"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.
Violet looked at the roots over their heads, where the periscope disappeared into the network of the tree. To her horror she found that her vision was becoming blurry, as if the fungus was growing over her eyes. "It sounds like they put the horseradish into the roots of the plant, in order to make everyone safe," she said. "That's what 'bringing safety to fruition' would be, the way a tree brings its crop to fruition."
"Apples!" cried Sunny in a strangled voice."Bitter apples!"
"Of course!" Klaus said. "The tree is a hybrid, and its apples are bitter because they contain horseradish!"
"If we eat an apple," Violet said, "the fungus will be diluted."
" Gentreefive," Sunny agreed in a croak, and lowered herself off her siblings' laps, wheezing desperately as she tried to get to the gap in the roots. Klaus tried to follow her, but when he stood up the poison made him so dizzy that he had to sit back down and clasp his throbbing head. Violet coughed painfully, and gripped her brother's arm.
"Come on," she said, in a frantic wheeze.
Klaus shook his head. "I'm not sure we can make it," he said.
Sunny reached toward the gap in the roots and then curled to the floor in pain. " Kikbucit?" she asked, her voice weak and faint.
"We can't die here," Violet said, her voice so feeble her siblings could scarcely hear her. "Our parents saved our lives in this very room, many years ago, without even knowing it."
"Maybe not," Klaus said. "Maybe this is the end of our story."
" Tumurchap," Sunny said, but before anyone could ask what she meant, the children heard another sound, faint and strange, in the secret space beneath the apple tree their parents had hybridized with horseradish long ago. The sound was sibilant, a word which might appear to have something to do with siblings, but actually refers to a sort of whistle or hiss, such as a steam engine might make as it comes to a stop, or an audience might make after sitting through one of Al Funcoot's plays. The Baudelaires were so desperate and frightened that for a moment they thought it might be the sound of Medusoid Mycelium, celebrating its poisonous triumph over the three children, or perhaps just the sound of their hopes evaporating. But the sibilance was not the sound of evaporating hope or celebrating fungus, and thank goodness it was not the sound of a steam engine ora disgruntled theatrical audience, as the Baudelaires were not strong enough to confront such things. The hissing sound came from one of the few inhabitants of the island whose story contained not one but two shipwrecks, and perhaps because of its own sad history, this inhabitant was sympathetic to the sad history of the Baudelaires, although it is difficult to say how much sympathy can be felt by an animal, no matter how friendly. I do not have the courage to do much research on this matter, and my only herpetological comrade's story ended quite some time ago, so what this reptile was thinking as it slid toward the children is a detail of the Baudelaires' history that may never be revealed. But even with this missing detail, it is quite clear what happened. The snake slithered through the gap in the roots of the tree, and whatever the serpent was thinking, it was quite clear from the sibilant sound that came hissing through the reptile's clenched teeth that the Incredibly Deadly Viper was offering the Baudelaire orphans an apple.
Chapter Thirteen
If is a well-known but curious fact that the first bite of an apple always tastes the best, which is why the heroine of a book much more suitable to read than this one spends an entire afternoon eating the first bite of a bushel of apples. But even this anarchic little girl—the word «anarchic» here means «apple-loving» — never tasted a bite as wonderful as the Baudelaire orphans' first bite of the apple from the tree their parents had hybridized with horseradish. The apple was not as bitter as the Baudelaire orphans would have guessed, and the horseradish gave the juice of the apple a slight, sharp edge, like the air on a winter morning. But of course, the biggest appeal of the apple offered by the Incredibly Deadly Viper was its immediate effect on the deadly fungus growing inside them. From the moment the Baudelaire teeth bit down on the apple—first Violet's, and then Klaus's, and then Sunny's— the stalks and caps of the Medusoid Mycelium began to shrink, and within moments all traces of the dreaded mushroom had withered away, and the children could breathe clearly and easily. Hugging one another in relief, the Baudelaires found themselves laughing, which is a common reaction among people who have narrowly escaped death, and the snake seemed to be laughing, too, although perhaps it was just appreciating the youngest Baudelaire scratching behind its tiny, hooded ears.
"We should each have another apple," Violet said, standing up, "to make sure we've consumed enough horseradish."
"And we should collect enough apples for all of the islanders," Klaus said. "They must be just as desperate as we were."
"Stockpot," Sunny said, and walked to the rack of pots on the ceiling, where the snake helped her take down an enormous metal pot that could hold a great number of apples and in fact had been used to make an enormous vat of applesauce a number of years previously.
"You two start picking apples," Violet said, walking to the periscope. "I want to check on Kit Snicket. The flooding of the coastal shelf must have begun by now, and she must be terrified."