Later on, and upon returning to her room, Violet decides that the night has grown one shade darker. With an irate sort of urgency, she shuffles through her belongings until she finds a matchbox and swiftly flicks her wrist, lighting a candle whose melted wax clings to its trunk in large droplets. She places it on the bench before her, and its flame shudders wildly at the snappish movement.
Against the turmoil of her thoughts, a clock ticks rather loudly in the background—a steady, repetitive sound—and she feels it will certainly drive her mad.
Tick—tock, tick—tock, tick—tock, tick—
She closes her eyes, releases a breath…
tock—
And in a moment's impulse, Violet retrieves the antiquated clock from the wall only to drop it before her on the workbench, picking it apart with a makeshift scalpel and deriving a peculiar sense of pleasure in hearing its last broken tick before it has receded to complete silence. The gears and cogs are strewn across the surface, down to the very last piece of clockwork, until what remain are a wooden skeleton and a face with arbitrary, timeless numbers.
Deafness, now, and it bring with it much needed—much dreaded—clarity.
There is a certain sense of control in being the one to break; a sense of power, and although dismantling a clock hardly poses as a testament to her sway on the ongoings in her life, the illusion of such a thought offers her a momentary consolation.
A calm in a synthetic, time-frozen reality.
But as the nature of her overactive brain would have it, such calm is hardly long-lived. When the anger fades, bitterness takes its place, and this dulled frustration only serves to make her heart heavy.
Numbly, she moves to stand before a dirtied wall-mirror and frowns. Her moonlight-kissed features are indistinct and shadowy, but she knows that the face staring back at her resembles her mother's to a point where distinction grows more and more faded with the passage of years. This has always been a cause for delight when she was younger, but now she finds herself wishing she looked different after all.
"Who even are you?" she whispers to her reflection.
And the thoughts that pass through her mind hardly make for adequate answers. There is a wearied girl with haunted eyes looking back at her, wearing a dress that much resembles a costume. There are pictures drifting through a haze of memories of inventions and crafts that made her proud at some point—can she be nothing more than what she is good at? There are the responsibilities that she willingly bears, exemplified by three faces that are not her own. There are the dreads and the worries; the cruel voices that whisper to her in the dead of night.
And then there is the way he looks at her. Like she is a shadow of what he lost, or a broken reflection of whom he loved.
Is she then a compilation of all those things? And when did she lose agency in deciding who she got to be?
A mirthless laugh escapes her, short and pained. "I don't even know who I am, let alone who I want to be." And she slumps down on a chair that whines and creaks, her eyes becoming void and her face expressionless.
"But this all feels so… empty." Her voice is faint and curious, as though she has found something that enticed a morbid interest in this surreal state of hers.
She pokes at contemplations and notions with the apathetic scalpel of a surgeon, searching for a point of weakness, for the thought that would make her heart tug with a telltale hurt.
An image of her family brings forth an ache, but it is one that is old and familiar—a regular presence in the back of her mind. Her promise to her mother makes her feel an inkling of dread that laces an otherwise steadfast determination… but from that point onward, her thoughts begin to wander far away from their origin.
"Would he prefer it," Violet mutters, "if I were her?"
And then does she feel the twist in her chest that she was searching for.
She chuckles. "I bet he wishes for it every time he looks at me. Wishes for his Beatrice…"
Craning her neck backwards and closing her eyes, she laughs again, because she feels funny, because this is all so surreal; so silly—because laughing is better than crying.
"I'm silly," she says, standing abruptly and shaking her head. "I'm so silly…!" Her pale hands cover her face as she strives to regain her composure, her dark hair curtaining her features where her hands fail to reach.
Violet draws in a breath, swallows, and lets her arms fall listlessly to her sides.
There is no telling what transpires behind her brown eyes, then.
All there is to tell is that she represses, because that is what she does best.
And she forgets the despondence and disappointment. She forgets her feelings and thinks that it is almost selfish for her to think this way when her sister and adoptive daughter are still so far away from safety.
