A/N: (Updated: February 13, 2025) Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! :) Enjoy!
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Disclaimer: Me no own ASOUE. Get off my lawn, you damn kids! XD
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Chapter 18:
Verbal Fridge Dialogue
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The curtain had come down on daylight when we were a couple stories from the bottom. Man, what a climb. Probably the bravest––and craziest––thing I'd ever done in my life. It'd make a hell of a story, though. One that would definitely entertain Duncan and Isadora when I find them. Oh, please be alright, guys. I'm hurrying, I promise.
Violet tapped the ice beneath her shoes. "Be careful here, Quigley," she said. "The ice feels thin. We'll have to climb around it."
"The ice has been less solid on our way down," I told her. Yes, it was, to my horror. If the waterfall was thawing, we were in deep trouble. If it was back to normal, we'd have no choice but to go back down the Vertical Flame Diversion and hike up the long way to get to Sunny. Time was of the essence, and we were running out of it. Better make it count with what little we have. I hope Sunny finds out something. Anything. We need a lead, hopefully to Duncan and Isadora.
"That's not surprising," Violet said. "We've poked a great deal of it with forks and candelabra legs. By the time False Spring arrives, this whole slope will probably only be half frozen."
"By the time False Spring arrives, I hope we'll be on our way to find Duncan and Isadora," I said.
"Me, too," Violet said quietly, and we said no more until we reached the bottom.
"Did you find Sunny?" a voice asked as our feet touched the ground.
We looked around to find Klaus walking up to us, but it was hard to see him in the night. I took out my spyglass and turned on the flashlight to see better.
"She was the one who was sending the signal," Violet said, taking her ribbon out of her hair. "She's safe."
"And she found out who burned down the headquarters," I said. "It was a man with a beard but no hair and a woman with hair but no beard."
"Even Count Olaf was afraid of them," Violet said.
"You left her with them?" Klaus asked, silently demanding an explanation for why we left her up there.
"They're planning something bad. They're talking about making more orphans," Violet said. She looked up the waterfall and took a deep breath. "Sunny wanted to spy to find out more."
"She's just a baby, she can't be a spy!" Klaus said stiffly.
"She's not a baby anymore," Violet said, shaking her head. "She's gonna meet us down here as soon as she finds out anything. It was her idea, she insisted."
"She insisted?" Klaus repeated, ready to snap at Violet.
"She volunteered," Violet said.
There was a tense pause, then finally they looked up toward the summit.
"Then I guess we'll have to trust her," Klaus said finally, his eyes pleading behind his slightly frosted glasses.
"What choice do we have?" Violet said.
There was another uneasy pause as the two looked at each other then down at the ground. Maybe I should change the subject. Obviously, Sunny's wellbeing was hard on both of them. And to be honest, it was hard on me, too. I looked at Klaus. "Did you find anything?"
Klaus looked me right in the eye. "I found V.F.D.," he said. With that, he headed back into the ruins. Violet and I looked at each other, then followed him inside. "If you were in a building that was about to be burned down, and you had to protect something, where would you hide it?"
"A safe," I said.
"Assuming you have enough time to open the safe," Klaus said.
We thought for a moment. "The refrigerator," Violet said.
"Exactly, so I searched the fridge," Klaus said, leading us over to a blackened metal box against what was left of a wall.
"What did you find?" I asked.
Klaus opened the refrigerator, and I shined my flashlight onto its contents. "Verbal Fridge Dialogue," he said.
"Verbal Fridge Dialogue?" Violet repeated, puzzled.
"Verbal Fridge Dialogue. It's a code used in emergency situations," Klaus said. "If you can't send a message, you can leave one using items you find in the fridge. Listen to this." He opened the code book he found earlier and read aloud. "'The darkest of the jams of three/Contains within the addressee.'"
"That's a couplet, like my sister writes," I said.
"I don't think your sister wrote that particular poem," Violet said. "This code was probably invented before your sister was born."
"That's what I thought," Klaus said. "But it made me wonder who taught Isadora about couplets. They might have been a volunteer."
"She had a poetry teacher when we were young," I said. "But I never met him. I always had cartography class."
"Well, I haven't had much training in poetry, but the couplet seems to say that inside the darkest jar of jam is the name of the person who's supposed to get the message." Klaus picked up a borderline black jar of jam. "The darkest jam is boysenberry." He unscrewed the lid and I pointed my flashlight at the underside of the cap. Written in cursive were two letters, J and S.
"J.S.," I said.
"Jacques Snicket?" Violet guessed.
"But Jacque Snicket's dead," I told her.
Klaus screwed the cap back on the jar. "That's not the only thing that's strange about this message," he said, then read some more from the book. "'Gatherings use a cured, fruit-based calendar. And location can be divined via any spice-based condiment.'" He looked at us. "J.S. is calling a meeting for the whole V.F.D.." He picked up another jar, this one having a few olives floating in it. "The number of olives is the day of the week it is. One for Sunday, Two for Monday..."
