael said, "but if you want to be a part of the safe place we've constructed, I think you should abandon this Kit Snicket person, too, even though I've never heard of her."

"We won't abandon her," Violet said. "She needs our help."

"As I said, I won't force you," Ishmael said, with one last tug on his beard. "Good-bye, Baudelaires. You can stay here on the coastal shelf with your friend and your books, if those things are so important to you."

"But what will happen to them?" asked Willa. "Decision Day is approaching, and the coastal shelf will flood with water."

"That's their problem," Ishmael said, and gave the islanders an imperious—the word

"imperious," as you probably know, means "mighty and a bit snobbish"—shrug. As his shoulders raised, a small object rolled out of the sleeve of his robe and landed with a small
plop!
in a puddle, narrowly missing the bird cage where Olaf was prisoner. The Baudelaires could not identify the object, but whatever it was, it was enough to make Ishmael hurriedly clap his hands to distract anyone who might be wondering about it.

"Let's go!" he cried, and the sheep began to drag him back toward his tent. A few islanders gave the Baudelaires apologetic looks, as if they disagreed with Ishmael's suggestions but did not dare to resist the peer pressure of their fellow colonists. Professor Fletcher and Omeros, who had secrets of their own, looked particularly regretful, and Friday looked as if she might cry. She even started to say something to the Baudelaires, but Mrs. Caliban stepped forward and put her arm firmly around the girl's shoulders, and she merely gave the siblings a sad wave and walked away with her mother. The Baudelaires were too stunned for a moment to say anything. Contrary to expectations, Count Olaf had not fooled the inhabitants of this place so far from the world, and had instead been captured and punished. But still the Baudelaires were not safe, and certainly not happy to find themselves abandoned on the coastal shelf like so much detritus.

"This isn't fair," Klaus said finally, but he said it so quietly that the departing islanders probably did not hear. Only his sisters heard him, and the snake the Baudelaires thought they would never see again, and of course Count Olaf, who was huddled in the large, ornate bird cage like an imprisoned beast, and who was the only person to answer him.

"Life isn't fair," he said, in his undisguised voice, and for once the Baudelaire orphans agreed with every word the man said.

The
predicament of the Baudelaire orphans as they sat abandoned on the coastal shelf, with Kit Snicket unconscious at the top of the cube of books above them, Count Olaf locked in a cage alongside them, and the Incredibly Deadly Viper curled at their feet, is an excellent opportunity to use the phrase "under a cloud." The three children were certainly under a cloud that afternoon, and not just because one lone mass of condensed water vapor, which Klaus was able to identify as being of the cumulus variety, was hanging over them in the sky like another castaway from the previous night's storm. The expression "under a cloud" refers to people who are out of favor in a particular community, the way most classrooms have at least one child who is quite unpopular, or most secret organizations have at least one rhetorical analyst who is under suspicion. The island's only community had certainly placed Violet, Klaus, and Sunny under a cloud, and even in the blazing afternoon sun the children felt the chill of the colony's suspicion and disapproval.

"I can't believe it," Violet said. "I can't believe we've been abandoned."

"We thought we could cast away everything that happened to us before we arrived here,"

Klaus said, "but this place is no safer than anywhere else we've been."

"But what to do?" Sunny asked.

Violet looked around the coastal shelf. "I suppose we can catch fish and harvest seaweed to eat," she said. "Our meals won't be much different from those on the island."

"If fire," Sunny said thoughtfully, "then saltbake carp."

"We can't live here," Klaus pointed out. "Decision Day is approaching, and the coastal shelf will be underwater. We either have to live on the island, or figure out a way to get back to where we came from."

"We'll never survive a journey at sea without a boat," Violet said, wishing she had her ribbon back so she could tie up her hair.

"Kit did," Sunny pointed out.

"The library must have served as a sort of raft," Klaus said, running his hand along the books, "but she couldn't have come far on a boat of paper."

"I hope she met up with the Quagmires," Violet said.

"I hope she'll wake up and tell us what happened," Klaus said.

"Do you think she's seriously hurt?" Violet asked.

"There's no way to tell without a complete medical examination," Klaus said, "but except for her ankle, she looks all right. She's probably just exhausted from the storm."

"Worried," Sunny said sadly, wishing there was a dry, warm blanket on the coastal shelf that the Baudelaires might have used to cover their unconscious friend.

"We can't just worry about Kit," Klaus said. "We need to worry about ourselves."

"We have to think of a plan," Violet said wearily, and all three Baudelaires sighed. Even the Incredibly Deadly Viper seemed to sigh, and laid its head sympathetically on Sunny's foot. The Baudelaires stood on the coastal shelf and thought of all their previous predicaments, and all the plans they'd thought up to make themselves safe, only to end up in the midst of another unfortunate event. The cloud they were under seemed to get bigger and darker, and the children might have sat there for quite some time had not the silence been broken by the voice of the man who was locked in a bird cage.

"I have a plan," Count Olaf said. "Let me out and I'll tell you what it is."

