The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events 11)

"That must be Fiona's mother," Klaus said, pointing at the laughing woman.

"Look," Violet said, pointing to the wall behind the family. "This was taken on board the Queequeg. That's the edge of the plaque with the captain's personal philosophy – 'He who hesitates is lost.' "

"The whole family is lost, almost," Klaus said quietly. "Fiona's mother is dead. Her brother joined Count Olaf's troupe. And who knows where her stepfather is?" He put down the photograph, opened his commonplace book, and flipped to the beginning, where he had pasted another photograph taken long ago.

This photograph also had four people in it, although one of the people was facing away from the camera, so it was impossible to tell who it was. The second person was Jacques Snicket, who of course was long dead. And the other two people were the Baudelaire parents. Klaus had kept this photograph ever since the children found it at Heimlich Hospital, and had looked at it every day, gazing into his parents' faces and reading the one sentence, over and over, that had been typed below it. "Because of the evidence discussed on page nine," the sentence read, "experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown."

For quite some time, the Baudelaires had thought this meant one of their parents was alive after all, but now they were almost certain it meant no such thing. Violet and Klaus looked from one photograph to the other, imagining a time when no one in the pictures was lost, and everyone was happy.

Klaus sighed, and looked at his sister. "Maybe we shouldn't be hesitating here," Klaus said. "Maybe we should be rescuing our captain, instead of reading books of poetry and looking at old photographs. I don't want to lose Fiona."

"Fiona's safe with her brother," Violet said, "and I'm sure she'll join us when she can. We need to decode this message, or we might lose everything. In this case, he or she who doesn't hesitate is lost."

"What if we decode the message before Fiona arrives?" Klaus asked. "Do we wait for her to join us?"

"We wouldn't have to," Violet said. "The three of us could properly operate this submarine by ourselves. All we'd need to do is repair the porthole, and we could probably steer the Queequeg out of the Carmelita."

"We can't abandon her here," Klaus said. "She wouldn't abandon us."

"Are you sure?" violet asked.

Klaus sighed, and looked at the photograph again. "No," he said. "Let's get to work."

Violet nodded in agreement, and the two Baudelaires shelved the discussion – a phrase which here means "temporarily stopped their conversation" and unshelved the poetry books in order to get to work on decoding Quigley's Verse Fluctuation Declarations. It had been some time since the Baudelaires had been able to read in a comfortable place, and the children were pleased to find themselves silently flipping pages, searching for certain words, and even taking a few notes. Reading poetry, even if you are only reading to find a secret message hidden within its words, can often give one a feeling of power, the way you can feel powerful if you are the only one who brought an umbrella on a rainy day, or the only one who knows how to untie knots when you're taken hostage. With each poem the children felt more and more powerful – or, as they might have said in their food code, more and more wasabi – and by the time the two volunteers were interrupted they felt as if the tables just might be continuing to turn.

"Snack!" announced a cheerful voice below them, and Violet and Klaus were pleased to see their sister emerging from the kitchen carrying a small plate.

"Sunny!" Violet cried. "We thought you were asleep."

"Rekoop," the youngest Baudelaire said, which meant something along the lines of, "I had a brief nap, and when I woke up I felt well enough to cook something."

"I am a bit hungry," Klaus admitted. "What did you make us?"

"Amuse bouche," Sunny said, which meant something like, "Tiny water chestnut sandwiches, with a spread of cheese and sesame seeds."

"They're quite tasty," Violet said, and the three children shared the plate of amuse bouche as the elder Baudelaires brought Sunny up to speed, a phrase which here means "told their sister what had happened while she was suffering inside the diving helmet." They told her about the terrible villain they encountered inside. They described the hideous circumstances in which the Snow Scouts found themselves, and the hideous clothing worn by Esmé Squalor and Carmelita Spats. They told her about the Volunteer Factual Dispatch, and the Verse Fluctuation Declarations they were trying to decode. And, finally, they told her about the hook-handed man being Fiona's long-lost brother, and the possibility that he might join them aboard the Queequeg. "Perifido," Sunny said, which meant "It would be foolish to trust one of Olaf's henchmen."

"We don't trust him," Klaus said. "Not really. But Fiona trusts him, and we trust Fiona."

"Volatile," Sunny said.

