“Aye!” Fiona said. “Aye! Aye! Aye! We’ll take you with us, Fernald! Aye!”
Violet and Klaus looked at one another. They were grateful, of course, that the hook-handed man was letting them save Sunny from the Medusoid Mycelium, but they couldn’t help but wish Fiona had uttered fewer “Aye!” s. Inviting Count Olaf’s henchman to join them on the Queequeg, even if he was Fiona’s long-lost brother, seemed like a decision they might regret.
“I’m so glad,” the hook-handed man said, giving the two siblings a smile they found inscrutable, a word which here means “either pleasant or nasty, but it was hard to tell.” “I have lots of ideas about where we could go after we get off the Carmelita.”
“Well, I’d certainly like to hear them,” Fiona said. “Aye!”
“Perhaps we could discuss such things later,” Violet said. “I don’t think now is a good time to hesitate.”
“Aye!” Fiona said. “She who hesitates is lost!”
“Or he,” Klaus reminded her. “We’ve got to get to the Queequeg right away.”
The hook-handed man opened the door of the brig and looked up and down the corridor. “This will be tricky,” he said, beckoning to the children with one of his hooks. “The only way back to the Queequeg is through the rowing room, but that room is filled with children we’ve kidnapped. Esmé took my tagliatelle grande and is whipping them so they’ll row faster.”
The elder Baudelaires did not bother to point out that the hook-handed man had threatened the Baudelaires with the very same noodle, when the children had worked at Caligari Carnival, along with a few other individuals who had ended up joining Olaf’s troupe. “Is there any way to sneak past them?” Violet asked.
“We’ll see,” Olaf’s henchman said. “Follow me.”
The hook-handed man strode quickly down the empty corridor, with Fiona behind him and the two Baudelaires behind her, carrying the diving helmet in which Sunny still coughed. Violet and Klaus purposefully lagged behind so they might have a word with the mycologist.
“Fiona, are you sure you want to take him with us?” Klaus asked, leaning in close to murmur in her ear. “He’s a very dangerous and volatile man.”
“He’s my brother,” Fiona replied in a fierce whisper, “and I’m your captain. Aye! I’m in charge of the Queequeg, so I get to choose its crew.”
“We know that,” Violet said, “but we just thought you might want to reconsider.”
“Never,” Fiona said firmly. “With my stepfather gone, Fernald may be the only person I have left in my family. Would you ask me to abandon my own sibling?”
As if replying, Sunny coughed desperately from inside her helmet, and the elder Baudelaires knew that Fiona was right. “Of course we wouldn’t,” Klaus said.
“Stop muttering back there,” the hook-handed man ordered, as he led the children around another twist in the corridor. “We’re approaching the rowing room, and we don’t want anyone to hear us.”
The children stopped talking, but as the henchman stopped at the door to the rowing room, and held his hook over an eye on the wall which would open the door, Violet and Klaus could hear that there was no reason to be quiet. Even through the thick metal of the rowing room entrance, they could hear the loud, piercing voice of Carmelita Spats.
“For my third dance,” she was saying, “I will twirl around and around while all of you clap as hard as you can. It is a dance of celebration, in honor of the most adorable tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian in the world!”
“Please, Carmelita,” begged the voice of a child. “We’ve been rowing for hours. Our hands are too sore to clap.”
There was a faint, damp sound, like someone dropping a washcloth, and the elder Baudelaires realized that Esmé was whipping the children with her enormous noodle. “You will participate in Carmelita’s recital,” the treacherous girlfriend announced, “or you will suffer the sting of my tagliatelle grande! Ha ha hoity-toity!”
“It’s not really a sting,” said one brave child. “It’s more of a mild, wet slap.”
“Shut up, cakesniffer!” Carmelita ordered, and the children heard the rustle of her pink tutu as she began to twirl. “Start clapping!” she shrieked, and then the children heard a sound they had never heard before.
