A Series of Unfortunate Events 13 - The End

     “It is,” Friday said. “Of course, people rarely leave this island. No one has left since before I was born, so each year we simply light the outrigger on fire, and push it out to sea. Watching a burning outrigger slowly vanish on the horizon is a beautiful sight.”

     “It sounds beautiful,” Klaus said, although the middle Baudelaire thought it sounded more creepy than beautiful, “but it seems a waste to build a canoe every year only to burn it up.”

     “It gives us something to do,” Friday said with a shrug. “Besides building the outrigger, there's not much to occupy us on the island. We catch fish, and cook meals, and do the laundry, but that still leaves much of the day unoccupied.”

     “Cook?” Sunny asked eagerly.

     “My sister is something of a chef,” Klaus said. “I'm sure she'd be happy to help with the cooking.”

     Friday smiled, and put her hands in the deep pockets of her robe. “I'll keep that in mind,” she said. “Are you sure you don't want another sip of cordial?”

     All three Baudelaires shook their heads. “No, thank you,” Violet said, “but it's kind of you to offer.”

     “Ishmael says that everyone should be treated with kindness,” Friday said, “unless they are unkind themselves. That's why I left that horrible man Count Olaf behind. Were you traveling with him?”

     The Baudelaires looked at one another, unsure of how to answer this question. On one hand, Friday seemed very cordial, but like the cordial she offered, there was something else besides sweetness in her description of the island. The colony's customs sounded very strict, and although the siblings were relieved to be out of Count Olaf's company, there seemed something cruel about abandoning Olaf on the coastal shelf, even though he certainly would have done the same to the orphans if he'd had the opportunity. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were not sure how Friday would react if they admitted being in the villain's company, and they did not reply for a moment, until the middle Baudelaire remembered an expression he had read in a novel about people who were very, very polite.

     “It depends on how you look at it,” Klaus said, using a phrase which sounds like an answer but scarcely means anything at all. Friday gave him a curious look, but the children had reached the end of the coastal shelf and were standing at the edge of the island. It was a sloping beach with sand so white that Friday's white robe looked almost invisible, and at the top of the slope was an outrigger, fashioned from wild grasses and the limbs of trees, which looked nearly finished, as if Decision Day was arriving soon. Past the outrigger was an enormous white tent, as long as a school bus. The Baudelaires followed Friday inside the tent, and found to their surprise that it was filled with sheep, who all lay dozing on the ground. The sheep appeared to be tied together with thick, frayed rope, and towering over the sheep was an old man smiling at the Baudelaires through a beard as thick and wild as the sheep's woolly coats. He sat in an enormous chair that looked as if it were fashioned out of white clay, and two more piles of clay rose up where his feet should have been. He was wearing a robe like Friday's and had a similar seashell hanging from his belt, and his voice was as cordial as Friday's as he smiled down at the three siblings.

     “What have we here?” he said.

     “I found three castaways on the coastal shelf,” Friday said proudly.

     “Welcome, castaways,” Ishmael said. “Forgive me for remaining seated, but my feet are quite sore today, so I'm making use of our healing clay. It's very nice to meet you.”

     “It's nice to meet you, Ishmael,” said Violet, who thought healing clay was of dubious scientific efficacy, a phrase which here means “unlikely to heal sore feet.”

     “Call me Ish,” said Ishmael, leaning down to scratch the heads of one of the sheep. “And what shall I call you?”

     “Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire,” Friday chimed in, before the siblings could introduce themselves.

     “Baudelaire?” Ishmael repeated, and raised his eyebrows. He gazed at the three children in silence as he took a long sip of cordial from his seashell, and for just one moment his smile seemed to disappear. But then he gazed down at the siblings and grinned heartily. “We haven't had new islanders in quite some time. You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like, unless you're unkind, of course.”

     “Thank you,” Klaus said, as kindly as he could. “Friday has told us a few things about the island. It sounds quite interesting.”

