The Carnivorous Carnival Page 6

  "So Madame Lulu needs a carrot, too, eh?" the hook-handed man said with a laugh.

  "First thing tomorrow morning," Olaf continued, "Madame Lulu will consult her crystal ball again, and tell me where the Baudelaires are."

  Esmé glared at Lulu. "And what sort of gift will you give then, Olaf?"

  "Be reasonable, my dear," Count Olaf said to his girlfriend. "The lions will make Caligari Carnival much more popular, so Madame Lulu can devote her time to fortune-telling and give us the information we need to finally steal the Baudelaire fortune."

  "I hate to criticize," Hugo said hesitantly, "but is there any way we can make the carnival more popular without feeding us to the lions? I must confess that I'm a little nervous about that part."

  "You heard the crowd when I told them about the new attraction," Count Olaf said. "They couldn't wait to see the lions devour you, and all of us need to do our part to give people what they want. Your part is to return to the freaks' caravan until tomorrow. And the rest of us will do our part and start digging the pit."

  "Pit?" one of the white-faced women asked. "What do we need a pit for?"

  "To keep the lions in," Olaf replied, "so they only eat whichever freak jumps down there. Let's dig it over by the roller coaster."

  "Good idea, boss," the bald man said.

  "There are shovels in tool caravan," Lulu said. "I will show you, please."

  "I'm not going to dig a pit," Esmé announced as the others walked away. "I might break a nail. Besides, I need to talk to Count Olaf–alone."

  "Oh, all right," Count Olaf said. "Let's go in the guest caravan where we won't be disturbed."

  Olaf and Esmé walked off in one direction, and Madame Lulu led the henchmen in the other, leaving the three children alone with their coworkers.

  "Well, we'd better go inside," Colette said. "Maybe we can think of a way not to get eaten."

  "Oh, let's not think about those fearsome creatures," Hugo said with a shudder. "Let's play another game of dominoes instead."

  "Chabo, my other head, and I will be along in a moment," Violet said. "We want to finish our hot chocolate."

  "You might as well enjoy it," Kevin said glumly, following Hugo and Colette back into the freaks' caravan. "It might turn out to be the last hot chocolate you ever drink."

  Kevin shut the door with both hands, and the Baudelaires stepped farther away from the caravan so they could talk without being overheard.

  "Adding cinnamon to hot chocolate is a terrific idea, Sunny," Violet said, "but I'm having trouble enjoying it."

  "Ificat," Sunny said, which meant "Me too."

  "Count Olaf's latest scheme leaves a bad taste in my mouth," Klaus said, "and I don't think cinnamon will help."

  "We have to get into that fortune-telling tent," Violet said, "and this may be our only chance."

  "Do you think it's really true?" Klaus asked. "Do you think Madame Lulu really saw something in her crystal ball?"

  "I don't know," Violet said, "but I do know from my studies of electricity that lightning can't appear inside a tent. Something mysterious is going on, and we need to find out what it is."

  "Chow!" Sunny said, which meant "Before we're thrown to the lions!"

  "But do you think it's real?" Klaus asked.

  "I don't know," Violet said testily, a word which here means "in her regular voice, forgetting her disguise because she was becoming very frustrated and upset." "I don't know if Madame Lulu is a fortune-teller. I don't know how Count Olaf always knows where we are. I don't know where the Snicket file is, or why someone else had Olaf's tattoo, or what V.F.D. stands for, or why there's a secret passageway that leads to our house, or–"

  "If our parents are alive?" Klaus interrupted. "Do you know if one of our parents is really alive?"

  The middle Baudelaire's voice quivered, and his sisters turned to look at him–a feat that was difficult for Violet, who was still sharing his shirt–and saw that he was crying. Violet leaned so that her head was against his while Sunny put her mug down and crawled closer to hug his knees, and the three Baudelaires stood quietly together for a few moments.

  Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it. When I am able, I go out walking on Briny Beach very early in the morning, which is the best time to find materials important to the Baudelaire case, and the ocean is so peaceful that I feel peaceful, too, as if I am no longer grieving for the woman I love and will never see again. But then, when I am cold and duck into a teashop where the owner is expecting me, I have only to reach for the sugar bowl before my grief returns, and I find myself crying so loudly that other customers ask me if I could possibly lower my sobs. With the Baudelaire orphans, it was as if their grief were a very heavy object that they each took turns carrying so that they would not all be crying at once, but sometimes the object was too heavy for one of them to move without weeping, so Violet and Sunny stood next to Klaus, reminding him that this was something they could all carry together until at last they found a safe place to lay it down.

  "I'm sorry I was testy, Klaus," Violet said. "There's just so much we don't know that it's hard to think about all at once."

  "Chithvee," Sunny said, which meant "But I can't help thinking about our parents."

  "Me neither," Violet admitted. "I keep wondering if one of them survived the fire."

  "But if they did," Klaus said, "why would they be hiding in a faraway place? Why aren't they trying to find us?"

  "Maybe they are," Violet said quietly. "Maybe they're searching for us everywhere they can think of, but they can't find us, because we've been hiding and disguising ourselves for so long."

  "But why doesn't our mother or father contact Mr. Poe?" Klaus said.

  "We've tried to contact him," Violet pointed out, "but he doesn't answer our telegrams, and we can't seem to reach him by phone. If one of our parents has survived the fire, maybe they're having the same wretched luck."

  "Galfuskin," Sunny pointed out. By "Galfuskin" she meant something like, "This is all guesswork–let's go to the fortune-telling tent and see if we can find out anything for sure, and we'd better do it soon before the others get back."

  "You're right, Sunny," Violet said, and put her mug down next to Sunny's. Klaus put down his mug, and all three Baudelaires took disguised steps away from their hot chocolate. Violet and Klaus walked awkwardly in their shared pants, leaning against one another with every step, and Sunny followed alongside, still crawling so that she would look half wolf if anyone watched them as they made their way through the carnival toward the fortune-telling tent. But no one was watching the Baudelaire orphans. The visitors to the carnival had gone home to tell their friends about the lion show happening the next day. The children's coworkers were in the freaks' caravan bemoaning their fate, a word which here means "playing dominoes, rather than trying to think of a way out of their predicament." Madame Lulu and Olaf's assistants were digging the pit, over by the roller coaster still covered in ivy. Count Olaf and Esmé Squalor were bickering in the guest caravan, which was located at the far end of the carnival where I had stayed with my brother so many years ago, and the rest of Madame Lulu's employees were closing down the carnival and hoping that someday they might work in a less miserable place. So nobody was watching as the children approached the tent next to Lulu's caravan, and stopped for a minute at the flap that led inside. The fortune-telling tent no longer stands at Caligari Carnival, or anywhere else for that matter. Anyone wandering through the blackened and desolate hinterlands would scarcely be able to tell that there had been any tents at all. But even if everything looked exactly the same as when the Baudelaire orphans stayed there, it is unlikely that a traveler would understand what the tent's decoration meant, as nowadays there are so few living experts on such subjects, and the experts who are alive are all in terrible circumstances, or, in my case, on their way to terrible circumstance
s in the hopes of making them less terrible. But the Baudelaire orphans– who, as you will recall, had only arrived at the carnival the night before, and so had never seen the fortune-telling tent in daylight until this very moment–could see how the tent was decorated, which is why they stopped to stare at it. At first glance, the painting on the fortune-telling tent seemed to depict an eye, like the decoration on Madame Lulu's caravan and the tattoo on Count Olaf's ankle. The three children had seen similar eyes wherever they went, from a building in the shape of an eye when they were working in a lumbermill, to an eye on Esmé Squalor's purse when they were hiding in a hospital, to a huge swarm of eyes that surrounded them in their most frightening nightmares, and although the siblings never understood quite what these eyes meant, they were so weary of gazing at them that they would never pause to look at one again. But there are many things in life that become different if you take a long look at them, and as the children paused in front of the fortune-telling tent, the painting seemed to change before their very eyes, until it did not seem like a painting at all, but an insignia.

