I am on my way now to the Valley of Four Drafts, in order to continue my research on the Baudelaire case. I hope also to retrieve the aforementioned evidence at last. It is too late to restore my happiness, of course, but at least I can clear my name. From the site of V.F.D. headquarters, I will head straight for the Hotel Denouement. I should arrive by well, it wouldn't be wise to type the date, but it should be easy for you to remember Beatrice's birthday. Meet me at the hotel. Try to get us a room without ugly curtains.
With all due respect, Lemony Snicket P.S. If you substitute the chopped celery with hearts of palm, it is equally delicious.
Chapter Six
In the very early hours of the morning, while the two elder Baudelaires struggled to find their footing as they climbed up the Vertical Flame Diversion and I sincerely hope that you did not read the description of that journey the youngest Baudelaire found herself struggling with a different sort of footing altogether. Sunny had not enjoyed the long, cold night on Mount Fraught. If you have ever slept in a covered casserole dish on the highest peak of a mountain range, then you know that it is an uncomfortable place to lay one's head, even if you find a dishtowel inside it that can serve as a blanket. All night long, the chilly mountain winds blew through the tiny holes inside the top of the cover, making it so cold inside the dish that Sunny's enormous teeth chattered all night, giving her tiny cuts on her lips and making such a loud noise that it was impossible to sleep. Finally, when the first rays of the morning sun shone through the holes and made it warm enough to doze, Count Olaf left his tent and kicked open the cover of the dish to begin ordering Sunny around. "Wake up, you dentist's nightmare!" he cried. Sunny opened one exhausted eye and found herself staring at the villain's footing, particularly the tattoo on Olaf's left ankle, a sight that was enough to make her wish her eyes were still closed.
Tattooed on Olaf's ankle was the image of an eye, and it seemed to Sunny that this eye had been watching the Baudelaires throughout all of their troubles, from the day on Briny Beach when they learned of the terrible fire that destroyed their home. Time after time, Count Olaf had tried to hide this eye so the authorities would not recognize him, so the children were always uncovering it from behind his ridiculous disguises, and the Baudelaires had begun seeing the eye in other places, such as at the office of an evil hypnotist, on the side of a carnival tent, on Esm Squalor's purse, and on a necklace owned by a mysterious fortune-teller. It was almost as if this eye had replaced the eyes of their parents, but instead of keeping watch over the children and making sure that they were safe from harm, this eye merely gave them a blank stare, as if it did not care about the children's troubles, or could do nothing about them. If you looked very closely, you could find the letters V.F.D. half-hidden in the eye, and this reminded Sunny of all the sinister secrets that surrounded the three siblings, and how far they were from understanding the web of mystery in which they found themselves. But it is hard to think about mysteries and secrets first thing in the morning, particularly if someone is yelling at you, and Sunny turned her attention to what her captor was saying.
"You'll be doing all the cooking and cleaning for us, orphan," Count Olaf said, "and you can start by making us breakfast. We have a big day ahead of us, and a good breakfast will give me and my troupe the energy we need to perform unspeakable crimes."
"Plakna?" Sunny asked, which meant "How am I supposed to cook breakfast on the top of a freezing mountain?" but Count Olaf just gave her a nasty smile.
"Too bad your brain isn't as big as your teeth, you little monkey," he said. "You're talking nonsense, as usual."
Sunny sighed, frustrated that there was no one on top of the Mortmain Mountains who understood what she was trying to say. "Translo," she said, which meant "Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that it's nonsense."
"There you go, babbling again," Olaf said, and tossed Sunny the car keys. "Get the groceries out of the trunk of the car and get to work."
Sunny suddenly thought of something that might cheer her up a little bit. "Sneakitawc," she said, which was her way of saying "Of course, because you don't understand me, I can say anything I want to you, and you'll have no idea what I'm talking about."
"I'm getting quite tired of your ridiculous speech impediment," Count Olaf said.
"Brummel," Sunny said, which meant "In my opinion, you desperately need a bath, and your clothing is a shambles."
"Be quiet this instant," Olaf ordered.
"Busheney," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, "You're an evil man with no concern whatsoever for other people."
"Shut up!" Count Olaf roared. "Shut up and get cooking!"
Sunny got out of the casserole dish and stood up, looking down at the snowy ground so the villain would not see she was smiling. It is not nice to tease people, of course, but the youngest Baudelaire felt that it was all right to enjoy a joke at the expense of such a murderous and evil man, and she walked to Olaf's car with a spring in her step, a phrase which here means "in a surprisingly cheerful manner considering she was in the clutches of a ruthless villain on top of a mountain so cold that even the nearby waterfall was frozen solid."
But when Sunny Baudelaire opened the trunk of the car her smile faded. Under normal circumstances, it is not safe to keep groceries in the trunk of a car for an extended period of time, because some foods will spoil without being refrigerated. But Sunny saw that the temperatures of the Mortmain Mountains had caused the groceries to become over-refrigerated. A thin layer of frost covered every item, and Sunny had to crawl inside and wipe the frost off with her bare hands to see what she might make for the troupe. There was a variety of well-chilled food that Olaf had stolen from the carnival, but none of it seemed like the makings of a good breakfast. There was a bag of coffee beans beneath a harpoon gun and a frozen hunk of spinach, but there was no way to grind the beans into tiny pieces to make coffee. Near a picnic basket and a large bag of mushrooms was a jug of orange juice, but it had been close to one of the bullet holes in the trunk, and so had frozen completely solid in the cold. And after Sunny moved aside three chunks of cold cheese, a large can of water chestnuts, and an eggplant as big as herself, she finally found a small jar of boysenberry jam, and a loaf of bread she could use to make toast, although it was so cold it felt more like a log than a breakfast ingredient.
"Wake up!" Sunny peeked out of the trunk and saw Count Olaf calling through the door of one of the tents she had assembled. "Wake up and get dressed for breakfast!"
"Can't we sleep ten minutes more?" asked the whiny voice of the hook-handed man. "I was having a lovely dream about sneezing without covering my nose and mouth, and giving everybody germs."
"Absolutely not!" Olaf replied. "I have lots of work for you to do."
"But Olaf," said Esm Squalor, emerging from the tent she had shared with Count Olaf. Her hair was in curlers and she was wearing a long robe and a pair of fuzzy slippers. "I need a little while to choose what I'm going to wear. It's not in to burn down a headquarters without wearing a fashionable outfit."
Sunny gasped in the trunk. She had known that Olaf was eager to reach the V.F.D. headquarters as soon as possible, in order to get his hands on the rest of some crucial evidence, but it had not occurred to her that he would combine this evidence-grabbing with his usual pyromania, a word which here means "a love of fire, usually the product of a deranged mind."