"How many olives are in that container?" I asked.
"Five," Klaus said, wrinkling his nose. "I didn't like counting them. Ever since the Squalors fixed us aqueous martinis, the taste of olives hasn't really appealed to me."
"Five olives means Thursday," Violet said.
"Today's Friday," I said. "The gathering of the volunteers is less than a week away."
"But where is it?" Violet asked.
Klaus flipped a few pages. "'Any spice-based condiment should have a coded label referring volunteers to encoded poems.'"
My face scrunched in confusion. "I don't think I understand," I said.
Klaus sighed and reached for a jar of mustard. "This is where it really gets complicated," he said. "Mustard is a spice-based condiment, and according to the code, it should refer us to a poem of some sort."
"How can mustard refer us to a poem?" Violet asked.
Klaus looked at her and smiled. "I was puzzled for a long time, but I finally thought to look at the list of ingredients. Listen to this: 'Vinegar, mustard seed, salt, turmeric, the final quatrain of the eleventh stanza of "The Garden of Proserpine," by Algernon Charles Swinburne, and calcium disodium, an allegedly natural preservative.' A quatrain is four lines of a poem, and a stanza is another word for a verse. They hid a reference to a poem in the list of ingredients."
"It's the perfect place to hide something," Violet said. "No one ever reads those lists very carefully. But did you find the poem?"
Klaus frowned and reached into his pocket. "Under a burnt wooden sign marked 'Poetry,' I found a pile of papers that were burned practically beyond recognition. But here's the one surviving scrap, and it's the last quatrain of the eleventh stanza of 'The Garden of Proserpine' by Algernon Charles Swinburne."
Huh. Talk about sheer luck. "That's convenient," I said.
"A little too convenient," Klaus said. "The entire library was destroyed, and the one poem that survived is the one we need. It can't be a coincidence." He held out the scrap of paper for Violet and me to see. "It's as if someone knew we'd be looking for this."
"What does the quatrain say?" Violet asked.
"It's not very cheerful," Klaus said. I tilted my spyglass so he could see it better. "That no life lives forever/That dead men rise up never/That even the weariest river/ Winds somewhere safe to sea."
Well. That's...comforting. And also confusing. Ugh, where's my sister when I need her? "I wish Isadora were here," I said, shaking my head. "She could tell us what that poem means."
"'Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea,'" Violet repeated. "Do you think that refers to the last safe place?"
"I don't know. I couldn't find anything else that would help us," Klaus said.
"What about the lemon juice?" Violet asked. "And the pickle?"
"There might be more to the message," Klaus said. "If the answer was in this library, then it's gone up in smoke."
"Maybe Sunny could learn something," Violet said.
"Then we'll keep an eye out for her," Klaus said with a nod.
I peered over Klaus's shoulder at the ashy piece of paper. Wait a minute. There was something written beside the eleventh stanza. Something in pencil, too faint for me to read. "Let me see that, Klaus," I said, beckoning for the quatrain.
Klaus handed me his find and I examined it closely. I brought my spyglass closer to the page, hoping that would help me see it more clearly. "There's something very faint here," I said. "Something written in pencil, but it's too faint to read."
Noticing what tricks my spyglass had up its sleeve, Klaus took his spyglass out and fumbled around with it, probably trying to find the flashlight on it.
"Here," I said, holding my hand out. I twisted his rings to the right configuration and out shot a beam of light, piercing the black that had swallowed us. I handed it back to him and we both shone our lights on the stanza. Violet leaned over to get a good look at what we were doing. My eyes widened at what two words had come out of the shadows. I knew those words anywhere. The main reason I was even here in the Mortmain Mountains.
"Sugar bowl," we all said in unison.
"What could that mean?" Klaus asked.
I took out my notebook. "Jacques Snicket mentioned a sugar bowl once," I said. "Back when we were in Dr. Montgomery's library. He said it was very important to find it. I wrote it down on the top of a page in my commonplace book, so I could add any information I learned about its whereabouts." I showed them a page bereft of answers. "I never learned anything more. That's why I'm here. Jacques sent me to find it. And you guys."
"It seems that the more we learn, the more mysteries we find," Klaus sighed. "We reached V.F.D. Headquarters and decoded a message, and all we know is that there's one last safe place, and volunteers are gathering there on Thursday."
"That might be enough if Sunny finds out where the last safe place is," Violet said.
"But how are we gonna get Sunny away from Count Olaf?" Klaus asked.
"We could climb up there again and sneak away with Sunny," I suggested.
Violet shook her head. "The moment they noticed Sunny was gone, they would find us," she said. "From Mount Fraught, they can see everything and everyone for miles and miles, and we're hopelessly outnumbered."
"That's true," I said. "There are ten villains up there, and only four of us."
"Then how are we gonna rescue her?" Klaus said.
I thought hard. If we couldn't climb back up there and get Sunny, then we'd have to get creative. But how? What surefire way could get Sunny back to us? I thought harder. Well, he has something Violet and Klaus love. Maybe... "Count Olaf has somebody you love," I said. "If we have something he loves, we could arrange a trade. What does Count Olaf love?"