     “It depends on how you look at it,” Ishmael said. “Even if you want to leave, you'll only have the opportunity once a year. In the meantime, Friday, why don't you show them to a tent, so they can change their clothes? We should have some new woolen robes that fit you nicely.”

      “We would appreciate that,” Violet said. “Our concierge uniforms are quite soaked from the storm.”

     “I'm sure they are,” Ishmael said, twisting a strand of beard in his fingers. “Besides, our custom is to wear nothing but white, to match the sand of the islands, the healing clay of the pool, and the wool of the wild sheep. Friday, I'm surprised you are choosing to break with tradition.”

     Friday blushed, and her hand rose to the sunglasses she was wearing. “I found these in the wreckage,” she said. “The sun is so bright on the island, I thought they might come in handy.”

     “I won't force you,” Ishmael said calmly, “but it seems to me you might prefer to dress according to custom, rather than showing off your new eyewear.”

     “You're right, Ishmael,” Friday said quietly, and removed her sunglasses with one hand while the other hand darted into one of her robe's deep pockets.

     “That's better,” Ishmael said, and smiled at the Baudelaires. “I hope you will enjoy living on this island,” he said. “We're all castaways here, from one storm or another, and rather than trying to return to the world, we've built a colony safe from the world's treachery.”

     “There was a treacherous person with them,” Friday piped up eagerly. “His name was Count Olaf, but he was so nasty that I didn't let him come with us.”

     “Olaf?” Ishmael said, and his eyebrows raised again. “Is this man a friend of yours?”

     “Fat chance,” Sunny said.

     “No, he isn't,” Violet translated quickly. “To tell you the truth, we've been trying to escape from Count Olaf for quite some time.”

     “He's a dreadful man,” Klaus said.

     “Same boat,” Sunny said.

     “Hmmm,” Ishmael said thoughtfully. “Is that the whole story, Baudelaires?”

     The children looked at one another. Of course, the few sentences they'd uttered were not the whole story. There was much, much more to the story of the Baudelaires and Count Olaf, and if the children had recited all of it Ishmael probably would have wept until the tears melted away the clay so his feet were bare and he had nothing to sit on. The Baudelaires could have told the island's facilitator about all of Count Olaf's schemes, from his vicious murder of Uncle Monty to his betrayal of Madame Lulu at the Caligari Carnival. They could have told him about his disguises, from his false peg leg when he was pretending to be Captain Sham, to his running shoes and turban when he was calling himself Coach Genghis. They could have told Ishmael about Olaf's many comrades, from his girlfriend Esmé Squalor to the two white-faced women who had disappeared in the Mortmain Mountains, and they could have told Ishmael about all of the unsolved mysteries that still kept the Baudelaires awake at night, from the disappearance of Captain Widdershins from an underwater cavern to the strange taxi driver who had approached the children outside the Hotel Denouement, and of course they could have told Ishmael about that ghastly day at Briny Beach, when they first heard the news of their parents' deaths. But if the Baudelaires had told Ishmael the whole story, they would have had to tell the parts that put the Baudelaires in an unfavorable light, a phrase which here means “the things the Baudelaires had done that were perhaps as treacherous as Olaf.” They would have talked about their own schemes, from digging a pit to trap Esmé to starting the fire that destroyed the Hotel Denouement. They would have mentioned their own disguises, from Sunny pretending to be Chabo the Wolf Baby to Violet and Klaus pretending to be Snow Scouts, and their own comrades, from Justice Strauss, who turned out to be more useful than they had first thought, to Fiona, who turned out to be more treacherous than they had imagined. If the Baudelaire orphans had told Ishmael the whole story, they might have looked as villainous as Count Olaf. The Baudelaires did not want to find themselves back on the coastal shelf, with all the detritus of the storm. They wanted to be safe from treachery and harm, even if the customs of the island colony were not exactly to their liking, and so, rather than telling Ishmael the whole story, the Baudelaires merely nodded, and said the safest thing they could think of.