Although Olaf was no longer using his high-pitched voice, he still sounded muffled from within the cage, and when the Baudelaires turned to look at him it was as if he were in one of his disguises. The yellow and orange dress he had been wearing covered most of him up, and the children could not see the curve of his false pregnancy or the tattoo of an eye he had on his ankle. Only a few toes and fingers extended from between the bird cage's bars, and if the siblings peered closely they could see the wet curve of his mouth, and one blinking eye staring out from his captivity.

"We're not letting you out," Violet said. "We have enough trouble without you wandering around loose."

"Suit yourself," Olaf said, and his dress rustled as he attempted to shrug. "But you'll drown as surely as I will when the coastal shelf floods. You can't build a boat, because the islanders have scavenged everything from the storm. And you can't live on the island, because the colonists have abandoned you. Even though we're shipwrecked, we're still in the same boat."

"We don't need your help, Olaf," Klaus said. "If it weren't for you, we wouldn't be here in the first place."

"Don't be so sure of that," Count Olaf said, and his mouth curled into a smile. "Everything eventually washes up on these shores, to be judged by that idiot in the robe. Do you think you're the first Baudelaires to find yourselves here?"

"What you mean?" Sunny demanded.

"Let me out," Olaf said, with a muffled chuckle, "and I'll tell you."

The Baudelaires looked at one another doubtfully. "You're trying to trick us," Violet said.

"Of course I'm trying to trick you!" Olaf cried. "That's the way of the world, Baudelaires.

Everybody runs around with their secrets and their schemes, trying to outwit everyone else.

Ishmael outwitted me, and put me in this cage. But I know how to outwit him and all his islander friends. If you let me out, I can be king of Olaf-Land, and you three can be my new henchfolk."

"We don't want to be your henchfolk," Klaus said. "We just want to be safe."

"Nowhere in the world is safe," Count Olaf said.

"Not with you around," Violet agreed.

"I'm no worse than anyone else," Count Olaf said. "Ishmael is just as treacherous as I am."

"Fustianed," Sunny said.

"It's true!" Olaf insisted, although he probably did not understand what Sunny had said.

"Look at me! I'm stuffed into a cage for no good reason! Does that sound familiar, you stupid baby?"

"My sister is not a baby," Violet said firmly, "and Ishmael is not treacherous. He may be misguided, but he's only trying to make the island a safe place."

"Is that so?" Olaf said, and the cage shook as he chuckled. "Why don't you reach into that pool, and see what Ishmael dropped into the puddle?"

The Baudelaires looked at one another. They had almost forgotten about the object that had rolled out of the facilitator's sleeve. The three children stared down into the water, but it was the Incredibly Deadly Viper who wriggled into the murky depths of the puddle and came back with a small object in its mouth, which it deposited into Sunny's waiting hand.

"Takk," Sunny said, thanking the snake by scratching it on the head.

"What is it?" Violet said, leaning in to look at what the viper had retrieved.

"It's an apple core," Klaus said, and his sisters saw that it was so. Sunny was holding the core of an apple, which had been so thoroughly nibbled that scarcely anything remained.

"You see?" Olaf asked. "While the other islanders have to do all the work, Ishmael sneaks off to the arboretum on his perfectly healthy feet and eats all the apples for himself! Your beloved facilitator not only has clay on his feet, he has feet of clay!"

The bird cage shook with laughter, and the Baudelaire orphans looked first at the apple core and then at one another. "Feet of clay" is an expression which refers to a person who appears to be honest and true, but who turns out to have a hidden weakness or a treacherous secret. If someone turns out to have feet of clay, your opinion of them may topple, just as a statue will topple if its base turns out to be badly constructed. The Baudelaires had thought Ishmael was wrong to abandon them on the coastal shelf, of course, but they believed he had done it to keep the other islanders out of harm's way, just as Mrs. Caliban had not wanted Friday to upset herself by learning to read, and although they did not agree with much of the facilitator's philosophy, they at least respected the fact that he was trying to do the same thing the Baudelaires had been trying to do since that terrible day on the beach when they had first become orphans: to find or build a safe place to call home. But now, looking at the apple core, they realized what Count Olaf said was true. Ishmael had
feet
of clay. He was lying about his injuries, and he was selfish about the apples in the arboretum, and he was treacherous in pressuring everyone else on the island to do all the work.
Gazing
at the treacherous teeth marks the facilitator had left behind, they remembered his claim that he predicted the weather by magic, and the strange look in his eye when he insisted that the island had no library, and the Baudelaires wondered what other secrets the bearded facilitator was hiding. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny sank to a mound of damp sand, as if they had feet of clay themselves, and leaned against the cube of books, wondering how they could have traveled so far from the world only to find the same dishonesty and treachery they always had.

"What is your plan?" Violet asked Count Olaf, after a long silence.

"Let me out of this cage," Olaf said, "and I'll tell you."

"Tell us first," Klaus said, "and perhaps we'll let you out."

"Let me out first," Olaf insisted.