  An insignia is sort of a mark that usually stands for an organization or a business, and the mark can be of any sort whatsoever. Sometimes an insignia can be a simple shape, such as a wavy line to indicate an organization concerned with rivers or oceans, or a square to indicate an organization concerned with geometry or sugar cubes. Sometimes an insignia can be a small picture of something, such as a torch, to indicate an organization that is flammable, or the three-eyed girl outside the House of Freaks, indicating that people who were unusual in some way were on display inside. And sometimes an insignia can be part of the name of the organization, such as the first few letters, or its initials. The Baudelaires, of course, were not involved in any sort of business, aside from disguising themselves as carnival freaks, and as far as they knew they were not members of an organization of any kind, and they had never even been to the hinterlands until Count Olaf's car had taken them down Rarely Ridden Road, but the three children took a long look at the insignia on Madame Lulu's tent, because they knew that it was important to them somehow, as if whoever had painted the insignia knew they would come here, and wanted to bring them inside.

  "Do you think . . ." Klaus said, his voice trailing off as he squinted at the tent.

  "I didn't see it at first glance," Violet said, "but as I took a long look . . ."

  "Volu . . ." Sunny said, and without another word the three children peered into the entrance, and, seeing no sign of anyone inside, took a few steps forward. If someone had been watching the youngsters, they would have seen these few hesitant steps as they entered the fortune-teller's tent as quietly as they could. But there was no one watching. There was no one to see the flap of cloth as it closed quietly behind them, making the whole tent shiver ever so slightly, and there was no one to notice that the painting shivered, too. There was no one watching the Baudelaire orphans as they drew closer to finding the answers to their questions, or solving the mysteries of their lives. There was no one to take a long look at the painting on the tent to see that it was not an image of an eye, as it appeared to be at first glance, but an insignia, standing for an organization the children knew only as V.F.D.

  Chapter Six

  There are many difficult things in this world to hide, but a secret is not one of them. It is difficult to hide an airplane, for instance, because you generally need to find a deep hole or an enormous haystack, and sneak the airplane inside in the middle of the night, but it is easy to hide a secret about an airplane, because you can merely write it on a tiny piece of paper and tape it to the bottom of your mattress any time you are at home. It is difficult to hide a symphony orchestra, because you usually need to rent a soundproof room and borrow as many sleeping bags as you can find, but it is easy to hide a secret about a symphony orchestra, because you can merely whisper it into the ear of a trustworthy friend or music critic. And it is difficult to hide yourself, because you sometimes need to stuff yourself into the trunk of an automobile, or concoct a disguise out of whatever you can find, but it is easy to hide a secret about yourself, because you can merely type it into a book and hope it falls into the right hands. My dear sister, if you are reading this, I am still alive, and heading north to try and find you.

  Had the Baudelaire orphans been looking for an airplane as they stepped inside Madame Lulu's fortune-telling tent, they would have known to look for the tip of a wing, sticking out from under an enormous black tablecloth decorated with shiny silver stars, which hung over a table in the center of the tent. Had they been looking for a symphony orchestra, they would have known to listen for the sound of someone coughing or bumping up against an oboe as they hid in the corners of the tent, which were covered in heavy curtains. But the children were not looking for methods of air travel or professional musicians. They were looking for secrets, and the tent was so big that they scarcely knew where to begin looking. Was there news of the Baudelaire parents hidden in the cupboard that stood near the entrance? Could there be information about the Snicket file stuffed into the large trunk that stood in one of the corners? And was it possible the children could find out the meaning of V.F.D. by gazing into the crystal ball placed in the center of the table? Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked around the tent, and then at one another, and it seemed that the secrets concerning them could be hidden just about anywhere.

  "Where do you think we should look?" Violet asked.

  "I don't know," Klaus replied, squinting all around him. "I'm not even sure what to look for."