     “It depends on how you look at it,” Violet said, and her siblings nodded in agreement.

     “Very well,” Ishmael said. “Run along and find your robes, and once you've changed, please give all of your old things to Friday and we'll haul them off to the arboretum.”

     “Everything?” Klaus said.

     Ishmael nodded. “That's our custom.”

     “Occulaklaus?” Sunny asked, and her siblings quickly explained that she meant something like, “What about Klaus's glasses?”

     “He can scarcely read without them,” Violet added.

     Ishmael raised his eyebrows again. “Well, there's no library here,” he said quickly, with a nervous glance at Friday, “but I suppose your eyeglasses are of some use. Now, hurry along, Baudelaires, unless you'd like a sip of cordial before you go.”

     “No, thank you,” Klaus said, wondering how many times he and his siblings would be offered this strange, sweet beverage. “My siblings and I tried some, and didn't care much for the taste.”

     “I won't force you,” Ishmael said again, “but your initial opinion on just about anything may change over time. See you soon, Baudelaires.”

     He gave them a small wave, and the Baudelaires waved back as Friday led them out of the tent and farther uphill where more tents were fluttering in the morning breeze.

     “Choose any tent you like,” Friday said. “We all switch tents each day—except for Ishmael, because of his feet.”

     “Isn't it confusing to sleep in a different place each night?” Violet asked.

    “It depends on how you look at it,” Friday said, taking a sip from her seashell. “I've never slept any other way.”

     “Have you lived your whole life on this island?” Klaus said.

     “Yes,” Friday said. “My mother and father took an ocean cruise while she was pregnant, and ran into a terrible storm. My father was devoured by a manatee, and my mother was washed ashore when she was pregnant with me. You'll meet her soon. Now please hurry up and change.”

     “Prompt,” Sunny assured her, and Friday took her hand out of her pocket and shook Sunny's.

     The Baudelaires walked into the nearest tent, where a pile of robes lay folded in one corner. In moments, they changed into their new clothes, happy to discard their concierge uniforms, which were soaked and salty from the night's storm. When they were finished, however, they stood and stared for a moment at the pile of damp clothing. The Baudelaires felt strange to don the garments of shibboleth, a phrase which here means “wear the warm and somewhat unflattering clothing that was customary to people they hardly knew.” It felt as if the three siblings were casting away everything that had happened to them prior to their arrival on the island. Their clothing, of course, was not the Baudelaires' whole story, as clothing is never anyone's whole story, except perhaps in the case of Esmé Squalor, whose villainous and fashionable clothing revealed just how villainous and fashionable she was. But the Baudelaires could not help but feel that they were abandoning their previous lives, in favor of new lives on an island of strange customs.

     “I won't throw away this ribbon,” Violet said, winding the slender piece of cloth through her fingertips. “I'm still going to invent things, no matter what Ishmael says.”

     “I'm not throwing away my commonplace book,” Klaus said, holding the dark blue notebook. “I'll still research things, even if there's no library here.”

     “No throw this,” Sunny said, and held up a small metal implement so her siblings could see. One end was a small, simple handle, perfect for Sunny's petite hands, and the other end branched into several sturdy wires that were meshed together like a small shrubbery.

     “What is that?” Violet asked.

     “Whisk,” Sunny said, and she was exactly right. A whisk is a kitchen tool used to mix ingredients together rapidly, and the youngest Baudelaire was happy to have such a useful item in her possession.

     “Yes,” Klaus said. “I remember our father used to use it when he prepared scrambled eggs. But where did it come from?”

     “Gal Friday,” Sunny said.

     “She knows Sunny can cook,” Violet said, “but she must have thought Ishmael would make her throw the whisk away.”

     “I guess she's not so eager to follow all of the colony's customs,” Klaus said.