"Tell us first," Sunny insisted, just as firmly.

"I can argue with you all day," the villain growled. "Let me out, I tell you, or I'll take my plan to my grave!"

"We can think of a plan without you," Violet said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. "We've managed to escape plenty of difficult situations without your help."

"I have the only weapon that can threaten Ishmael and his supporters," Count Olaf said.

"The harpoon gun?" Klaus said. "Omeros took that away."

"Not the harpoon gun, you scholarly moron," Count Olaf said contemptuously, a word which here means "while trying to scratch his nose within the confines of the bird cage." "I'm talking about the Medusoid Mycelium!"

"Fungus!" Sunny cried. Her siblings gasped, and even the Incredibly Deadly Viper looked astonished in its reptilian way as the villain told them what you may have already guessed.

"I'm not really pregnant," he confessed with a caged grin. "The diving helmet containing the spores of the Medusoid Mycelium is hidden in this dress I'm wearing. If you let me out, I can threaten the entire colony with these deadly mushrooms. All those robed fools will be my slaves!"

"What if they refuse?" Violet asked.

"Then I'll smash the helmet open," Olaf crowed, "and this whole island will be destroyed."

"But we'll be destroyed, too," Klaus said. "The spores will infect us, the same as everyone else."

"Yomhashoah," Sunny said, which meant "Never again." The youngest Baudelaire had already been infected by the Medusoid Mycelium not long ago, and the children did not like to think about what would have happened if they hadn't found some wasabi to dilute the poison.

"We'll escape on the outrigger, you fool," Olaf said. "The island imbeciles have been building it all year. It's perfect for leaving this place behind and heading back to where the action is."

"Maybe they'll just let us leave," Violet said. "Friday said that anyone who wishes to leave the colony can climb aboard the outrigger on Decision Day."

"That little girl hasn't been here long," sneered Count Olaf, "so she still believes Ishmael lets people do whatever they want. Don't be as dumb as she is, orphans."

Klaus wished desperately that his commonplace book was open in his lap, so he could take notes, instead of on the far side of the island, with all of the other forbidden items. "How do you know so much about this place, Olaf?" he demanded. "You've only been here a few days, just like us!"

"Just like you," the villain repeated mockingly, and the cage shook with laughter again.

"Do you think your pathetic history is the only story in the world? Do you think this island has just sat here in the sea, waiting for you to wash up on its shores? Do you think that I just sat in my home in the city, waiting for you miserable orphans to stumble into my path?"

"Boswell," Sunny said. She meant something along the lines of, "Your life doesn't interest me," and the Incredibly Deadly Viper seemed to hiss in agreement.

"I could tell you stories, Baudelaires," Count Olaf said in a muffled wheeze. "I could tell you secrets about people and places that you'd never dream of. I could tell you about arguments and schisms that started before you were born. I could even tell you things about yourselves that you could never imagine. Just open the door of my cage, orphans, and I'll tell you things you could never discover on your own."

The Baudelaires looked at one another and shuddered. Even in broad daylight, trapped in a cage, Count Olaf was still frightening. It was as if there was something villainous that could threaten them even if it were locked up tight, far away from the rest of the world. The three siblings had always been curious children. Violet had been eager to unlock the mysteries of the mechanical world with her inventing mind since the first pair of pliers had been placed in her crib. Klaus had been keen to read everything he got his hands on since the alphabet was first printed on the wall of his bedroom by a visitor to the Baudelaire home. And Sunny was always exploring the universe through her mouth, first by biting anything that interested her, and later by tasting food carefully in order to improve her cooking skills. Curiosity was one of the Baudelaires' most important customs, and one might think that they would be very curious indeed to hear more about the mysteries the villain had mentioned. But there was something very, very sinister about Count Olaf's words. Listening to him talk felt like standing on the edge of a deep well, or walking on a high cliff in the dead of night, or listening to a strange rustling sound outside your bedroom window, knowing that at any moment something dangerous and enormous could happen. It made the Baudelaires think of that terrible question mark on the radar screen of the
Queequeg
—a secret so gigantic and important that it could not fit in their hearts or minds, something that had been hidden their entire lives and might destroy their entire lives once it was revealed. It was not a secret the Baudelaire orphans wanted to hear, from Count Olaf or from anyone else, and although it felt like a secret that could not be avoided, the children wanted to avoid it anyway, and without another word to the man in the cage the three siblings stood up and walked around the cube of books until they were at the far end, where Olaf and his bird cage could not be seen. Then, in silence, the three siblings sat back down, leaned against the strange raft, and stared out at the flat horizon of the sea, trying not to think about what Olaf had said. Occasionally they took sips of coconut cordial from the seashells that hung from their waists, hoping that the strong, strange drink would distract them from the strong, strange thoughts in their heads. All afternoon, until the sun set on the rippling horizon of the sea, the Baudelaire orphans sat and sipped, and wondered if they dared learn what lay at the heart of their sad lives, when every secret, every mystery, and every unfortunate event had been peeled away .