The Miserable Mill (A Series of Unfortunate Events 4)

Phil gave the children a sad smile, and reached into his pocket. "At the Lucky Smells Lumbermill," he said, bringing out a bunch of tiny scraps of paper, "they don't pay us in money. They pay us in coupons. See, here's what we all earned yesterday: twenty percent off a shampoo at Sam's Haircutting Palace. The day before that we earned this coupon for a free refill of iced tea, and last week we earned this one: 'Buy Two Banjos and Get One Free.' The trouble is, we can't buy two banjos, because we don't have anything but these coupons."

"Nelnu!" Sunny shrieked, but Foreman Flacutono began banging his pots together before anyone could realize what she meant.

"Lunch is over!" he shouted. "Back to work, everyone! Everyone except you, Baudelamps! The boss wants to see you three in his office right away!"

The three siblings put down their debark-ers and looked at one another. They had been working so hard that they had almost forgotten about meeting their guardian, whatever his name was. What sort of man would force small children to work in a lumbermill? What sort of man would hire a monster like Foreman Flacutono? What sort of man would pay his employees in coupons, or feed them only gum? Foreman Flacutono banged his pots together again and pointed at the door, and the children stepped out of the noisy room into the quiet of the courtyard. Klaus took the map out of his pocket and pointed the way to the office. With each step, the orphans raised small clouds of dirt that matched the clouds of dread hovering over them. Their bodies ached from the morning's work, and they had an uneasy feeling in their empty stomachs. As they had guessed from the way their day began, the three children were having a bad day. But as they got closer and closer to the office, they wondered if their day was about to get even worse.

CHAPTER Four

As I'm sure you know, whenever there is a mirror around, it is almost impossible not to take a look at yourself. Even though we all know what we look like, we all like just to look at our reflections, if only to see how we're doing. As the Baudelaire orphans waited outside the office to meet their new guardian, they looked in a mirror hanging in the hallway and they saw at once that they were not doing so well. The children looked tired and they looked hungry. Violet's hair was covered in small pieces of bark. Klaus's glasses were hanging askew, a phrase which here means "tilted to one side from leaning over logs the entire morning." And there were small pieces of wood stuck in Sunny's four teeth from using them as debarkers. Behind them, reflected in the mirror, was a painting of the seashore, which was hanging on the opposite wall, which made them feel even worse, because the seashore always made them remember that terrible, terrible day when the three siblings went to the beach and soon received the news from Mr. Poe that their parents had died. The children stared at their own reflections, and stared at the painting of the seashore behind them, and it was almost unbearable to think about everything that had happened to them since that day.

"If someone had told me," Violet said, "that day at the beach, that before long I'd find myself living at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, I would have said they were crazy."

"If someone had told me" Klaus said, "that day at the beach, that before long I'd find myself pursued by a greedy, evil man named Count Olaf, I would have said they were insane."

"Wora," Sunny said, which meant something like "If someone had told me, that day at the beach, that before long I'd find myself using my four teeth to scrape the bark off trees, I would have said they were psychoneurotically disturbed."

The dismayed orphans looked at their reflections, and their dismayed reflections looked back at them. For several moments, the Baudelaires stood and pondered the mysterious way their lives were going, and they were thinking so hard about it that they jumped a little when somebody spoke.

"You must be Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire," the somebody said, and the children turned to see a very tall man with very short hair. He was wearing a bright blue vest and holding a peach. He smiled and walked toward them, but then frowned as he drew closer. "Why, you're covered in pieces of bark," he said. "I hope you haven't been hanging around the lumbermill. That can be very dangerous for small children."

Violet looked at the peach, and wondered if she dared ask for a bite. "We've been working there all morning," she said.

The man frowned. "Working there?"

Klaus looked at the peach, and had to stop himself from grabbing it right out of the man's hand. "Yes," he said. "We received your instructions and went right to work. Today was a new log day."

The man scratched his head. "Instructions?" he asked. "What in the world are you talking about?"

Sunny looked at the peach, and it was all she could do not to leap up and sink her teeth right into it. "Molub!" she shrieked, which must have meant something like "We're talking about the typed note that told us to go to work at the lumbermill!"

"Well, I don't understand how three people as young as yourselves were put to work in the lumbermill, but please accept my humblest apologies, and let me tell you that it will not happen again. Why, you're children, for goodness' sake! You will be treated as members of the family!"

The orphans looked at one another. Could it be that their horrible experiences in Paltry-ville were just a mistake? "You mean we don't have to debark any more logs?" Violet asked.

"Of course not," the man said. "I can't believe you were even allowed inside. Why, there are some nasty machines in there. I'm going to speak to your new guardian about it immediately."

"You're not our new guardian?" Klaus asked.

"Oh no," the man said. "Forgive me for not introducing myself. My name is Charles, and it's very nice to have the three of you here at Lucky Smells Lumbermill."

"It's very nice to be here," Violet lied politely.

"I find that difficult to believe," Charles said, "seeing as you've been forced to work in the mill, but let's put that behind us and have a fresh start. Would you care for a peach?"

"They've had their lunch!" came a booming voice, and the orphans whirled around and stared at the man they saw. He was quite short, shorter than Klaus, and dressed in a suit made of a very shiny dark-green material that made him look more like a reptile than a person. But what made them stare most was his face-or, rather, the cloud of smoke that was covering his face. The man was smoking a cigar, and the smoke from the cigar covered his entire head. The cloud of smoke made the Baudelaire children very curious as to what his face really looked like, and you may be curious as well, but you will have to take that curiosity to your grave, for I will tell you now, before we go any further, that the Baudelaires never saw this man's face, and neither did I, and neither will you.

"Oh, hello, sir," Charles said. "I was just meeting the Baudelaire children. Did you know they had arrived?"

"Of course I knew they arrived," the smoke-faced man said. "I'm not an idiot."

"No, of course not," Charles said. "But were you aware that they were put to work in the lumbermill? On a new log day, no less! I was just explaining to them what a terrible mistake that was."

"It wasn't a mistake," the man said. "I don't make mistakes, Charles. I'm not an idiot." He turned so the cloud of smoke faced the children. "Hello, Baudelaire orphans. I thought we should lay eyes on one another."

"Batex!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant "But we're not laying eyes on one another!"

"I have no time to talk about that," the man said. "I see you've met Charles. He's my partner. We split everything fifty-fifty, which is a good deal. Don't you think so?"

"I guess so," Klaus said. "I don't know very much about the lumber business."

"Oh, yes," Charles said. "Of course I think it's a good deal."

"Well," the man said, "I want to give you three a good deal as well. Now, I heard about what happened to your parents, which is really too bad. And I heard all about this Count Olaf fellow, who sounds like quite a jerk, and those odd-looking people who work for him. So when Mr. Poe gave me a call, I worked out a deal. The deal is this: I will try to make sure that Count Olaf and his associates never go

anywhere near you, and you will work in my lumbermill until you come of age and get all that money. Is that a fair deal?"

The Baudelaire orphans did not answer this question, because it seemed to them the answer was obvious. A fair deal, as everyone knows, is when both people give something of more or less equal value. If you were bored with playing with your chemistry set, and you gave it to your brother in exchange for his dollhouse, that would be a fair deal. If someone offered to smuggle me out of the country in her sailboat, in exchange for free tickets to an ice show, that would be a fair deal. But working for years in a lumbermill in exchange for the owner's trying to keep Count Olaf away is an enormously unfair deal, and the three youngsters knew it.