     “Guesso,” Sunny agreed, and put the whisk in one of her robe's deep pockets. Klaus did the same with his commonplace book, and Violet did the same with her ribbon, and the three of them stood together for a moment, sharing their pocketed secrets. It felt strange to be keeping secrets from people who had taken them in so kindly, just as it felt strange not to tell Ishmael their whole story. The secrets of the ribbon, the commonplace book, and the whisk felt submerged, a word for “hidden” that usually applies to things underwater, such as a submarine submerged in the sea, or a boat's figurehead submerged in a coastal shelf, and with each step the Baudelaires took out of the tent, they felt their submerged secrets bumping up against them from within the pockets of their robes.

     The word “ferment,” like the words “bear,” “yarn,” and “hard,” can mean two completely different things. One meaning is the chemical process by which the juice of certain fruits becomes sweeter and stronger, as Klaus explained to his siblings on the coastal shelf. But the other meaning of “ferment” refers to something building inside someone, like a secret that may be eventually found out, or a scheme that someone has been planning for quite some time. As the three Baudelaires exited the tent, and handed the detritus of their previous lives to Friday, they felt their own secrets fermenting inside them, and wondered what other secrets and schemes lay undiscovered. The Baudelaire orphans followed Friday back down the sloping beach, and wondered what else was fermenting on this strange island that was their new home.

CHAPTER

Four

 

     By the time the Baudelaire orphans returned to Ishmael's tent, the joint was hopping, a phrase which here means “full of islanders in white robes, all holding items they had scavenged from the coastal shelf.” The sheep were no longer napping but standing stiffly in two long lines, and the ropes tying them together led to a large wooden sleigh—an unusual form of transportation in such warm weather. Friday led the children through the colonists and sheep, who stepped aside and looked curiously at the three new castaways. Although this was the first time that the Baudelaires were castaways, they were accustomed to being strangers in a community, from their days at Prufrock Preparatory School to their time spent in the Village of Fowl Devotees, but they still did not enjoy being stared at. But it is one of the strange truths of life that practically nobody likes to be stared at and that practically nobody can stop themselves from staring, and as the three children made their way toward Ishmael, who was still sitting on his enormous clay chair, the Baudelaires could not help looking back at the islanders with the same curiosity, wondering how so many people could become castaways on the same island. It was as if the world was full of people with lives as unfortunate as that of the Baudelaires, all ending up in the very same place.

     Friday led the Baudelaires to the base of Ishmael's chair, and the facilitator smiled down at the children as they sat at his clay-covered feet. “Those white robes look very handsome on you Baudelaires,” he said. “Much better than those uniforms you were wearing earlier. You're going to be wonderful colonists, I am sure of it.”

     “Pyrrhonic?” Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, “How can you be sure of such a thing based on our clothing?” But rather than translate, Violet remembered that the colony valued kindness and decided to say something kind.

     “I can't tell you how much we appreciate this,” Violet said, careful not to lean against the mounds of clay that hid Ishmael's toes. “We didn't know what would happen to us after the storm, and we're grateful to you, Ishmael, for taking us in.”

     “Everyone is taken in here,” Ishmael said, apparently forgetting that Count Olaf had been abandoned. “And please, call me Ish. Would you like some cordial?”

     “No, thank you,” said Klaus, who could not bring himself to call the facilitator by his nickname. “We'd like to meet the other colonists, if that's all right.”

     “Of course,” Ishmael said, and clapped his hands for attention. “Islanders!” he cried. “As I'm sure you've noticed, we have three new castaways with us today—Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, the only survivors of that terrible storm. I'm not going to force you, but as you bring up your storm scavenging items for my suggestions, why don't you introduce yourselves to our new colonists?”

     “Good idea, Ishmael,” said someone from the back of the tent.

     “Call me Ish,” said Ishmael, stroking his beard. “Now then, who's first?”

     “I suppose I am,” said a pleasant-looking man who was holding what looked like a large, metal flower. “It's nice to meet you three. My name is Alonso, and I've found the propeller of an airplane. The poor pilot must have flown straight into the storm.”

     “What a shame,” Ishmael said. “Well, there's no airplane to be found on the island, so I don't think a propeller will be of much use.”

