Lemony Snicket - The Carnivorous Carnival

When the Baudelaire orphans finally opened their eyes, they found that they had stumbled to the entrance of Madame Lulu's fortune-telling tent, with the initials V.F.D. still staring out at them. Most of the carnival visitors had walked over to the lion pit to see the show, so the siblings were alone in the fading afternoon, and once again there was no one watching over them as they stood in front of the tent, trembling and crying quietly. The last time they had stood for so long at the tent's entrance, the decoration had seemed to change before their very eyes until they saw that it was not a painting of an eye, but the insignia of an organization that might help them. Now they stood and stared again, hoping that something would change before their very eyes until they saw what it was that they could do. But nothing seemed to change no matter how hard they looked. The carnival remained silent, and the afternoon continued to creep toward evening, and the insignia on the tent simply stared back at the weeping Baudelaires.

"I wonder where the fan belt is," Violet said finally. Her voice was faint and almost hoarse, but her tears had stopped at last. "I wonder if it fell to the ground, or was thrown onto the tracks of the roller coaster, or if it ended up — "

"How can you think about a fan belt at a time like this?" Klaus asked, although his voice was not angry. Like his sister, he was still trembling inside the shirt they shared, and felt very tired, as is often the case after a long cry.

"I don't want to think about anything else," Violet said. "I don't want to think about Madame Lulu and the lions, and I don't want to think about Count Olaf and the crowd, and I don't want to think about whether or not we did the right thing."

"Right," Sunny said gently.

"I agree," Klaus said. "We did the best we could."

"I'm not so sure," Violet replied. "I had the fan belt in my hand. It was all we needed to finish the invention and escape from this awful place."

"You couldn't finish the invention," Klaus said. "We were surrounded by a crowd of people who wanted to see someone thrown to the lions. It's not our fault that she fell in instead."

"And bald," Sunny added.

"But we made the crowd even more frantic," Violet said. "First we stalled the show, and then we used mob psychology to get them excited about throwing somebody into the pit."

"Count Olaf is the one who thought up this whole ghastly scheme," Klaus said. "What happened to Madame Lulu is his fault, not ours."

"We promised to take her with us," Violet insisted. "Madame Lulu kept her promise and didn't tell Count Olaf who we were, but we didn't keep ours."

"We tried," Klaus said. "We tried to keep ours."

"Trying's not good enough," Violet said. "Are we going to try to find one of our parents? Are we going to try to defeat Count Olaf?"

"Yes," Sunny said firmly, and wrapped her arms around Violet's leg. The eldest Baudelaire looked down at her sister and her eyes filled with tears.

"Why are we here?" she asked. "We thought we could put on disguises and get ourselves out of trouble, but we're worse off than when we began. We don't know what V.F.D. stands for. We don't know where the Snicket file is. And we don't know if one of our parents is really alive."

"There are some things we might not know," Klaus said, "but that doesn't mean we should give up. We can find out what we need to know. We can find out anything."

Violet smiled through her tears. "You sound like a researcher," she said.

The middle Baudelaire reached into his pocket and pulled out his glasses. "I am a researcher," he said, and stepped toward the entrance to the tent. "Let's get to work."

"Ghede!" Sunny said, which meant something like, "I almost forgot about the archival library!" and she followed her siblings through the flap in the tent.

As soon as the Baudelaire orphans stepped inside, they saw that Madame Lulu had made quite a few preparations for her escape with the children, and it made them very sad to think that she would never return to the fortune-telling tent to collect the things she had waiting for her. Her disguise kit was all packed up again, and waiting by the door so she could take it with her. There was a cardboard box standing next to the cupboard, filled with food that could be eaten on the journey. And laid out on the table, next to Madame Lulu's replacement crystal ball and various parts of the lightning device she had dismantled, was a large piece of paper that was badly torn and looked very old, but the Baudelaires saw at once that it could help them.

"It's a map," Violet said. "It's a map of the Mortmain Mountains. She must have had it among her papers."

Klaus put his glasses on and peered at it closely. "Those mountains must be very cold this time of year," he said. "I didn't realize the altitude was so high."

"Never mind the altitude," Violet said. "Can you find the headquarters Lulu was talking about?"

"Let's see," Klaus said. "There's a star next to Plath Pass, but the key says that a star indicates a campground."

"Key?" Sunny asked.

"This chart in the corner of the map is called a key," Klaus explained. "You see? The map-maker explains what each symbol means, so the map doesn't get too cluttered."

"There's a black rectangle there in the Richter Range," she said. "See? Over in the east?"

"A black rectangle indicates hibernation grounds," Klaus said. "There must be quite a few bears in the Mortmain Mountains. Look, there are five hibernation grounds near Silent Springs, and a large cluster of them at the top of Paucity Peak."

"And here," Violet said, "in the Valley of Four Drafts, where it looks like Madame Lulu spilled coffee."

"Valley of Four Drafts!" Klaus said.

"V.F.D.!" Sunny cried.

The Baudelaires peered together at the spot on the map. The Valley of Four Drafts was high up in the Mortmain Mountains, where it would be very cold. The Stricken Stream began there, and wound its way down to the sea in sagging curves through the hinterlands, and the map showed many, many hibernation grounds along the way. There was a small brown stain in the center of the valley, where four gaps in the mountains came together and where Lulu had probably spilled coffee, but there were no markings for a headquarters or for anything else.

"Do you think it means something?" Violet asked. "Or is it just a coincidence, like all the V.F.D.s we've come across?"

"I thought the V in V.F.D. stood for 'volunteer,'" Klaus said. "That's what we found written on a page of the Quagmire notebooks, and it's what Jacques Snicket said."

"Winnow?" Sunny asked, which meant "But where else could the headquarters be? There's no other marking on the map."

"Well, if V.F.D. is a secret organization," Violet said, "they might not put their headquarters on a map."

'Or it could be marked secretly," Klaus said, and leaned in to take a good look at the stain. "Maybe this isn't just a stain," he said. "Maybe it's a secret marking. Maybe Madame Lulu put some coffee here on purpose, so she could find the headquarters, but nobody else could."

"I guess we'll have to travel there," Violet said with a sigh, "and find out."

"How are we going to travel there?" Klaus said. "We don't know where the fan belt is."

"We might be missing some parts," Violet replied, "but that doesn't mean we should give up. I can build something else."

"You sound like an inventor," he said.

Violet smiled, and took her hair ribbon out of her pocket. "I am an inventor," she said. "I'll look around here and see if there's anything else we can use. Klaus, you look under the table at the archival library."

"We'd better get out of the clothes we're sharing," Klaus said, "or we can't do two things at once."