The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events 11)

"Giggle giggle glandular problems!" Esmé cried. "We are going to be painfully wealthy!"

"Heepa deepa ho ho ha!" Olaf shouted. "The world will always remember the name of this wonderful submarine!"

"What is the name of this submarine?" Fiona asked, and to the children's relief the villains stopped their irritating laughter.

Olaf glared at the mycologist and then looked at the ground. "The Carmelita" he admitted quietly. "I wanted to call it the Olaf, but somebody made me change it."

"The Olaf is a cakesniffing name!" cried a rude voice the siblings had hoped never to hear again, and I'm sorry to say that Carmelita Spats skipped into the room, sneering at the Baudelaires as she did so.

Carmelita had always been the sort of unpleasant person who believed that she was prettier and smarter than everybody else, and Violet and Klaus saw instantly that she had become even more spoiled under the care of Olaf and Esmé. She was dressed in an outfit perhaps even more absurd than Esmé Squalor's, in different shades of pink so blinding that Violet and Klaus had to squint in order to look at her. Around her waist was a wide, frilly tutu, which is a skirt used during ballet performances, and on her head was an enormous pink crown decorated with light pink ribbons and dark pink flowers. She had two pink wings taped to her back, two pink hearts drawn on her cheeks, and two different pink shoes on each foot that made unpleasant slapping sounds as she walked. Around her neck was a stethoscope, such as doctors use, with pink puffballs pasted all over it, and in one hand she had a long pink wand with a bright pink star at the end of it.

"Stop looking at my outfit!" she commanded the Baudelaires scornfully. "You're just jealous of me because I'm a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian!"

"You look adorable, darling," purred Esmé, patting her on the crown. "Doesn't she look adorable, Olaf?"

"I suppose so," Count Olaf muttered. "I wish you would ask me before taking disguises from my trunk."

"But Countie, I needed your disguises," Carmelita whined, batting her eyelashes, which were covered in pink glitter. "I needed a special outfit for my special tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital!"

Several of the children groaned at their oars.

"Please, no!" cried one of the Snow Scouts. "Her dance recitals last for hours!"

"Have mercy on us!" cried another child.

"Carmelita Spats is the most talented dancer in the entire universe!" Esmé growled, snapping the noodle over the rower's heads. "You brats should be grateful that she is performing for you! It'll help you row!"

"Ugh," Sunny could not help saying from inside her helmet, as if the idea of Carmelita's dance recital were making her even sicker.

The elder Baudelaires looked at one another and tried to imagine how they could help their young sibling.

"I think we have a pink cape aboard the Queequeg," Klaus said hurriedly. "It would look perfect on Carmelita. I'll just run back to the submarine, and –"

"I don't want your old clothes, you cakesniffer!" Carmelita said scornfully. "A tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian doesn't wear hand-me-downs!"

"Isn't she precious" Esmé cooed. "She's like the adopted child I never had – except for you Baudelaires, of course. But I never liked you much."

"Are you going to stay and watch me, Countie?" Carmelita asked. "This is going to be the most special dance recital in the whole wide world!"

"There's too much work to do," Count Olaf said hastily. "I have to throw these children in the brig, so my associate can force them to reveal the location of the sugar bowl."

"You like that sugar bowl more than me," Carmelita pouted.

"Of course we don't, darling," Esmé said. "Olaf, tell her that sugar bowl doesn't mean a thing to you! Tell her she's like a wonderful marshmallow in the middle of our lives!"

"You're a marshmallow, Carmelita," Olaf said, and pushed the children out of the enormous room. "I'll see you later."

"Tell Hooky to be extra vicious with those brats!" Esmé cried, whipping the tagliatelle grande over her fake octopus head. "And now, on with the show!"

Count Olaf ushered the children out of the room as Carmelita Spats began tapping and twirling in front of the rowers. The elder Baudelaires were almost grateful to go to the brig, rather than being forced to watch a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital. Olaf dragged them down another hallway that twisted every which way, curving to the right and to the left as if it were a snake the mechanical octopus had eaten, and finally stopped in front of a small door, with a metal eye where the metal eye where the doorknob ought to have been.

"This is the brig!" Count Olaf cried. "Ha ha haberdasher!"

Sunny coughed once more from inside her helmet – a rough, loud cough that sounded worse than before. The Medusoid Micelium was clearly continuing its ghastly growth, and Violet tried one more time to convince the villain to let them help her.

"Please let us go back to the Queequeg," she said. "Can't you hear her coughing?"

"Yes," Count Olaf said, "but I don't care."

"Please!" Klaus cried. "This is a matter of life and death!"

"It certainly is," Olaf sneered, turning the knob. "My associate will make you reveal the location of the sugar bowl if he has to tear you apart to do it!"

"Listen to my friends!" Fiona said. "Aye! We're in a terrible situation!"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Count Olaf said, with a wicked smile, as the door creaked open to reveal a small, bare room. There was nothing in it but a small stool, at which a man sat, shuffling a deck of cards with quite a bit of difficulty. "How can a family reunion be a terrible situation?" Olaf said, and shoved the children inside the room, slamming the door behind them.

Violet and Klaus faced Olaf's associate, and turned the diving helmet so Sunny could face him, too. The siblings were not surprised, of course, that the person shuffling the cards was the hook-handed man, and they were not at all happy to see him, and they were quite scared that their time in the brig would make it impossible to save Sunny from the mushrooms growing inside her helmet. But when they looked at Fiona, they saw that the mycologist was quite surprised at who she saw in the brig, and quite happy to see the man who stood up from his stool and waved his hooks in amazement.

"Fiona!" the hook-handed man cried.

"Fernald!" Fiona said, and it seemed they just might save Sunny after all.

Chapter Ten

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. A

nd you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.

The Baudelaire orphans, of course, had had a great sadness in their life from the moment they first heard of their parents' death, and sometimes it felt as if they had to wave smoke away from their eyes to see even the happiest of moments. As Violet and Klaus watched Fiona and the hook-handed man embrace one another, they felt as if the smoke of their own unhappiness had filled the brig. They could not bear to think that Fiona had found her long-lost brother when they themselves, in all likelihood, would never see their parents again, and might even lose their sister as the poisonous spores of the Medusoid Mycelium made her coughing sound worse and worse inside the helmet.

"Fiona!" the hook-handed man cried. "Is it really you?"

"Aye," the mycologist said, taking off her triangular glasses to wipe away her tears. "I never thought I would see you again, Fernald. What happened to your hands?"

"Never mind that," the hook-handed man said quickly. "Why are you here? Did you join Count Olaf, too?"

"Certainly not," Fiona said firmly. "He captured the Queequeg, and threw us into the brig."

"So you've joined the Baudelaire brats," the hook-handed man said. "I should have known you were a goody-goody!"

"I haven't joined the Baudelaires," Fiona said, just as firmly. "They've joined me. Aye! I'm the captain of the Queequeg now."

"You?" said Olaf's henchman. "What happened to Widdershins?"