"Yes," Violet admitted, "but we don't have much choice. We're in the middle of the ocean –"

"And we need to get to the beach," Klaus said, and held up the book of Lewis Carroll's poetry. "I think I've solved part of the Verse Fluctuation Declaration. Lewis Carroll has a poem called 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' "

"There was something about a walrus in the telegram," Violet said.

"Yes," Klaus said. "It took me a while to find the specific stanza, but here it is. Quigley wrote:

'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' The Walrus did beseech. 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the movie theater.' "

"Yes," Violet said. "But what does the actual poem say?"

Klaus read,

"'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' The Walrus did beseech. 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach.' "

Klaus closed the book and looked up at his sisters. "Quigley wants us to meet him tomorrow," he said, "at Briny Beach."

"Briny Beach," Violet repeated quietly. The eldest Baudelaire did not have to remind her siblings, of course, of the last time they were at Briny Beach, learning from Mr. Poe that the tables of their lives had turned. The three siblings sat and thought of that terrible day, which felt as blurred and faded as the photograph of Fiona's family – or the photograph of their own parents, pasted into Klaus's commonplace book. Returning to Briny Beach after all this time felt to the Baudelaires like an enormous step backward, as if they would lose their parents and their home again, and Mr. Poe would take them once more to Count Olaf's house, and all the unfortunate events would crash over them once more, like the waves of the ocean crashing on the tidepools of Briny Beach and the tiny, passive creatures who lived inside them.

"How would we get there?" Klaus asked.

"In the Queequeg," Violet said. "This submarine should have a location device, and once we know where we are, I think I could set a course for Briny Beach."

"Distance?" Sunny asked.

"It shouldn't be far," Klaus said. "I'd have to check the charts. But what would we do when we got there?"

"I think I have the answer to that," Violet said, turning to her book of T. S. Eliot poems. "Quigley used lines from a very long poem in this book called The Waste Land."

"I tried to read that," Klaus said, "but I found T. S. Eliot too opaque. I scarcely understood a word."

"Maybe it's all in code," Violet said. "Listen to this. Quigley wrote:

'At the pink hour when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a pony throbbing party.'

"But the real poem reads:

"At the violet hour when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a –"

"Blah blah blah ha ha ha!" interrupted a cruel, mocking voice. "Ha blah ha blah ha blah! Tee hee snaggle sniggle tee hee hee! Hu

bba hubba giggle diddle denouement!"

The Baudelaires looked up from their books to face Count Olaf, who was already stepping through the porthole and onto the wooden table. Behind him was Esmé Squalor, sneering beneath the hood of her octopus outfit, and the children could hear the unpleasant slapping footsteps of the horrid pink shoes of Carmelita Spats, who peeked her heart-decorated face into the submarine and giggled nastily.

"I'm happier than a pig eating bacon!" Count Olaf cried. "I'm tickled pinker than a sunburned Caucasian! I'm in higher spirits than a brand-new graveyard! I'm so happy-go-lucky that lucky and happy people are going to heat me with sticks out of pure, unbridled jealousy! Ha ha jicama! When I stopped by the brig to see how my associate was progressing, and found that you orphans had flown the coop, I was afraid you were escaping, or sabotaging my submarine, or even sending a telegram asking for help! But I should have known you were too dim-witted to do anything useful! Look at yourselves, orphans, snacking and reading poetry, while the powerful and good-looking people of the world cackle in triumph! Cackle cackle cutthroat!"

"In just a few minutes," Esmé bragged, "we will arrive at the Hotel Denouement, thanks to our bratty rowing crew. Tee hee triumphant! V.F.D.'s last safe place will soon be in ashes – just like your home, Baudelaires!"

"I'm going to do a special tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital," Carmelita bragged, "on the graves of all those volunteers!" Carmelita leaped through the porthole, her pink tutu fluttering as if it were trying to escape, and joined Olaf on the table to begin a dance of triumph. "C is for 'cute!', " Carmelita sang, "A is for 'adorable'! R is for 'ravishing'! M is for 'gor–' "

"Now, now, Carmelita," Count Olaf said, giving the tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian a tense smile. "Why don't you save your dance recital for later? I'll buy you all the dance costumes in the world. With V.F.D. out of the way, all the fortunes of the world can be mine – the Baudelaire fortune, the Quagmire fortune, the Widdershins fortune, the –"

"Where is Fiona?" Klaus asked, interrupting the villain. "What have you done with her? If you've hurt her –"