There is nothing wicked about having a dreadful singing voice, any more than there is something wicked about having dreadful posture, dreadful cousins, or a dreadful pair of pants. Many noble and pleasant people have any number of these things, and there are even one or two kind individuals who have them all. But if you have something dreadful, and you force it upon someone else, then you have done something quite wicked indeed. If you force your wicked posture on someone, for instance, by leaning so far back that they are forced to carry you down the street, then you have wickedly ruined their afternoon walk, and if you force your dreadful cousins on someone, by dropping them off to play at their house so you can escape from their dreadful presences and spend some time alone, then you have wickedly ruined their entire day, and only a very wicked person indeed would force a dreadful pair of pants on the legs and lower torso of somebody else. But to force your dreadful singing voice on somebody, or even a crowd of people, is one of the world’s most wicked crimes, and at that moment Carmelita Spats opened her mouth and afflicted the crew of the Carmelita with her wickedness. Carmelita’s singing voice was loud, like a siren, and high-pitched, like a squeaky door, and extremely off-pitch, as if all of the notes in the musical scale were pushing up against one another, all trying to sound at the same time. Her singing voice was mushy, as if someone had filled her mouth with mashed potatoes before she sang, and filled with vibrato, which is the Italian term for a voice that wavers as it sings, as if someone were shaking Carmelita very vigorously as she began her song. Even the most dreadful of voices can be tolerated if it is performing a good song, but I’m sad to say that Carmelita Spats had written the song herself and that it was just as dreadful as her singing voice. Violet and Klaus were reminded of Prufrock Preparatory School, where they had first met Carmelita. The vice principal of the school, a tedious man named Nero, forced his students to listen to him play the violin for hours, and they realized this administrator must have had a powerful influence on Carmelita’s creativity.
“C is for ‘cute,’” Carmelita sang,
“A is for ‘adorable’!
R is for ‘ravishing’!
M is for ‘gorgeous’!
E is for ‘excellent’!
L is for ‘lovable’!
I is for ‘I’m the best’!
T is for ‘talented’!
and A is for ‘a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian’!
Now let’s begin my whole wonderful song all over again!”
The song was so irritating, and sung so poorly, that Violet and Klaus almost felt as if they were being tortured after all, particularly as Carmelita kept on singing it, over and over and over.
“I can’t stand her voice,” Violet said. “It reminds me of the cawing of the V.F.D. crows.”
“I can’t stand the lyrics,” Klaus said. “Someone needs to tell her that ‘gorgeous’ does not begin with the letter M.”
“I can’t stand the brat,” the hook-handed man said bitterly. “She’s one of the reasons I’d like to leave. But this sounds like as good a time as any to try to sneak through this room. There are plenty of pillars to hide behind, and if we walk around the very edge, where each oar sticks through the wall into the tentacles of the octopus, we should be able to get to the other door—assuming everybody is watching Carmelita’s tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital.”
“That seems like a very risky plan,” Violet said.
“This is no time to be a coward,” the hook-handed man growled.
“My sister is not a coward,” Klaus said. “She’s just being cautious.”
“There’s no time to be cautious!” Fiona said. “Aye! She who hesitates is lost! Aye! Or he! Let’s go!”
Without another word, the hook-handed man poked the eye on the wall, and the door slid open to reveal the enormous room. As Olaf’s comrade had predicted, the rowing children were all facing Carmelita, who was prancing and singing on one side of the room while Esmé watched with a proud smile on her face and a large noodle in one of her tentacles. With the hook-handed man and Fiona in the lead, the three Baudelaires—Sunny still in the diving helmet, of course—made their careful way around the outside of the room as Carmelita twirled around singing her absurd song. When Carmelita announced what C was for, the children ducked behind one of the pillars. When she told her listeners the meaning of A and R, the children crept past the moving oars, taking care not to trip. When she insisted that “gorgeous” began with M, Count Olaf’s henchman pointed one of his hooks at a far door, and when Carmelita reached E and L, the children ducked behind another pillar, hoping the dim light of the lanterns would not give them away. When Carmelita announced that she was the best, and bragged about being talented, Esmé Squalor frowned and turned around, blinking underneath the fake eyes of her octopus outfit, and the children had to flatten themselves on the floor so the villainous girlfriend would not spot them, and when the tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian found it necessary to remind her audience that she was, in fact, a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian, the two elder Baudelaires found themselves ahead of Fiona and the hook-handed man, hiding behind a pillar that was just a few feet from their destination. They were just about to inch their way toward the door when Carmelita began belting out the last line of her song—“belting out” is a phrase which here means “singing in a particularly loud and particularly irritating voice”—only to stop herself just as she was about to begin her whole wonderful song all over again.
