1 Chapter Seven
Violet gazed at the note in utter disbelief. Her friends and siblings were looking at her with troubled, pleading faces: faces that expected her to know what to do, and how to do it. It was all her fault, she just felt it. Once again she remembered the promise she made to her parents that she would always protect Klaus and Sunny, but look where she'd led them!
"If someone had told me, that day at the beach," she began in a small voice, "that someday we would perform as acrobats in a traveling carnival and find ourselves in a dreadful situation involving the kidnapping of a 15% (who claims to be 100%) psychic gypsy by a horrible ugly Count who has troubled us in eight other homes—if one can call some of them 'homes'—and now plans to steal our fortunes, and kill us too, I would have said they'd had too much cotton candy! But he CAN, and he WILL!" She threw the note to the ground and stomped on it, ripping it up as Chabo would have done with his mighty jaws.
"And who will take care of Chabo?" she asked, for the thought of that Very Freakish Dog just popped into her mind, too. Violet sat down and put her head in her hands, because all her hope was lost.
Isadora timidly reached down and picked up Olaf's ransom note. She read it in a quavering voice that got squeakier and squeakier as she progressed.
"…the gypsy-idiot's life is in your hands," she finished, and followed in Violet's footsteps by throwing it to the ground and stamping on it as hard as she could.
"What should we do?" Duncan asked dully. He was tugging on his hair as if he wished for it all to just get off his head.
"Heece," said Sunny, which, if you recall from book the fourth, means, "Beats me. I'm only a baby."
"Well, we HAVE to at least try to find Lulu," Klaus said. "This isn't fair. If we can't find her, then we'll just have to do what the letter says. Give up the fortunes." He did not need to voice the fact that he would also be killed, for however hard it is to even imagine a thing like that happening to someone close to you, it was what was on all five orphans' minds. Isadora swallowed hard.
"You-you're right. We can't let Olaf murder Lulu just because she was unfortunate enough to…this may sound mean, but…because she was unfortunate enough to befriend you. I mean, look what happened to Duncan and me!"
"What is that supposed to mean? This isn't our fault!" Violet said angrily.
"He follows you wherever you go, and he affects the people you meet. You told me he also killed your Uncle Monty, and your Aunt Josephine!" Duncan pointed out.
"And I can't help but be a tiny bit disappointed that this is how my life is going to end! I haven't even published one poem yet!" Isadora started to cry, and Duncan patted her shoulder.
"So now you're against us?" Klaus asked incredulously. "Our very best friends, against us?"
"Mahitif!" Sunny shrieked.
"Of course not. We're still going to look for Madame Lola, or whatever her name was," said Duncan, but he did not sound like he was actually going to try hard.
"It's Lulu," Violet corrected him automatically.
"You know what I mean!" he snapped, and turned to Isadora. "Why don't we go this way, and they can go that way—,"
"No. We're all going to stick together," said Violet, and she half- smiled at Klaus, remembering the last time one of the Baudelaires had made a decision to stay together instead of splitting up. It had been the time when all three were about to jump out the window of Heimlich Hospital, and Violet wanted to jump one at a time to make sure the cord they had made would hold up. But Klaus convinced her that leaving no one behind was how they were really different from Count Olaf.
"Fine," the Quagmire Triplets said in unison. There was a very long pause.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Isadora said. "This is so stupid. We need each other, and I was making it sound like we were better off without having ever met one another!"
"I'm sorry too," said Duncan. "I hope you'll forgive us!"
"Etuock!" said Sunny, which meant something along the lines of, "Yes, we forgive you! Now let's go find Lulu!" And that is what the five orphans set out to do.
***
Madame Lulu woke up, groggy and dazed, at the top of a very tall place. She had no idea where she was or what had just happened…She remembered her "darlin' Quagmires" turning out to be the infamous Baudelaire murderers, and then the police officer kidnapping her, but after that her memory was blank. She sat up and looked around the room she found herself in. It resembled an attic of sorts; very untidy with cobwebs in the corners. There was an old oak table with stacks of dusty papers on top. Every wall was covered in shelves and shelves of books.