     “Excuse me,” Violet said hesitantly, “but I know something about mechanical devices. If we rigged the propeller up to a simple hand-powered motor, we'd have a perfect fan for keeping cool on particularly hot days.”

     There was a murmur of appreciation from the crowd, and Alonso smiled at Violet. “It does get mighty hot around here,” he said. “That's a good idea.”

     Ishmael took a sip of cordial from his seashell, and then frowned at the propeller. “It depends on how you look at it,” he said. “If we only made one fan, then we'd all be arguing over who got to stand in front of it.”

     “We could take turns,” Alonso said.

     “Whose turn will it be on the hottest day of the year?” Ishmael countered, a word which here means “said in a firm and sensible tone of voice, even though it was not necessarily a sensible thing to say.” “I'm not going to force you, Alonso, but I don't think building a fan is worth all the fuss it might cause.”

     “I suppose you're right,” Alonso said, with a shrug, and put the propeller on the wooden sleigh. “The sheep can take it to the arboretum.”

     “An excellent decision,” Ishmael said, as a girl perhaps one or two years older than Violet stepped forward.

     “I'm Ariel,” she said, “and I found this in a particularly shallow part of the shelf. I think it's a dagger.”

     “A dagger?” Ishmael said. “You know we don't welcome weapons on the island.”

     Klaus was peering at the item Ariel was holding, which was made of carved wood rather than metal. “I don't think that's a dagger,” Klaus said. “I believe it's an old tool used for cutting the pages of books. Nowadays most books are sold with their pages already separated, but some years ago each page was attached to the next, so you needed an implement to slice open the folds of paper and read the book.”

     “That's interesting,” Ariel remarked.

     “It depends on how you look at it,” Ishmael said. “I fail to see how it could be of use here. We've never had a single book wash ashore— the storms simply tear the pages apart.”

     Klaus reached into his pocket and touched his hidden commonplace book. “You never know when a book might turn up,” he pointed out. “In my opinion, that tool might be useful to keep around.”

     Ishmael sighed, looking first at Klaus and then at the girl who had found the item. “Well, I'm not going to force you, Ariel,” he said, “but if I were you I would toss that silly thing onto the sleigh.”

     “I'm sure you're right,” Ariel said, shrugging at Klaus, and she put the page cutter next to the propeller as a plump man with a sunburned face stepped forward.

     “Sherman's the name,” said Sherman, with a little bow to all three siblings. “And I found a cheese grater. I nearly lost a finger prying it away from a nest of crabs!”

     “You shouldn't have gone to all that trouble,” Ishmael said. “We're not going to have much use for a cheese grater without any cheese.”

     “Grate coconut,” Sunny said. “Delicious cake.”

     “Cake?” Sherman said. “Egad, that would be delicious. We haven't had dessert since I've arrived here.”

     “Coconut cordial is sweeter than dessert,” Ishmael said, raising his seashell to his lips. “I certainly wouldn't force you, Sherman, but I do think it would be best if that grater were thrown away.”

     Sherman took a sip from his own seashell, and then nodded, looking down at the sand. “Very well,” he said, and the rest of the morning proceeded in a similar manner. Islander after islander introduced themselves and presented the items they had found, and nearly every time the colony's facilitator discouraged them from keeping anything. A bearded man named Robinson found a pair of overalls, but Ishmael reminded him that the colony only wore the customary white robes, even though Violet could imagine herself wearing them while inventing some sort of mechanical device, so as not to get her robe dirty. An old woman named Erewhon held up a pair of skis that Ishmael dismissed as impractical, although Klaus had read of people who had used skis to cross mud and sand, and a red-haired woman named Weyden offered a salad spinner, but Ishmael reminded her that the island's only salads were to be made from the seaweed that was rinsed in the pool and dried out in the sun, rather than spun, even though Sunny could almost taste a dried coconut snack that such an appliance could have made. Ferdinand island to dump the items in the arboretum, and the islanders excused themselves, at Ishmael's suggestion, to wash their hands for lunch. Within moments the only occupants of the tent were Ishmael, the Baudelaire orphans, and the girl who had first brought them to the tent, as if the siblings were merely another piece of wreckage to be picked over for approval.

