Chapter 7

Fright is a strange thing. When you're frightened at a dentist's office and you hide behind your mother, you may be thinking that the man trying to coax you in the room with the big chair is going to hurt you or your precious teeth. You may be frightened if you're on a plane over 500,000 feet in the air and the captain announces that there are technical difficulties. You may be frightened if you're an author hiding in the sewer underground to keep Very Ferocious Dogs from harming you. However, the Baudelaire sisters were not frightened for any of these reasons, since they were not in a dentist's office, an airplane, or a sewer, places that seemed much more pleasant than the place they were at now. The Baudelaire sisters were at the scene of a terrible fire, a fire that had separated them from their brother and Kit. Violet sat down on a log; frightened if anyone had recognized her as Veronica Baudelaire from the Daily Punctilio and thought that she was a murderer like it said and they were on their way to the Hotel with the authorities to arrest her and her sister.

"Sunny!" she cried, just realizing in how much danger they had put themselves in.

"Violet?" said Sunny, which meant something along the lines of; "Yes Violet?"

"We have to leave!" she said.

"Why?"

"We were just on live television! Remember all those people that are after us? They could have seen us! And this place is filled with police officers!"

"Arta?" said Sunny, which meant, "Well what are we going to do?"

"Leave. We're going to leave this place now."

"Kit!" said Sunny, which meant; "But how will we find Kit? She's our only hope of finding the secret of V.F.D."

"I know, but I don't know how we could look for her without being spotted, since more and more police officers are arriving."

"Frestith." said Sunny, which meant; "You hide and I'll look, I'm harder to spot than you because I'm smaller."

"Sunny, I can't let you do that, it's too dangerous." said Violet.

"Afry?" said Sunny, which meant something like; "Do you want to find Kit or not?"

"Yes but—"

"Go." said Sunny, which meant; "Then let me go."

"Sunny, be careful, Olaf could be lurking anywhere." said Violet.

"Worry." said Sunny, which meant; "Don't worry, I'll be fine."

Violet sighed and walked back to the courtyard of the hotel. She sat on a bench near the fountain she had cleaned herself up in earlier. She smiled as she thought of the time at the Village of Fowl Devotees when Duncan and Isadora were trapped in the fountain shaped like a crow and Sunny had discovered the way to let them out. She thought about where they were right now and if they were still in the hot air balloon with Hector. Then she frowned. Violet had more important things to think of than the past, such as the safety of her baby sister. She thought about going to check on her, but then she thought about the police officers spotting her. She had nothing she could do, other than hope for the best and think about how to get her and her sister and Kit out of there.

Suddenly, amidst the smoke came a small figure slowly making his or her way to Violet.

"Sunny? Sunny is that you?" asked Violet.

"Violet…" said Sunny, which meant; "Violet, Kit…"

"No. Sunny please tell me she's alive. Please Sunny!"

"No." said Sunny. "No Kit."

Violet fell to the ground sobbing.

"Why!" she wailed. "Why did our lives have to turn out so horrible? What did we do wrong?"

"Cry." said Sunny, which meant something along the lines of; "Don't cry Violet, we'll be fine. We'll find V.F.D. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but we'll find it."

"Sunny, don't you get it? We can't go on like this! We have no choice but to…"

"Violet!" said Sunny sternly.

"We have to give ourselves in to Olaf. We're children, and look what we've been through! We don't deserve this. Let's just hand over our fortune and… do whatever he wants us to do. We can't go on running about like this, or for all our lives he'll be chasing us."

"So nothing?" said Sunny, which meant; "So we've come all this way just to give in? We've done all our work for nothing? For nothing?"

"Yes." said Violet. "We have. Let's hope Mr. Poe found Klaus a good enough home. At least he'll be happy."

"Us?" said Sunny, which meant; "And us?"

"Sunny, there is no us. It's over. I'm going to take you to Mulctuary Money Management, give you to Mr. Poe, and go to Olaf by myself."

"Come too!" said Sunny, which probably meant; "I'm coming too!"

"I'm not going to take you back to that horrible place. As long as he has one of us, he'll be happy."

"See?" said Sunny, which meant; "So we'll never see each other again?"

"I'm afraid not. You'll be reunited with Klaus one day, I'm sure of it. But I don't think Count Olaf will ever let me go. And in the end he'll probably…"

"Way!" said Sunny, which meant; "No way Violet, am I crazy? I know our parents left you to take care of us, but giving your own life for our safety was not part of your agreement to them. If one of us goes, we all go."

"But we have no idea where Klaus is, and even if we did…"

"Do." said Sunny, which meant; "But we do."