Lulu got to her feet to examine the papers. When she looked closer at the desk, she noticed that the image of an eye had been carved in roughly in odd places. Because this eye reminded her of a particularly painful happening in her past, one that makes me cry myself to sleep when I think of it before bedtime, and also because she was just curious, she picked up a stack of paper.
Almost a whole inch of dust slid off the top paper, causing the gypsy to have a sneezing fit about fifteen minutes long (she was strongly allergic to dust). She held the first paper an arm's length away from her face as she read:
6/13
Baudelaires employed as acrobats. In care of Lauren U. Lichtenstein- Ullman. Need to wait…need to get something they really care for.
6/14
Found job as ring leader. Have to stay close to keep an eye on Baudelaires, make sure they don't escape.
Lulu read on and on, learning about long, complicated plans to steal the Baudelaire murderers' money! But maybe they're not murderers, she suddenly thought. Look at yourself…your name is on just about every most- wanted criminal list and you don't even consider the idea that others may be innocent!
"I'm a 100% psychic!" yelled the 15% psychic. "I will save those kids if it be the last thang I ever done!" So she sat down to prepare her 15% psychic brain to communicate with a certain Very Freakish Dog by the name of Chabo, who was at the moment searching for his master as hard as he could.
***
The orphans were tiptoeing along the sides of tents, trying to avoid the police but trying to find a gypsy, which was a very hard thing to do. This was a particularly difficult task to complete because the police had closed off the entire Librariton carnival area, making it impossible for the five children to leave. They had decided, consequently, to search the carnival area first, for there was a possibility that Madame Lulu was being hidden on the grounds, though they highly doubted it.
Suddenly they saw a flashlight in the distance, bobbing closer and closer with each step its holder took. Whoever it was was staggering most unusually, looking very tall and thin. This was because the person was indeed on stilts.
"Quick, hide behind this flap!" said Violet, pointing to an opening in one of the tents they were currently walking next to. To their horror, two more stilted figures walked out the same way, almost bumping into them. Luckily—a word I do not often use when writing about the Baudelaires—they were able to scramble behind a nearby bush (A/N: which I placed there due to lack of better ideas…) before the second and third tall, thin figures could even notice them.
"Ah! There you two are. Any luck so far?" asked a high, cold voice that belonged to none other than Esme Squalor.
"Unfortunately, no," one of the others said in a moderately high voice.
"But half the brats' time is already gone…They've only got an hour and a half left until either they give up their fortunes or that gypsy's toast!" the last one cackled.
"Oh, you're right! It is already 10:30…" Esme replied. "Well, you keep searching and I'll check back with Olaf." She straightened an overly-poofy wig on her head, and at that moment the orphans all realized the same thing at the same time: Esme and the two others (undoubtedly the powder-faced women) were pretending to be—and doing an extremely poor job at being—clowns.
I don't know about you, but I have very bad memories associated with clowns. For instance: I remember a time when I, Selia Jour, was stuck in an elevator with a clown. This elevator happened to be falling down an elevator shaft of a sixty-six story apartment building, because a particularly snobby woman had just decided that elevators were "out" and ordered that the cords holding the elevator up be cut. While the elevator was dropping down to what would surely be my death, the only thing there was to look at was the clown, who was seemingly just as petrified as I was. So, you can imagine how I associate clowns with great heights, and have been terrified of both ever since.
This was not the case for the Baudelaires and Quagmires, however, so they were not afraid of the clown portion of this disguise. They were afraid of the people wearing the clown disguises, and I'm sure you understand why.
What the people in the clown costumes had said had been even more disturbing that the fact that they were even present, and made all five stomachs lurch unpleasantly. Their time was half-up, and they were no nearer to finding Lulu than going home and living with their parents again.