     “Quite a storm, wasn't it?” asked Ishmael, after a short silence. “We scavenged even more junk than usual.”

     “Were any other castaways found?” Violet asked.

     “Do you mean Count Olaf?” Ishmael asked. “After Friday abandoned him, he'd never dare approach the island. He's either wandering around the coastal shelf, or he's trying to swim his way back to wherever he came from.”

     The Baudelaires looked at one another, knowing full well that Count Olaf was likely hatching some scheme, particularly as none of the islanders had found the boat's figurehead, where the deadly spores of the Medusoid Mycelium were hidden. “We weren't just thinking of Olaf,” Klaus said. “We had some friends who may have been caught in the same storm— a pregnant woman named Kit Snicket who was in a submarine with some associates, and a group of people who were traveling by air.”

     Ishmael frowned, and drank some cordial from his seashell. “Those people haven't turned up,” he said, “but don't despair, Baudelaires. It seems that everything eventually washes up on our shores. Perhaps their crafts were unharmed by the storm.”

     “Perhaps,” Sunny agreed, trying not to think that they might not have been as lucky as that.

     “They might turn up in the next day or so,” Ishmael continued. “Another storm is heading this way.”

     “How do you know?” Violet asked. “Is there a barometer on the island?”

     “There's no barometer,” Ishmael said, referring to a device that measures the pressure in the atmosphere, which is one way of predicting the weather. “I just know there's one coming.”

     “How would you know such a thing?” Klaus asked, stopping himself from retrieving his commonplace book so he could take notes. “I've always heard that the weather is difficult to predict without advanced instruments.”

     “We don't need any advanced instruments on this colony,” Ishmael said. “I predict the weather by using magic.”

     “Meledrub,” Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, “I find that very difficult to believe,” and her siblings silently agreed. The Baudelaires, as a rule, did not believe in magic, although their mother had had a nifty card trick she could occasionally be persuaded to perform. Like all people who have seen something of the world, the children had come across plenty of things they had been unable to explain, from the diabolical hypnotism techniques of Dr. Orwell to the way a girl named Fiona had broken Klaus's heart, but they had never been tempted to solve these mysteries with a supernatural explanation like magic. Late at night, of course, when one is sitting upright in bed, having been woken up by a sudden loud noise, one believes in all sorts of supernatural things, but it was early afternoon, and the Baudelaires simply could not imagine that Ishmael was some sort of magical weatherman. Their doubt must have shown on their faces, for the facilitator immediately did what many people do when they are not believed, and hurriedly changed the subject.

     “What about you, Friday?” Ishmael asked. “Did you find anything else besides the castaways and those awful sunglasses?”

     Friday looked quickly at Sunny, but then shook her head firmly. “No,” she said.

     “Then please go help your mother with lunch,” he said, “while I talk to our new colonists.”

     “Do I have to?” Friday asked. “I'd rather stay here, with the Baudelaires.”

     “I'm not going to force you,” Ishmael said gently, “but I'm sure your mother could use some help.”

     Without another word, Friday turned and left the tent, walking up the sloping beach toward the other tents of the colony, and the Baudelaires were alone with their facilitator, who leaned down to speak quietly to the orphans.

     “Baudelaires,” he said, “as your facilitator, allow me to give you a piece of advice, as you begin your stay on this island.”

     “What might that be?” Violet asked.

