The Vile Village (A Series of Unfortunate Events 7)

"Maybe," Klaus replied, "but the word 'initial' can also mean 'first.' I think Isadora means that this is the first way she can speak to us — through these poems."

"But we already know that," Violet said. "The Quagmires wouldn't have to tell us. Let's look at all the poems together. Maybe it will give us a complete picture."

Violet took the other two poems out of her pocket, and the three children looked at them together.

For sapphires we are held in here. Only you can end our fear.

Until dawn comes we cannot speak. No words can come from this sad beak.

The first thing you read contains the clue: An initial way to speak to you.

"The part about the beak is still the most confusing," Klaus said.

"Leucophrys!" Sunny said, which meant "I think I can explain that — the crows are delivering the couplets."

"How can that be possible?" Violet asked.

"Loidya!" Sunny answered. She meant something like "I'm absolutely sure that nobody approached the tree all night, and at dawn the note dropped down from the branches of the tree."

"I've heard of carrier pigeons," Klaus said "Those are birds that carry messages for a living But I've never heard of carrier crows."

"Maybe they don't know that they're carrier crows," Violet said. "The Quagmires could be attaching the scraps of paper to the crows in some way — putting them in their beaks, or in their feathers — and then the poems come loose when they sleep in Nevermore Tree. The triplets must be somewhere in town. But where?"

"Ko!" Sunny cried, pointing to the poems.

"Sunny's right," Klaus said excitedly. "It says 'Until dawn comes we cannot speak.' That means they're attaching the poems in the morning, when the crows roost uptown."

"Well, that's one more reason to get uptown," Violet replied. "We can save Jacques before he's burned at the stake, and search for the Quagmires. Without you, Sunny, we wouldn't know where to look for the Quagmires."

"Hasserin," Sunny said, which meant "And without you, Klaus, we wouldn't know how to save Jacques."

"And without you, Violet," Klaus said, "we'd have no chance of escaping from this town."

"And if we keep standing here," Violet said, "we won't save anybody. Let's go wake up Hector, and get moving. The Council of Elders said they'd burn Jacques at the stake right after breakfast."

"Yikes!" Sunny said, which meant "That doesn't give us much time," so the Baudelaires didn't take much time walking into the barn and through Hector's library, which was so massive that the two Baudelaire sisters could not believe Klaus had managed to find helpful information among the shelves and shelves of books. There were bookshelves so tall you had to stand on a ladder to reach their highest shelves, and ones so short that you had to crawl on the floor to read their titles. There were books that looked too heavy to move, and books that looked too light to stay in one place, and there were books that looked so dull that the sisters could not imagine anyone reading them — but these were the books that were still stacked in huge heaps spread out on the tables after Klaus's all-night reading session. Violet and Sunny wanted to pause for a moment and take it all in, but they knew that they didn't have much time.

Behind the last bookshelf of the library was Hector's inventing studio, where Klaus and Sunny got their first glimpse of the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, which was a marvelous contraption. Twelve enormous baskets, each about the size of a small room, were stacked up in the corner, connected by all sorts of different tubes, pipes, and wires, and circled around the baskets were a series of large metal tanks, wooden grates, glass jugs, paper bags, plastic containers, and rolls of twine, along with a number of large mechanical devices with buttons, switches, and gears, and a big pile of deflated balloons. The self-sustaining hot air mobile home was so immense and complicated that it reminded the two younger Baudelaires of what they thought of when they pictured Violet's inventive brain, and every piece of it looked so interesting that Klaus and Sunny could scarcely decide what to look at first. But the Baudelaires knew that they didn't have much time, so rather than explain the invention to her siblings, Violet walked quickly over to one of the baskets, which Klaus and Sunny were surprised to see contained a bed, which in turn contained a sleeping Hector.

"Good morning," the handyman said, when Violet gently shook him awake.

"It is a good morning," she replied. "We've discovered some marvelous things. We'll explain everything on our way uptown."

"Uptown?" Hector said, stepping out of the basket. "But the crows are roosting uptown. We do the downtown chores in the morning, remember?"

"We're not doing any chores this morning,"

Klaus said firmly. "That's one of the things we need to explain."

Hector yawned, stretched and rubbed his eyes, and then smiled at the three children "Well, fire away," he said, using a phrase which here means "begin telling me about your plans."

The siblings led Hector back through his inventing studio and secret library and waited while he locked up the barn. Then, as they took their first few steps across the flat landscape toward the uptown district, the Baudelaire orphans fired away. Violet told Hector about the improvements she had made on his invention, and Klaus told him about what he had learned in Hector's library, and Sunny told him — with some translation help from her siblings — about her discovery of how Isadora's poems were being delivered. By the time the Baudelaires were unrolling the last scrap of paper and showing Hector the third couplet, they had already reached the crow-covered outskirts of V.F.D.'s uptown district.

"So the Quagmires are somewhere in the uptown district," Hector said. "But where?"

"I don't know," Violet admitted, "but we'd better try to save Jacques first. Which way is the uptown jail?" Violet asked Hector.

"It's across from Fowl Fountain," the handyman replied, "but it looks like we won't need directions. Look what's ahead of us."

The children

looked, and could see some of the townspeople holding flaming torches and walking about a block ahead of them. "It must be after breakfast," Klaus said. "Let's hurry."

The Baudelaires walked as quickly as they could between the muttering crows roosting on the ground, with Hector trailing skittishly behind them, and soon they rounded a corner and reached Fowl Fountain — or at least what they could see of it. The fountain was swarming with crows who were fluttering their wings in the water in order to give themselves a morning bath, and the Baudelaires could scarcely see one metal feather of the hideous landmark Across the courtyard was a building with bars on the windows and crows on the bars, and the torch-carrying citizens were standing in a half circle around the door of the building. More of V.F.D.'s citizens were arriving from every direction, and the three children could see a few crow-hatted members of the Council of Elders standing together and listening to something Mrs. Morrow was saying.

"It seems we arrived in the nick of time," Violet said. "We'd better scatter ourselves throughout the crowd. Sunny, you move to the far left. I'll take the far right."

"Roger!" Sunny said, and began crawling her way through the half circle of people.

"I think I'll just stay here," Hector said quietly, looking down at the ground, but the children had no time to argue with him. Klaus began to walk straight down the middle of the crowd.

"Wait!" Klaus called, moving with difficulty through the people. "Rule #2,493 clearly states that any person who is going to be burned at the stake has the opportunity to make a speech right before the fire is lit!"

"Yes!" Violet cried, from the right-hand side of the crowd. "Let Jacques be heard!"

Officer Luciana stepped right in front of Violet, who almost bumped her head on the Chief's shiny helmet. Beneath the visor of the helmet Violet could see Luciana's lipsticked mouth rise in a very small smile. "It's too late for that," she said, and a few townspeople around her murmured in agreement. With a clunk! of one boot, she stepped aside and let Violet see what had happened. From the left-hand side of the crowd, Sunny crawled over the shoes of the person standing closest to the jail, and Klaus peered over Mr. Lesko's shoulder to get a good look at what everyone was staring at. Jacques was lying on the ground with his eyes closed, and two members of the Council of Elders were pulling a white sheet over him, as if they were tucking him in for a nap. But as dearly as I wish I could write that it was so, he was not sleeping. The Baudelaires had reached the uptown jail before the citizens of V.F.D could burn him at the stake, but they still had not arrived in the nick of time.