Lemony Snicket - The Slippery Slope

"Happy," said the young girl, and everyone who heard her knew what she was talking about.

If you ever look at a picture of someone who has just had an idea, you might notice a drawing of a lightbulb over the person's head. Of course, there is not usually a lightbulb hovering in the air when someone has an idea, but the image of a lightbulb over someone's head has become a sort of symbol for thinking, just as the image of an eye, sadly, has become a symbol for crime and devious behavior rather than integrity, the prevention of fire, and being well-read.

As Violet and Quigley climbed back down the slippery slope of the frozen waterfall, their fork-assisted climbing shoes poking into the ice with each step, they looked down and saw, by the last light of the setting sun, the figure of Klaus. He was holding a flashlight over his head to help the two climbers find their way down, but it looked as if he'd just had an idea.

"He must have found a flashlight in the wreckage," Quigley said. "It looks like the one Jacques gave me."

"I hope he found enough information to decode Verbal Fridge Dialogue," Violet said, and tapped the candelabra below her feet. "Be careful here, Quigley. The ice feels thin. We'll have to climb around it."

"The ice has been less solid on our way down," Quigley said.

"That's not surprising," Violet said. "We've poked a great deal of it with forks. By the time False Spring arrives, this whole slope will probably only be half frozen."

"By the time False Spring arrives," Quigley said, "I hope we'll be on our way to the last safe place."

"Me, too," Violet said quietly, and the two climbers said no more until they reached the bottom of the waterfall and walked carefully across the frozen pool along the path Klaus shone with his flashlight.

"I'm so glad you returned in one piece," Klaus said, shining his flashlight in the direction of the dining room remains. "It looked like a very slippery journey. It's getting cold, but if we sit behind the library entrance, we'll be away from much of the wind."

But Violet was so eager to tell her brother who they had found at the top of the peak that she could not wait another moment. "It's Sunny," she said. "Sunny's at the top. It was her who was signaling us."

"Sunny?" Klaus said, his eyes as wide as his smile. "How did she get up there? Is she safe? Why didn't you bring her back?"

"She's safe," Violet said. "She's with Count Olaf, but she's safe."

"Has he harmed her?" Klaus asked.

Violet shook her head. "No," she said. "He's making her do all the cooking and cleaning."

"But she's a baby!" Klaus said.

"Not anymore," Violet said. "We haven't noticed, Klaus, but she's grown up quite a bit. She's really too young to be in charge of all the chores, of course, but sometime, during all the hardship we've been through, she stopped being a baby."

"She's old enough to eavesdrop," Quigley said. "She's already discovered who burned down the V.F.D. headquarters."

"They're two terrible people, a man and a woman, who have quite an aura of menace," Violet said. "Even Count Olaf is a little afraid of them."

"What are they all doing up there?" Klaus asked.

"They're having some sort of villainous meeting," Quigley said. "We heard them mention something about a recruitment plan, and a large net."

"That doesn't sound pleasant," Klaus said.

"There's more, Klaus," Violet said. "Count Olaf has the Snicket file, and he found out about some secret location — the last safe place where the V.F.D. can gather. That's why Sunny stayed up there. If she overhears where the place is, we'll know where to go to meet up with the rest of the volunteers."

"I hope she manages to find out," Klaus said. "Without that piece of information, all that I've discovered is useless."

"What have you discovered?" Quigley asked.

"I'll show you," Klaus said, and led the way to the ruins of the library, where Violet could see he'd been working. His dark blue notebook was open, and she could see that several pages were filled with notes. Nearby were several half-burnt scraps of paper, stacked underneath a burnt teacup Klaus was using for a paperweight, and all of the contents of the refrigerator were laid out in a careful half circle: the jar of mustard, the container of olives, three jars of jam, and the very fresh dill. The small glass jug, containing one pickle, and the bottle of lemon juice were off to one side. "This is some of the most difficult research I've ever done," Klaus said, sitting down next to his notebook. "Justice Strauss's legal library was confusing, and Aunt Josephine's grammatical library was dull, but the ruined V.F.D. library is a much bigger challenge. Even if I know what book I'm looking for, it may be nothing but ashes."

"Did you find anything about Verbal Fridge Dialogue?" Quigley asked, sitting beside him.

"Not at first," Klaus said. "The scrap of paper that led us to the refrigerator was in a large pile of ashes, and it took awhile to sift through it. But I finally found one page that was probably from the same book." He reached for his notebook and held up his flashlight so he could see the pages. "The page was so delicate," he said, "that T immediately copied it into my commonplace book. It explains how the whole code works."

"Read it to us," Violet said, and Klaus complied, a word which here means "followed Violet's suggestion and read a very complicated paragraph out loud, explaining it as he went along."

"'Verbal Fridge Dialogue,'" he read, '"is an emergency communication system that avails itself of the more esoteric products in a refrigerator. Volunteers will know such a code is being used by the presence of very fr — '" He looked up from his notebook. "The sentence ends there," he said, "but I assume that 'very fr' is the beginning of 'very fresh dill.' If very fresh dill is in the refrigerator, that means there's a message there, too."

"I understand that part," Violet said, "but what does 'esoteric' mean?"

"In this case," Klaus said, "I think it refers to things that aren't used very much — the things that stay in the refrigerator for a long time."

"Like mustard and jam and things like that," Violet said. "I understand."

"'The receiver of the message should find his or her initials, as noted by one of our poet volunteers, as follows,'" Klaus continued. "And then there's a short poem:

"The darkest of the jams of three contains within the addressee. "

"That's a couplet," Quigley said, "like my sister writes."

"I don't think your sister wrote that particular poem," Violet said. "This code was probably invented before your sister was born."

"That's what I thought," Klaus said, "but it made me wonder who taught Isadora about couplets. They might have been a volunteer."

"She had a poetry teacher when we were young," Quigley said, "but I never met him. I always had cartography class."

"And your mapmaking skills," Violet said, "led us to the headquarters."

"And your inventing skills," Klaus said, "allowed you to climb up to Mount Fraught."

"And your researching skills are helping us now," Violet said. "It's as if we were being trained for all this, and we didn't even know it."

"I never thought of learning about maps as training," Quigley said. "I just liked it."

"Well, I haven't had much training in poetry," Klaus said, "but the couplet seems to say that inside the darkest jar of jam is the name of the person who's supposed to get the message."

Violet looked down at the three jars of jam. "There's apricot, strawberry, and boysenberry," she said. "Boysenberry's the darkest."

Klaus nodded, and unscrewed the cap from the jar of boysenberry jam. "Look inside," he said, and shined the flashlight so Violet and Quigley could see. Someone had taken a knife and written two letters in the surface of the jam: J and S.