The mental image of a young child and a toddler, scared and confused, perhaps hurt or otherwise incapacitated, erodes every other thought in her mind, and she almost claws at her hair in frustration at how helpless and incapable she feels.
Suddenly, a dissonant tune severs the silence and startles her. She whips her head in its direction, heart pounding, only to see the dragonfly-winged ballerina twirling in reverse with an eerie glow that bounces off her wings whenever touched by the moonlight.
Violet strides in the direction of the music box, perplexed and unnerved, but when she sees her bird companion sitting nearby, she calms down.
"Tesla," she voices in a reproachful tone that belies her relief. "Don't poke at things so late at night. You might wake someone up…" stroking a finger against his downy feathers, she lightly adds, "or give me a heart attack."
But the melody soon abates, and in its place comes a distinguished click. Violet stops at once, her senses alert, and raises her eyes from Tesla to look at the box beside her. She takes it in both hands and studies it, skilled fingers searching for something that gives. Eventually, she touches the ballerina and notices that she is no longer held tightly in place. Slowly, Violet pulls at the figurine, causing a secondary lid to lift as well, and her mouth falls agape when she sees a piece of paper at the bottom of the box.
She grabs it quickly with shaking hands and leans closer to the candle, muttering the written words aloud, "Have no dread should silence overwhelm; for melodious rings desert their hiding place and seek to answer your questions and your queries. Each rising melody is to the nerves an electrifying current. It warps your senses and displaces you to a new location. But as the nature of time must have it, things go and others come—even the most celebrated melodies. And so to the reader I say, rely not on what you hear; the eyes are much more potent allies. Darkness is dispersed by light. One is borne within, the other is handed by the bearer who ignites others by exhausting his own flame—for that, no ring or song is needed."
For a while, Violet is silent. She contemplates the cryptic words with a frown, resisting the urge to crumple the paper in frustration.
She sighs, "Why must everything be coded and mysterious?"
But when a realization dawns upon her, she pauses. She skims the paragraph again, a rush of adrenalin coursing through her veins. "But I know this code…"
Quickly, she fetches a pen and sits on the bench, tying her hair in a quick motion. "It starts after the mention of a ring…" A stroke of ink circles the beginning. "And continues with every eleventh word…"
Swiftly, Violet progresses through the code, circling the intended words and writing them down at the end of the paper. When the second mention of a ring comes, she stops decoding and reads what she has written, "Desert your current location. Go to the light bearer."
The light bearer…
"Lucifer…" she whispers, turning her gaze to look out the window and imagining the point where the singular road diverges into two.
The thin paper in her fingers has a leaden weight. It edges her; compels her to move fast lest she wastes a second whose value eludes her ready knowledge—and, she soon realizes, it is this ignorance that frightens her, with its merciless taunts and its ability to guide her imagination down the most sinister of roads.
With a lead to guide her, standing still no longer poses as a viable option.
"It's still very vague," she mumbles, reading the strange passage again.
But vague is better than nothing.
Violet gestures for Tesla to sit atop her shoulder, his weight a silent consolation, and ponders what to take with her that could be of use. But scarcely anything exists in the small, dreary room, and with dismay, she concedes that a matchbox is the only thing that she might need.
She pockets it and exits into the dimly-lit hallways, careful to close the door quietly behind her. Her shadow settles beside her on the wall and echoes her steps as she makes towards Klaus's room, but just as she turns to the right, a skeletal figure abruptly emerges in her field of sight and she gasps in surprise.
"What are you doing up so late, dear girl?" says the innkeeper. Her gray hair rests tiredly against her shoulders as it is no longer lifted in a bun; and with no sunlight to force her thin lips into a smile, a sneer settles much more fittingly on her visage. Her face, already deeply wrinkled, grows menacing with the aid of stray shadows that fall upon it. "You shouldn't be wanderin' around at this unholy hour."
Violet recovers quickly, shutting her slightly agape mouth and training her features into a more cordial expression. "I just wanted to see my brother about something."