“C is for—cakesniffers!” she shouted. “What are you doing here?”
Violet and Klaus froze, and then saw with relief that the terrible little girl was pointing scornfully at Fiona and the hook-handed man, who were standing awkwardly between two oars.
“How dare you, Hooky?” Esmé said, fingering her large noodle as if she wanted to strike him with it. “You’re interrupting a very in recital by an unspeakably darling little girl!”
“I’m very sorry, your Esméness,” the hook-handed man said, stepping forward to elaborately bow in front of the wicked girlfriend. “I would sooner lose both hands all over again than interrupt Carmelita when she’s dancing.”
“But you did interrupt me, you handicapped cakesniffer!” Carmelita pouted. “Now I have to start the entire recital all over again!”
“No!” cried one of the rowing children. “Anything but that! It’s torture!”
“Speaking of torture,” the hook-handed man said quickly, “I stopped by to see if I could borrow your tagliatelle grande. It’ll help me get the Baudelaires to reveal the location of the sugar bowl.”
Esmé frowned, and fingered the noodle with one tentacle. “I don’t really like to lend things,” she said. “It usually leads to people messing up my stuff.”
“Please, ma’am,” Fiona said. “We’re so close to learning the location of the sugar bowl. Aye! We just need to borrow your noodle, so we can return to the brig.”
“Why are you helping Hooky?” Esmé said. “I thought you were another goody-goody orphan.”
“Certainly not,” the hook-handed man said. “This is my sister, Fiona, and she’s joining the crew of the Carmelita.”
“Fiona isn’t a very in name,” Esmé said. “I think I’ll call her Triangle Eyes. Are you really willing to join us, Triangle Eyes?”
“Aye!” Fiona said. “Those Baudelaires are nothing but trouble.”
“Why are you still talking?” demanded Carmelita. “This is supposed to be my special tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital time!”
“Sorry, darling,” Esmé said. “Hooky and Triangle Eyes, take this noodle and scram!”
The hook-handed man and his sister walked to the center of the room and stood directly in front of Esmé and Carmelita, offering a perfect opportunity for the elder Baudelaires to scram, a rude word which here means “slip out of the room unnoticed and walk down the shadowy hallway Olaf had led them down just a little while earlier.”
“Do you think Fiona will join us?” Violet asked.
“I don’t think so,” Klaus said. “They told Esmé they’d return to the brig, so they’ll have to go back the way we came.”
“You don’t think she’s really joining Olaf’s troupe, do you?” Violet said.
“Of course not,” Klaus said. “That was just to give us an opportunity to get out of the room. Fiona may be volatile, but she’s not that volatile.”
“Of course not,” Violet said, though she didn’t sound very sure.
“Of course not,” Klaus repeated, as another ragged cough came from inside the diving helmet. “Hang on, Sunny,” he called to his sister. “You’ll be cured in no time!” Although he tried to sound as confident as he could, the middle Baudelaire had no way of knowing if his words were true—although, I’m happy to say, they were.
“How are you going to cure Sunny,” Violet said, “without Fiona?”
242
“We’ll have to research it ourselves,” Klaus said firmly.
“We’ll never read her entire mycological library in time to make an antidote,” Violet said.
“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 completely 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.