Lemony Snicket - The Slippery Slope

"Very lovely indeed," Quigley said, but he was not looking at the view beneath him. He was looking beside him, where Violet Baudelaire was sitting.

Many things have been taken from the three Baudelaires. Their parents were taken, of course, and their home was taken from them, by a terrible fire. Their various guardians were taken from them, because they were murdered by Count Olaf or were simply miserable guardians who soon lost interest in three young children with nowhere to go. The Baudelaires' dignity was taken from them, on the occasions when the siblings were forced to wear absurd disguises, and recently they had been taken from one another, with the kidnapped Sunny doing chores at the top of the frozen waterfall while Violet and Klaus learned the secrets of V.F.D. at the bottom. But one thing that was taken from the Baudelaires that is not often discussed is their privacy, a word which here means "time by oneself, without anyone watching or interfering.' Unless you are a hermit or half of a pair of Siamese twins, you probably enjoy taking the occasional break from members of your family to enjoy some privacy, perhaps with a friend or companion, in your room or in a railway car you have managed to sneak aboard. But since that dreadful day at Briny Beach, when Mr. Poe arrived to tell the Baudelaires that their parents had perished, the three children had scarcely had any privacy at all. From the small, dark bedroom where they slept at Count Olaf's house, to the crowded caravan at Caligari Carnival, and all of the other woeful places in between, the Baudelaires' situation was always so desperate and cramped that they were rarely able to spare a moment for a bit of private time.

So, as Violet and Quigley rest for a few minutes more on a ledge halfway up the frozen waterfall, I will take this opportunity to give them a bit of privacy, by not writing down anything more of what happened between these two friends on that chilly afternoon. Certainly there are aspects of my own personal life that I will never write down, however precious they are to me, and I will offer the eldest Baudelaire the same courtesy. I will tell you that the two young people resumed their climb, and that the afternoon slowly turned to evening and that both Violet and Quigley had small secret smiles on their faces as the candelabra ice-tester and the fork-assisted climbing shoes helped them both get closer and closer to the mountains' highest peak, but there has been so little privacy in the life of Violet Baudelaire that I will allow her to keep a few important moments to herself, rather than sharing them with my distressed and weeping readers.

"We're almost there," Violet said. "It's difficult to see with the sun going down, but I believe we're just about at the top of the peak."

"I can't believe we've been climbing all afternoon," Quigley said.

"Not all afternoon," she reminded him with a shy smile. "I guess this waterfall is about as high as 667 Dark Avenue. It took a very long time to go up and down that elevator shaft trying to rescue your siblings. I hope this is a more successful journey."

"Me, too," Quigley said. "What do you think we will find at the top?"

"Set!" came the reply.

"I couldn't hear you over the wind," Quigley said. "What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything," Violet said. She squinted above her, trying to see in the last of the sunset, and scarcely daring to hope that she had heard correctly.

Out of all the words in the English language, the word "set" has the most definitions, and if you open a good dictionary and read the word's long, long entry, you will begin to think that "set" is scarcely a word at all, only a sound that means something different depending on who is saying it. If a group of jazz musicians says "set," for instance, they are probably referring to the songs they are planning to play at a club that evening, assuming it doesn't burn down. If the owner of a restaurant uses the word "set," they might mean group of matching wineglasses, or a bunch of waitresses who look exactly alike. A librarian will say "set" to refer to a collection of books that are all by the same author or about the same subject, and an Egyptologist will use the word "set" to refer to the ancient god of evil, although he does not come up very often in conversation. But when Violet heard the word "set" from the top of Mount Fraught, she did not think there was a group of jazz musicians, a restaurant owner, a librarian, or an Egyptologist talking about jazz tunes, wineglasses, waitresses, thematically linked books, or a black, immoral aardvark who is the sworn enemy of the god Osiris. She reached her fork as high as she could so she could climb closer, and saw the rays of the sunset reflect off a large tooth, and Violet knew that this time, the definition of "set" was "I knew you would find me!" and the speaker was Sunny Baudelaire. "Set!" Sunny said again.

"Sunny!" Violet cried.

"Sssh!" Sunny said.

"What is going on?" Quigley asked, several forksteps behind Violet.

"It's Sunny," Violet said, and hoisted herself onto the peak to see her baby sister, standing next to Count Olaf's car and grinning from ear to ear. Without another word, the two Baudelaire sisters hugged fiercely, Violet taking care not to poke Sunny with one of the forks she was holding. By the time Quigley reached the top of the peak and pulled himself up to lean against one of the car's tires, the two Baudelaires were smiling at each other with tears in their eyes.

"I knew we'd see you again, Sunny," Violet said. "I just knew it."

"Klaus?" Sunny asked.

"He's safe and nearby," Violet said. "He knew we could find you, too."

"Set," Sunny agreed, but then she noticed Quigley and her eyes grew wide. "Quagmire?" she asked in amazement.

"Yes," Violet said. "This is Quigley Quagmire, Sunny. He survived the fire after all." Sunny walked unsteadily over to Quigley and shook his hand. "He led us to the headquarters, Sunny, with a map he drew himself."

"Arigato," Sunny said, which meant something like, "I appreciate your help, Quigley."

"Was it you who signaled us?" Quigley asked.

"Yep," Sunny said. "Lox."

"Count Olaf's been making you do the cooking?" Violet asked in amazement.

"Vaccurum," Sunny said.

"Olaf even made her clean crumbs out of the car," Violet translated to Quigley, "by blowing as hard as she could."

"That's ridiculous!" Quigley said.

"Cinderella," Sunny said. She meant something along the lines of, "I've had to do all of the chores, while being humiliated at every turn," but Violet had no time to translate over the sound of Count Olaf's scratchy voice.

"Where are you, Babylaire?" he asked, adding an absurd nickname to his list of insults. "I've thought of more tasks for you to perform."

The three children looked at one another in panic. "Hide," Sunny whispered, and there was no need for translation. Violet and Quigley looked around the desolate landscape of the peak for a place to hide, but there was only one place to go.

"Under the car," Violet said, and she and Quigley wriggled underneath the long, black automobile, which was as dirty and smelly as its owner. As an inventor, the eldest Baudelaire had stared closely at automotive machinery plenty of times, but she had never seen such an extreme state of disrepair, a phrase which here means "an underside of an automobile in such bad shape that it was dripping oil on her and her companion." But Violet and Quigley didn't have a moment to waste thinking of their discomfort. They had no sooner moved their fork-assisted climbing shoes out of view when Count Olaf and his companions arrived. From underneath he car, the two volunteers could see only the villain's tattoo on the filthy ankle above his left shoe and a pair of very stylish pumps, decorated with glitter and tiny paintings of eyes, that could only belong to Esmé Squalor.