"Money," Violet said.
"Fire," I guessed.
"We don't have any money, and Olaf won't trade Sunny for a fire," Klaus pointed out.
"There must be something he really loves––something that makes him happy," I said. "Something that would make him very unhappy if it were taken away." After some thought, my eyes lit up and I gave Violet a sneaky smile. I knew exactly where to hit him where it hurt.
"Count Olaf loves Esmé Squalor," Violet said.
Bingo! Way to go, MacGyver! I was thinking the exact same thing. "If we were holding Esmé prisoner, we could arrange a trade," I said, nodding.
"That's true," Klaus said. "But we're not holding Esmé prisoner."
"We could take her prisoner," I said. Wait...what did I just say? Did I actually suggest that? Maybe the cold was getting to me. Or maybe it was Violet's kiss that had melted my brain to where I wasn't thinking clearly. The why was debatable, but I knew how much Sunny meant to Violet...and Klaus. I'd do anything to make her happy, even if it meant putting a few drops of black dye into my white morality.
Violet and Klaus shared an uneasy look. They didn't seem to like my idea, either. "How would we do it?" Klaus asked.
"We could lure her to us and trap her," I said. "We'll use the Verdant Flammable Devices. We'll light one or two, enough to make enough smoke for them to see us and have one of them, hopefully her, come down here."
"But then what?" Klaus asked.
"We build a trap," I said.
"No," Klaus said firmly, shaking his head. "It's not the right thing to do."
"Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire," I said.
"If everyone fought fire with fire, the world would go up in smoke. There has to be another way," Klaus said.
"Klaus, do you want Sunny back or not?" I said.
Violet looked at me, and instantly, my heart shattered. She wasn't on board with this at all. I could see it in her eyes. She was torn. And if I looked hard enough, I could see the judgment hiding behind the conflict. Oh, please, Violet, I'm just trying to help. I want to make sure Sunny is back safe in your arms. And after all the hell Count Olaf put you through, he deserves this. He deserves to suffer. To have something he loved ripped away from him, just so he can bleed like you've been all this time. And I was going to deliver that blow. With pride. Pride that I was doing the right thing. To put justice in your life.
After what felt like eternity of her gaze instilling shame in me, Violet sighed, then reached into her pocket and pulled out her ribbon. I smiled inwardly. She looked so beautiful with her hair up. I wonder what was going through that brilliant mind of hers. Wait, was she actually going to go through with my plan? Was she going to invent something to get the deed done? "The easiest trap to build is a pit," she said. "We could dig a deep hole and cover it up with some of this half-burned wood so Esmé couldn't see it. The wood has been weakened by the fire, so when she steps on it..."
Klaus and I nodded. She was going to go through with it! Good. "Hunters have used traps like that for centuries to capture wild animals," Klaus said.
"That doesn't make me feel any better," Violet said.
"How could we dig such a pit?" I asked.
"Well, we don't really have any tools, so we probably have to use our hands," Violet said. "As the pit got deeper, we'd have to use something to carry the dirt away."
"I still have that pitcher," Klaus said.
"And we'd need a way to make sure that we wouldn't get trapped ourselves," Violet said.
"I have a rope in my backpack," I said. "We could tie one end to the archway and use it to climb out."
Violet reached down and scooped up a handful of dirt. "Is this the right thing to do?" she asked, letting the dirt fall through her fingers. "Do you think this is what our parents would do?"
"Our parents aren't here," Klaus said. "They might have been here once, but they're not here now."
"Then we'd better get started," I said.
"If we want the pit to be ready by dawn, we'll have to dig all night," Violet said.
"Where shall we put the pit?" Klaus asked.
"In front of the entrance," Violet said. "Then we can hide behind the arch when Esmé approaches."
"How will we know when she's fallen in if we can't see her?" I asked.
"We'll hear it," Violet said, then shivered. "We'll hear the breaking of the wood and Esmé might scream."
Klaus shuddered. "That's not gonna be a pleasant sound."
"We're not in a pleasant situation," Violet said. She looked at me and nodded at the entrance. "Let's go."
I nodded and Klaus and I followed her to the entrance, just down the steps. We got on our knees and got to work. God, this dirt is freezing. I don't know if my fingers will hold up until morning. They might not even last ten minutes. Only time will tell. Before I knew it, Count Olaf laughing filled my mind. Laughing at Sunny as he made her do all his chores; Laughing at all the fires he'd set, all the people he'd killed; Laughing at what he'd done to Violet: attempting to marry her for her fortune, forcing her to run laps all night at Prufrock Preparatory School, prompting a whole slew of people to burn her at the stake in the Village of Fowl Devotees; attempting to cut her head off in Heimlich Hospital. My face grew dark as I gritted my teeth. I began to dig faster, more feverishly, like my life depended on it.
This was my one chance to get back at him for hurting her. And I was going to take it.