"It doesn't have to be horseradish," Violet said quickly, putting down a jar of tarragon in frustration. "Wasabi was an adequate substitute when Sunny was infected."
"Or Eutrema," Sunny wheezed.
"There's no wasabi here, either," Klaus said, sniffing a jar of mace and frowning. "Maybe it's hidden somewhere."
"Who would hide horseradish?" Violet asked, after a long cough.
"Our parents," Sunny said.
"Sunny's right," Klaus said. "If they knew about Anwhistle Aquatics, they might have known of the dangers of the Medusoid Mycelium. Any horseradish that washed up on the island would have been very valuable indeed."
"We don't have time to search the entire arboretum to find horseradish," Violet said. She reached into her pocket, her fingers brushing against the ring Ishmael had given her, and found the ribbon the facilitator had been using as a bookmark, which she used to tie up her hair so she might think better. "That would be harder than trying to find the sugar bowl in the entire Hotel Denouement."
At the mention of the sugar bowl, Klaus gave his glasses a quick polish and began to page through his commonplace book, while Sunny picked up her whisk and bit it thoughtfully. "Maybe it's hidden in one of the other spice jars," the middle Baudelaire said.
"We smelled them all," Violet said, between wheezes. "None of them smelled like horseradish."
"Maybe the scent was disguised by another spice," Klaus said. "Something that was even more bitter than horseradish would cover the smell. Sunny, what are some of the bitterest spices?"
"Cloves," said Sunny, and wheezed."Cardamom, arrowroot, wormwood."
"Wormwood," Klaus said thoughtfully, and flipped the pages of his commonplace book. "Kit mentioned wormwood once," he said, thinking of poor Kit alone on the coastal shelf. "She said tea should be as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a two-edged sword. We were told the same thing when we were served tea right before our trial."
"No wormwood here," Sunny said.
"Ishmael also said something about bitter tea," Violet said. "Remember? That student of his was afraid of being poisoned."
"Just like we are," Klaus said, feeling the mushrooms growing inside him. "I wish we'd heard the end of that story."
"I wish we'd heard every story," Violet said, her voice sounding hoarse and rough from the poison. "I wish our parents had told us everything, instead of sheltering us from the treachery of the world."
"Maybe they did," Klaus said, his voice as rough as his sister's, and the middle Baudelaire walked to the reading chairs in the middle of the room and picked up A Series of Unfortunate Events. "They wrote all of their secrets here. If they hid the horseradish, we'll find it in this book."
"We don't have time to read that entire book," Violet said, "any more than we have time to search the entire arboretum."
"If we fail," Sunny said, her voice heavy with fungus, "at least we die reading together."
The Baudelaire orphans nodded grimly, and embraced one another. Like most people, the children had occasionally been in a curious and somewhat morbid mood, and had spent a few moments wondering about the circumstances of their own deaths, although since that unhappy day on Briny Beach when Mr. Poe had first informed them about the terrible fire, the children had spent so much time trying to avoid their own deaths that they preferred not to think about it in their time off. Most people do not choose their final circumstances, of course, and if the Baudelaires had been given the choice they would have liked to live to a very old age, which for all I know they may be doing. But if the three children had to perish while they were still three children, then perishing in one another's company while reading words written long ago by their mother and father was much better than many other things they could imagine, and so the three Baudelaires sat together in one of the reading chairs, preferring to be close to one another rather than having more room to sit, and together they opened the enormous book and turned back the pages until they reached the moment in history when their parents arrived on the island and began taking notes. The entries in the book alternated between the handwriting of the Baudelaire father and the handwriting of the Baudelaire mother, and the children could imagine their parents sitting in these same chairs, reading out loud what they had written and suggesting things to add to the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind that comprised A Series of Unfortunate Events. The children, of course, would have liked to savor each word their parents had written—the word "savor," you probably know, here means "read slowly, as each sentence in their parents' handwriting was like a gift from beyond the grave" — but as the poison of the Medusoid Mycelium advanced further and further, the siblings had to skim, scanning each page for the words «horseradish» or "wasabi." As you know if you've ever skimmed a book, you end up getting a strange view of the story, with just glimpses here and there of what is going on, and some authors insert confusing sentences in the middle of a book just to confuse anyone who might be skimming. Three very short men were carrying a large, flat piece of wood, painted to look like a living room. As the Baudelaire orphans searched for the secret they hoped they would find, they caught glimpses of other secrets their parents had kept, and as Violet, Klaus, and Sunny spotted the names of people the Baudelaire parents had known, things they had whispered to these people, the codes hidden in the whispers, and many other intriguing details, the children hoped they would have the opportunity to reread A Series of Unfortunate Events on a less frantic occasion. On that afternoon, however, they read faster and faster, looking desperately for the one secret that might save them as the hour began to pass and the Medusoid Mycelium grew faster and faster inside them, as if the deadly fungus also did not have time to savor its treacherous path. As they read more and more, it grew harder and harder for the Baudelaires to breathe, and when Klaus finally spotted one of the words he had been looking for, he thought for a moment it was just a vision brought on by all the stalks and caps growing inside him.
"Horseradish!" he said, his voice rough and wheezy. "Look: 'Ishmael's fear mongering has stopped work on the passageway, even though we have a plethora of horseradish in case of any emergency.'"
Violet started to speak, but then choked on the fungus and coughed for a long while. "What does ' fear mongering' mean?" she said finally.
"'Plethora'?"Sunny's voice was little more than a mushroom-choked whisper.
"' Fear mongering' means 'making people afraid,'" said Klaus, whose vocabulary was unaffected by the poison, "and 'plethora' means 'more than enough.'" He gave a large, shuddering wheeze, and continued to read. "'We're attempting a botanical hybrid through the tuberous canopy, which should bring safety to fruition despite its dangers to our associates in utero. Of course, in case we are banished, Beatrice is hiding a small amount in a vess —'"
The middle Baudelaire interrupted himself with a cough that was so violent he dropped the book to the floor. His sisters held him tightly as his body shook against the poison and one pale hand pointed at the ceiling. "'Tuberous canopy,'" he wheezed finally. "Our father means the roots above our heads. A botanical hybrid is a plant made from the combination of two other plants." He shuddered, and his eyes, behind his glasses, filled with tears. "I don't know what he's talking about," he said finally.