But Miss Solomon tuts at her response, shaking her head. "That sweet boy hasn't been well all day. He's come down with a cold, you see—nothin' grave, but he sure needs his rest. You don't want to disturb him now that he's finally managed to sleep, do you?"
Concern is quick to worm its way into Violet's heart, but before she can even say a word, an aged hand settles on her shoulder, surprisingly rough albeit its attempt to give an impression of gentleness, and strives to make her turn back whence she came.
"Oh, you needn't worry, girl," says Miss. Solomon, walking the hesitant sister to her room. "I made him some soup and gave him a cup of remedial tea. He'll be fine by mornin'. Now you go rest that pretty head of yours; I turn off the lights in a few, and the darkness gets too much for anyone to tell their hands from their feet."
Alongside a quick mind invariably comes a strong intuition. Violet recognizes half truths and attempts at evasion as easily as she does a malfunctioning mechanical system. She also knows that using blunt force as a solution has rarely ever been a good idea.
And so she gives the innkeeper a tired smile and says, "I see. Thank you for caring for him—I realize I wasn't there when he needed me."
"That's right, you weren't. Would've been better for his and your sake had you not gone prancin' around town, chattin' up good, married men who have good, pious wives."
She says this with a saccharine sweet voice that contradicts her insinuations regarding Violet's character, who in turn raises her eyebrows and says, "It was nothing of that kind, ma'am, I was simply—"
"Yes, you were simply snoopin' around and ignorin' what I told you the very first day you came here," she steps closer to her, and although quite a bit older, she is shorter in height and thus looks up at the girl, clapping her left cheek twice before gripping her face in a skeletal hand and forcing her to lean closer. In a hushed, heated tone, she continues, "Now you listen to me very closely, girlie. If you don't keep your nose to yourself, I'll have to cut it straight off along with your limbs and that pretty, pouty mouth that doesn't know when to shut up." Here, she jerks her hand to give Violet's dark head a harsh shake.
Violet struggles to release herself but the grip does not slacken, it only becomes more bruising. Miss Solomon brings her mouth to her ear and continues, "And this goes to your brother and your male companion, too. And believe me, no one would bat an eye, not even the sheriff. You know why? Because if I told him myself what you've been up to, he'd have you killed himself—ah!"
The aged woman hastily retreats, her fingers leaving in their wake a crimson trail on a pale, smooth cheek. Violet's brown eyes reflect the fire of nearby lanterns, and they stare at the innkeeper as she clutches her wounded hand to her chest with a contradicting set of emotions—a shocked composure, and an angry dread.
"Your fiend bit me!" barks Miss Solomon, and Tesla readies his beak in a silent promise to repeat the offense. "I should have it roasted and stuffed!"
"I don't think your bible would commend it," says Violet, eyes vehement and voice icy. "Then again, I don't think it would commend any of the threats and accusations you just made."
"Don't use that smart tone on me, girl, I don't appreciate it," she hisses.
"And I don't appreciate your insinuations, ma'am." Violet wipes at her cheek with the dark sleeve of her dress. "But I hardly think I owe you an explanation about anything." And she brushes past her in a determined stride that speaks of barely contained ire.
A snappish voice comes from behind her, "Where are you going? Come back here!"
But her commands fall on deaf ears. Violet storms into Klaus's room and heads directly to his bed. "Wake up, Klaus, we're leaving." He hardly stirs. She sits beside his sleeping form and shakes his shoulders. "Klaus, wake up!"
"I wasn't lyin' when I said the boy was sick," speaks Miss Solomon as she leans against the doorframe with her arms crossed over her chest.
And indeed, her brother's forehead burns to the touch, and his breath comes in short, agitated pants. Violet raises furious eyes to look at the innkeeper. "You did this to him?"
"I did," she shrugs. "The tea and the soup? Not so remedial. But wipe that ridiculous look off your face, girl, it wasn't enough to kill him. That would've been accomplished tomorrow mornin' when I handed him his last meal."
"Do you always do that?" Violet snaps acidly. "Kill your customers in cold blood?"