     Ishmael looked around the tent, as if spies were lurking behind the white, fluttering fabric. He took another sip from his seashell, and cracked his knuckles. “Don't rock the boat,” he said, using an expression which here means “Don't upset people by doing something that is not customary.” His tone was very cordial, but the children could hear something less cordial almost hidden in his voice, the way a coastal shelf is almost hidden by water. “We've been living by our customs for quite some time. Most of us can scarcely remember our lives before we became castaways, and there is a whole generation of islanders who have never lived anywhere else. My advice to you is not to ask so many questions or meddle around too much with our customs. We have taken you in, Baudelaires, which is a kindness, and we expect kindness in return. If you keep prying into the affairs of the island, people are going to think you're unkind—just like Friday thought Olaf was unkind. So don't rock the boat. After all, rocking the boat is what got you here in the first place.”

     Ishmael smiled at his little joke, and although they found nothing funny about poking fun at a shipwreck that had nearly killed them, the children gave Ishmael a nervous smile in return, and said no more. The tent was silent for a few minutes, until a pleasant-looking woman with a freckly face walked into the tent carrying an enormous clay jar.

     “You must be the Baudelaires,” she said, as Friday followed her into the tent carrying a stack of bowls fashioned from coconut shells, “and you must be starving, too. I'm Mrs. Caliban, Friday's mother, and I do most of the cooking around here. Why don't you have some lunch?”

     “That would be wonderful,” Klaus said. “We're quite hungry.”

     “Whatya fixin?” asked Sunny.

     Mrs. Caliban smiled, and opened the jar so the children could peek inside. “Ceviche,” she said. “It's a South American dish of chopped raw seafood.”

     “Oh,” Violet said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Ceviche is an acquired taste, a phrase which here means “something you don't like the first few times you eat it,” and although the Baudelaires had eaten ceviche before—their mother used to make it in the Baudelaire kitchen, to celebrate the beginning of crab season—it was none of the children's favorite food, and not precisely what they had in mind as a first meal after being shipwrecked. When I was shipwrecked recently, for instance, I had the fortune to wash aboard a barge where I enjoyed a late supper of roast leg of lamb with creamed polenta and a fricassee of baby artichokes, followed by some aged Gouda served with roasted figs, and finished up with some fresh strawberries dipped in milk chocolate and crushed honeycomb, and I found this to be a wonderful antidote to being tossed like a rag doll in the turbulent waters of a particularly stormy creek. But the Baudelaires accepted their bowls of ceviche, as well as the strange utensils Friday handed them, which were made of wood and looked like a combination of a fork and a spoon.

     “They're runcible spoons,” Friday explained. “We don't have forks or knives in the colony, as they can be used as weapons.”

     “I suppose that's sensible,” Klaus said, although he couldn't help but think that nearly anything could be used as a weapon, if one were in a weaponry mood.

     “I hope you like it,” Mrs. Caliban said. “There's not much else you can cook with raw seafood.”

     “Negihama,” Sunny said.

     “My sister is something of a chef,” Violet explained, “and was suggesting that she could prepare some Japanese dishes for the colony, if there were any wasabi to be had.”

     The younger Baudelaires gave their sister a brief nod, realizing that Violet was asking about wasabi not only because it might allow Sunny to make something palatable—a word which here means “that wasn't ceviche”—but because wasabi, which is a sort of horseradish often used in Japanese food, was one of the few defenses against the Medusoid Mycelium, and with Count Olaf lurking about, she wanted to think about possible strategies should the deadly fungus be let loose from the helmet.

     “We don't have any wasabi,” Mrs. Caliban said. “We don't have any spices at all, in fact. No spices have washed up on the coastal shelf.”

     “Even if they did,” Ishmael added quickly, “I think we'd just throw them in the arboretum. The stomachs of the colonists are used to spice-less ceviche, and we wouldn't want to rock the boat.”

     Klaus took a bite of ceviche from his runcible spoon, and grimaced at the taste. Traditionally a ceviche is marinated in spices, which gives it an unusual but often delicious flavor, but without such seasoning, Mrs. Caliban's ceviche tasted like whatever you might find in a fish's mouth while it was eating. “Do you eat ceviche for every meal?” he asked.