Violet gazed at the note in utter disbelief. Her friends and siblings were looking at her with troubled, pleading faces: faces that expected her to know what to do, and how to do it. It was all her fault, she just felt it. Once again she remembered the promise she made to her parents that she would always protect Klaus and Sunny, but look where she'd led them!
"If someone had told me, that day at the beach," she began in a small voice, "that someday we would perform as acrobats in a traveling carnival and find ourselves in a dreadful situation involving the kidnapping of a 15% (who claims to be 100%) psychic gypsy by a horrible ugly Count who has troubled us in eight other homes—if one can call some of them 'homes'—and now plans to steal our fortunes, and kill us too, I would have said they'd had too much cotton candy! But he CAN, and he WILL!" She threw the note to the ground and stomped on it, ripping it up as Chabo would have done with his mighty jaws.
"And who will take care of Chabo?" she asked, for the thought of that Very Freakish Dog just popped into her mind, too. Violet sat down and put her head in her hands, because all her hope was lost.
Isadora timidly reached down and picked up Olaf's ransom note. She read it in a quavering voice that got squeakier and squeakier as she progressed.
"…the gypsy-idiot's life is in your hands," she finished, and followed in Violet's footsteps by throwing it to the ground and stamping on it as hard as she could.
"What should we do?" Duncan asked dully. He was tugging on his hair as if he wished for it all to just get off his head.
"Heece," said Sunny, which, if you recall from book the fourth, means, "Beats me. I'm only a baby."
"Well, we HAVE to at least try to find Lulu," Klaus said. "This isn't fair. If we can't find her, then we'll just have to do what the letter says. Give up the fortunes." He did not need to voice the fact that he would also be killed, for however hard it is to even imagine a thing like that happening to someone close to you, it was what was on all five orphans' minds. Isadora swallowed hard.
"You-you're right. We can't let Olaf murder Lulu just because she was unfortunate enough to…this may sound mean, but…because she was unfortunate enough to befriend you. I mean, look what happened to Duncan and me!"
"What is that supposed to mean? This isn't our fault!" Violet said angrily.
"He follows you wherever you go, and he affects the people you meet. You told me he also killed your Uncle Monty, and your Aunt Josephine!" Duncan pointed out.
"And I can't help but be a tiny bit disappointed that this is how my life is going to end! I haven't even published one poem yet!" Isadora started to cry, and Duncan patted her shoulder.
"So now you're against us?" Klaus asked incredulously. "Our very best friends, against us?"
"Mahitif!" Sunny shrieked.
"Of course not. We're still going to look for Madame Lola, or whatever her name was," said Duncan, but he did not sound like he was actually going to try hard.
"It's Lulu," Violet corrected him automatically.
"You know what I mean!" he snapped, and turned to Isadora. "Why don't we go this way, and they can go that way—,"
"No. We're all going to stick together," said Violet, and she half- smiled at Klaus, remembering the last time one of the Baudelaires had made a decision to stay together instead of splitting up. It had been the time when all three were about to jump out the window of Heimlich Hospital, and Violet wanted to jump one at a time to make sure the cord they had made would hold up. But Klaus convinced her that leaving no one behind was how they were really different from Count Olaf.
"Fine," the Quagmire Triplets said in unison. There was a very long pause.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Isadora said. "This is so stupid. We need each other, and I was making it sound like we were better off without having ever met one another!"
"I'm sorry too," said Duncan. "I hope you'll forgive us!"
"Etuock!" said Sunny, which meant something along the lines of, "Yes, we forgive you! Now let's go find Lulu!" And that is what the five orphans set out to do.
***
Madame Lulu woke up, groggy and dazed, at the top of a very tall place. She had no idea where she was or what had just happened…She remembered her "darlin' Quagmires" turning out to be the infamous Baudelaire murderers, and then the police officer kidnapping her, but after that her memory was blank. She sat up and looked around the room she found herself in. It resembled an attic of sorts; very untidy with cobwebs in the corners. There was an old oak table with stacks of dusty papers on top. Every wall was covered in shelves and shelves of books.