"Not without reason." The words are intoned in such a way to suggest that they mean to respond to a silly, banal question. "You only have yourselves to blame, you know. Your brother has been browsing some books that he had no business readin'. I caught him just in time, thank the Lord for that, but I don't like running risks. There was no guarantee that he wouldn't try again, and I simply did what I had to do."
Violet frowns deeply and shakes her head in disgusted disbelief. "To think you might have a soul, let alone one that deserves some divine reward…"
Miss Solomon scoffs. "Huh! Such righteous words you speak! I bet you think me an evil monster, don't you? Yet I haven't a doubt in my mind that you'd do the same as I did and more if you thought you had a good enough reason for it!"
At Violet's shocked expression, she edges closer in a sauntering gait and drawls, "Yes, I see it right there in your eyes. You have a fire in your heart that brings your blood to a simmer. There's anger. There's hurt. You just can't get over how unfair it all is! Won't be long before the dam breaks. Then there'll be no knowing you anymore. You mark my words, girl!" She wagged her finger in front of her face.
"Enough of this," mutters Violet shakily, seemingly more to herself than to Miss Solomon, and stands up at once. "Mr. Snicket!" she calls as she rushes down the stairs. "Mr. Snicket!"
"Yes! Go!" yells Miss Solomon, her hands gripping the wooden railing of the staircase and her eyes manic. "Leave with your foul company! And don't you ever come back!"
But her voice is a distant echo in the back of Violet's mind. She makes towards the bar and quickly locates Lemony, whose upper torso is sprawled across the table with his hat-clothed head reclining heavily against his forearm—he is clearly passed out from drinking.
If she was in a more permissive state, she would have heaved a heavy sigh and helped him to his room, but such sentiments are swiftly expelled from her mind at the moment. Time seems to grow thinner, yet despite her aggravation, she shakes him carefully lest he is roused with a painful headache—this would only slow them down. "Mr. Snicket," she calls.
And he wakes with a groan, blinking bleary eyes in confusion. "Violet?"
He attempts to sit up, but is instantly made remorseful when a sharp pain shoots through his head, and his muscles, stiff and sore, issue their own complaint.
A cup of water is handed to him, and he drinks.
"Can you stand, Mr. Snicket?" she says, and he instantly notes that her tone is terse and her posture, stiff.
Warily, he deposits the cup on the table and looks at her meaningfully. "Violet, what's the matter?"
"We need to leave," she deadpans. "Now."
"Now?" he echoes, but it quickly becomes apparent that there is no room for discussion. Violet has already turned her back to him and is striding away, and he forces himself through the pain to follow her.
"I shall explain later, but now we need to take Klaus and get out of here."
Their footfalls are in synchrony as they ascend the steps that creak and groan with their every move. She hardly spares the loitering woman a single glance as she moves towards her brother's room, but for his part, Lemony gives her a perturbed, confused look. The old lady has the look of a vulture, and he instantly shares Violet's discomfort at the thought of staying here a minute longer.
When he enters Klaus's room, he sees him lying listlessly on the mattress with an expression that speaks of unadulterated pain. His sister is heaving him up, but she falls short at being able to do so.
"He's gotten worse," she comments anxiously, and Lemony quickly relieves her by placing an arm around the boy's shoulder and another beneath his knees before carrying him. "We must get him some kind of medicine. Quickly."
Questions are lodged in Lemony's throat, and he has to stop himself from spewing them all at once. Instead he looks at the high-strung girl and notes that something in her has changed, like a switch that was turned against her will.
Nonetheless, he follows her down the stairs again, and the last utterances that they would hear in Vesper's Inn leave them feeling jaded as well as upset.
"I hope you know nothing but misfortune."
But someone must have already wished that upon them a long, long time ago.
Does this story keep getting darker or is it just me?
In any case, it has been a long time since I last published, and I don't wish to present any excuse. But to those who have stuck around all this time, you have my most heartfelt thanks.
EDIT - 29/11/2019 - I just wished to let you guys know that I haven't abandoned this story-I simply have no time to write, but the ideas for the next few chapters are there, and I'll get back to writing as soon as I can!