"Sunny, he's at some house someplace—"

"Money!" said Sunny, which meant; "We can go to Mulctuary Money Management and ask Mr. Poe. He'll tell us, since it's his job to keep us together and safe."

"You're right! Why didn't I think of that? Of course! It was so simple; we could have just gone there a long time ago! But what about V.F.D. and Kit…"

"Later." said Sunny. "Now Klaus."

"What about Quigley though? And his telegram, remember?

At the Violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting

He needed us to get in that taxi, and we did and it led us here. He wouldn't want us to leave, maybe this is where he's supposed to meet us."

"Think." said Sunny.

"I am, but I'm afraid I can't uncover that code any further than Klaus did. He's the reader, not me."

"Fiona." said Sunny, which meant; "If Fiona hadn't joined Olaf, then she would have been with us now and she could have uncovered the code."

"Yeah, you're right." said Violet sadly. She had forgotten that this whole time she had still been wearing Herman Melville on her clothes, and it pained her to think about it. "Once a friend, now a foe. If people can change sides so easily, then how do we know that Quigley hasn't joined up with Count Olaf as well and is just leading us to a trap?"

"No!" said Sunny, which meant; "No, Quigley's good! He'd never abandon us!"

"You're right. Just because Fiona did it, doesn't mean everyone else will too, right?"

"Right." said Sunny.

"If only I wasn't so stupid!" said Violet standing up.

"Stupid!" said Sunny, which meant, "Violet, you're not stupid! You're very smart!"

"No I'm not. I should have waited for one minute in the ersatz elevator. If I had just listened to Duncan, then we would know what V.F.D. was. We probably wouldn't be here now and somewhere where things made more sense."

"No worry." said Sunny.

"Sunny, do you think they're ok?" asked Violet.

"Yes." said Sunny.
"I hope they are. Because they are our only friends now, and if we lose them, we have no one."

"Fiona?" asked Sunny, which meant; "Do you think Fiona would help us?"

"I highly doubt it. Did you see what she did to the hotel? She knew we were going to be in there."

"Why?" said Sunny, which meant; "Why did she have to turn evil? She was so smart and nice, and such a good friend. If only Captain Widdershins and Phil hadn't disappeared. Do you think Olaf took them as part of his plan to get Fiona to join him?"

"No, he was just lucky that it turned out that way. I'm sure that wasn't his plan. He didn't even know that Captain Widdershins had a stepdaughter. He thought we were the only ones. And he was lucky that Fernald"—she said this in a disgusted tone of voice—"was on his crew, because if he wasn't then Fiona would have no reason to join up with him."

"Marry!" said Sunny, which meant; "Remember Captain Widdershins said you should marry Fernald if we found him? That was ridiculous!"

"Yeah, that evil toad would be the last thing I would marry." Violet smiled. She hadn't had a good laugh in a while.

"Wish?" said Sunny, which meant; "Don't you wish that they hadn't burned down the hotel? Then we would know so much more about V.F.D. at that meeting they had planned."

"The meeting!" said Violet suddenly. "I completely forgot about it! It's ruined! It should have been tomorrow, or was it today? I'm losing track of time. They must have had a back up place. Sunny, we can't keep wasting our time here, we need to do something, either to help Kit, Klaus, or find out about V.F.D. Which one do you pick?"

"Kit, help." said Sunny, which meant; "Kit, because she may be injured and need help."

"Good point, then what?"

"Klaus." said Sunny.

"And then V.F.D. It's funny how that used to be our first priority before." said Violet.

Sunny nodded. Suddenly a sound came from a speaker phone.

"ATTENTION. THE TWO BAUDELAIRE MURDERERS VERONICA AND SUSY HAVE BEEN SPOTTED HERE AT THE REMAINS OF HOTEL DENOUEMENT. KLYDE'S WHEREABOUTS ARE UNKNOWN. IT IS BELIEVED THAT THEY HAVE BURNED DOWN THIS LANDMARK AS A PART OF THEIR PLAN. PLEASE ALERT A NEARBY FIREFIGHTER IF YOU SPOT THEM. THANK YOU."

"Oh no." said Violet. "Sunny, now we really have to get out of here."

"HEY, THERE THEY ARE! I SEE THEM! CATCH THEM!" cried a man.

"Sunny, RUN!" screamed Violet. She grabbed her sister's hand and started running. They ran out past the courtyard, through a large field of wheat, and finally ended up at a cornfield.

"What to do?" said Sunny, which meant; "Violet, what do we do?"

"I—I don't know!" said Violet. "Being captured by them is probably worse than Olaf, because at least Olaf wouldn't burn us at stake!"

"Would." said Sunny, which meant; "Yes he would."