Lulu got to her feet to examine the papers. When she looked closer at the desk, she noticed that the image of an eye had been carved in roughly in odd places. Because this eye reminded her of a particularly painful happening in her past, one that makes me cry myself to sleep when I think of it before bedtime, and also because she was just curious, she picked up a stack of paper.
Almost a whole inch of dust slid off the top paper, causing the gypsy to have a sneezing fit about fifteen minutes long (she was strongly allergic to dust). She held the first paper an arm's length away from her face as she read:
6/13
Baudelaires employed as acrobats. In care of Lauren U. Lichtenstein- Ullman. Need to wait…need to get something they really care for.
6/14
Found job as ring leader. Have to stay close to keep an eye on Baudelaires, make sure they don't escape.
Lulu read on and on, learning about long, complicated plans to steal the Baudelaire murderers' money! But maybe they're not murderers, she suddenly thought. Look at yourself…your name is on just about every most- wanted criminal list and you don't even consider the idea that others may be innocent!
"I'm a 100% psychic!" yelled the 15% psychic. "I will save those kids if it be the last thang I ever done!" So she sat down to prepare her 15% psychic brain to communicate with a certain Very Freakish Dog by the name of Chabo, who was at the moment searching for his master as hard as he could.
***
The orphans were tiptoeing along the sides of tents, trying to avoid the police but trying to find a gypsy, which was a very hard thing to do. This was a particularly difficult task to complete because the police had closed off the entire Librariton carnival area, making it impossible for the five children to leave. They had decided, consequently, to search the carnival area first, for there was a possibility that Madame Lulu was being hidden on the grounds, though they highly doubted it.
Suddenly they saw a flashlight in the distance, bobbing closer and closer with each step its holder took. Whoever it was was staggering most unusually, looking very tall and thin. This was because the person was indeed on stilts.
"Quick, hide behind this flap!" said Violet, pointing to an opening in one of the tents they were currently walking next to. To their horror, two more stilted figures walked out the same way, almost bumping into them. Luckily—a word I do not often use when writing about the Baudelaires—they were able to scramble behind a nearby bush (A/N: which I placed there due to lack of better ideas…) before the second and third tall, thin figures could even notice them.
"Ah! There you two are. Any luck so far?" asked a high, cold voice that belonged to none other than Esme Squalor.
"Unfortunately, no," one of the others said in a moderately high voice.
"But half the brats' time is already gone…They've only got an hour and a half left until either they give up their fortunes or that gypsy's toast!" the last one cackled.
"Oh, you're right! It is already 10:30…" Esme replied. "Well, you keep searching and I'll check back with Olaf." She straightened an overly-poofy wig on her head, and at that moment the orphans all realized the same thing at the same time: Esme and the two others (undoubtedly the powder-faced women) were pretending to be—and doing an extremely poor job at being—clowns.
I don't know about you, but I have very bad memories associated with clowns. For instance: I remember a time when I, Selia Jour, was stuck in an elevator with a clown. This elevator happened to be falling down an elevator shaft of a sixty-six story apartment building, because a particularly snobby woman had just decided that elevators were "out" and ordered that the cords holding the elevator up be cut. While the elevator was dropping down to what would surely be my death, the only thing there was to look at was the clown, who was seemingly just as petrified as I was. So, you can imagine how I associate clowns with great heights, and have been terrified of both ever since.
This was not the case for the Baudelaires and Quagmires, however, so they were not afraid of the clown portion of this disguise. They were afraid of the people wearing the clown disguises, and I'm sure you understand why.
What the people in the clown costumes had said had been even more disturbing that the fact that they were even present, and made all five stomachs lurch unpleasantly. Their time was half-up, and they were no nearer to finding Lulu than going home and living with their parents again.