  "Well, maybe we should look for answers the way Count Olaf did," Violet said. "He told the whole story of his fortune-telling experience."

  "I remember," Klaus said. "First he entered Madame Lulu's tent. We've done that. Then, he said they turned out all the lights."

  The Baudelaires looked up, and noticed for the first time that the ceiling of the tent was decorated with small lights in the shape of stars, matching the stars on the tablecloth.

  "Switch!" Sunny said, pointing to a pair of switches attached to one of the tent poles.

  "Good work, Sunny," Violet said. "Here, Klaus, walk with me so I can get a look at those switches."

  The two older Baudelaires walked freakishly over to the pole, but when they reached the switches Violet frowned and shook her head.

  "What's wrong?" Klaus asked.

  "I wish I had a ribbon," Violet said, "to tie up my hair. It's hard to think seriously with my powdery hair getting in my eyes. But my hair ribbon is somewhere at Heimlich. . . ."

  Her voice trailed off, and Klaus saw that she had reached her hand into the pocket of Count Olaf's pants and was drawing out a ribbon that looked just like the one she usually wore. "Yerz," Sunny said.

  "It is mine," Violet said, looking at it closely. "Count Olaf must have kept it when he was preparing me for surgery, and left it in his pocket."

  "I'm glad you got it back," Klaus said, with a slight shudder. "I don't like to think about Olaf getting his filthy hands on our possessions. Do you need some help tying your hair up? It might be difficult using only one hand, and I don't think you should take your other one out from under the shirt. We don't want to mess up our disguise." "I think I can manage it with one hand," Violet said. "Ah, there we go. I feel less like a freak and more like Violet Baudelaire with my hair up like this. Now, let's see. Both these switches are attached to wires that run up to the top of the tent. One of them obviously controls the lights, but what does the other one do?"

  The Baudelaires looked up again, and saw something else attached to the ceiling of the tent. In between the stars was a small, round mirror, hanging from a piece of metal, which held it at an odd angle. Attached to the metal was a long strip of rubber, which led to a large knot of wires and gears, which in turn was attached to some more mirrors arranged in a sort of wheel.

  "What?" Sunny asked.

  "I don't know," Klaus said. "It sure doesn't look like anything I've read about."

  "It's an inventio
n of some sort," Violet said, studying it carefully. She began to point to different parts of the strange device, but it was as if she were talking to herself instead of her siblings. "That piece of rubber looks like a fan belt, which transmits torque from an automotive engine in order to help cool the radiator. But why would you want to–oh, I see. It moves those other mirrors around, which–but how would–wait a minute. Klaus, see that small hole in the upper corner of the tent?"

  "Not without my glasses," Klaus said.

  "Well, there's a small rip up there," Violet said. "What direction are we facing, if we face that small hole?"

  "Let me think for a moment," Klaus said. "Last night, the sun was setting as we got out of the car."

  "Yirat," Sunny said, which meant "I remember–the famous hinterlands sunset."

  "And the car is over there," Klaus said, turning around and dragging his older sister with them. "So that way is west, and the rip in the tent faces east."

  "East," Violet said with a smile, "the direction of the sunrise."

  "That's right," Klaus said, "but what does that have to do with anything?"

  Violet said nothing, just stood and smiled at her siblings, and Klaus and Sunny smiled back. Even with the fake scars penciled on her face, Violet was smiling in a way the other Baudelaires recognized at once. It was the sort of smile that appeared when Violet had figured out a difficult problem, usually having to do with an invention of some sort. She had smiled this way when the siblings were in jail, and she figured out how a pitcher of water could help break them out. She had smiled this way when she had looked over some evidence she had found in a suitcase, which could convince Mr. Poe that their Uncle Monty had been murdered. And she was smiling this way now, as she looked up at the strange device on the ceiling, and then back down at the two switches on the wall.

  "Watch this," she said, and flicked the first switch. Immediately, the gears began to spin, and the long strip of rubber began to move, and the wheel of mirrors became a whirring circle.