     “Certainly not,” Mrs. Caliban said with a little laugh. “That would get tiresome, wouldn't it? No, we only have ceviche for lunch. Every morning we have seaweed salad for breakfast, and for dinner we have a mild onion soup served with a handful of wild grass. You might get tired of such bland food, but it tastes better if you wash it down with coconut cordial.” Friday's mother reached into a deep pocket in her white robe, and brought out three large seashells that had been fashioned into canteens, and handed one to each Baudelaire.

     “Let's drink a toast,” Friday suggested, holding up her own seashell. Mrs. Caliban raised hers, and Ishmael wiggled in his clay chair and opened the stopper of his seashell once more.

     “An excellent idea,” the facilitator said, with a wide, wide smile. “Let's drink a toast to the Baudelaire orphans!”

    “To the Baudelaires!” agreed Mrs. Caliban, raising her seashell. “Welcome to the island!”

     “I hope you stay here forever and ever!” Friday cried.

     The Baudelaires looked at the three islanders grinning at them, and tried their best to grin back, although they had so much on their minds that their grins were not very enthusiastic. The Baudelaires wondered if they really had to eat spiceless ceviche, not only for this particular lunch, but for future lunches on the island. The Baudelaires wondered if they had to drink more of the coconut cordial, and if refusing to do so would be considered rocking the boat. They wondered why the figurehead of the boat had not been found, and they wondered where Count Olaf was, and what he was up to, and they wondered about their friends and associates who were somewhere at sea, and about all of the people they had left behind in the Hotel Denouement. But at this moment, the Baudelaires wondered one thing most of all, and that was why Ishmael had called them orphans, when they hadn't told him their whole story. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked first at their bowls of ceviche, and then at Friday and her mother, and then at their seashells, and finally up at Ishmael, who was smiling down at them from his enormous chair, and the castaways wondered if they really had reached a place that was far from the world's treachery or if the world's treachery was just hidden someplace, the way Count Olaf was hidden somewhere very nearby at that very moment. They looked up at their facilitator, uncertain if they were safe after all, and wondering what they could do about it if they weren't.

     “I won't force you,” Ishmael said quietly to the children, and the Baudelaire orphans wondered if that were true after all.

CHAPTER

Five

 

     Unless you are unusually insouciant—which is merely a fancy way of saying “the opposite of curious”—or one of the Baudelaire orphans yourself, you are probably wondering whether or not the three children drank the coconut cordial that was offered them rather forcefully by Ishmael.

     Perhaps you have been in situations yourself, where you have been offered a beverage or food you would rather not consume by someone you would rather not refuse, or perhaps you have been warned about people who will offer such things and told to avoid succumbing, a word which here means “accepting, rather than refusing, what you are given.” Such situations are often referred to as incidents of “peer pressure,” as “peer” is a word for someone with whom you are associating and “pressure” is a word for the influence such people often have. If you are a braeman or brae-woman—a term for someone who lives all alone on a hill—then peer pressure is fairly easy to avoid, as you have no peers except for the occasional your cave and try to pressure you into growing a woolly coat. But if you live among people, whether they are people in your family, in your school, or in your secret organization, then every moment of your life is an incident of peer pressure, and you cannot avoid it any more than a boat at sea can avoid a surrounding storm. If you wake up in the morning at a particular time, when you would rather hide your head under your pillow until you are too hungry to stand it any longer, then you are succumbing to the peer pressure of your warden or morning butler. If you eat a breakfast that someone prepares for you, or prepare your own breakfast from food you have purchased, when you would rather stomp your feet and demand delicacies from faraway lands, then you are succumbing to the peer pressure of your grocer or breakfast chef. All day long, everyone in the world is succumbing to peer pressure, whether it is the pressure of their fourth grade peers to play dodge ball during recess or the pressure of their fellow circus performers to balance rubber balls on their noses, and if you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives.

     The Baudelaire orphans had been uncomfortable more than enough times over the course of their misadventures, and having found themselves on a distant island with only one set of peers to choose from, they succumbed to the pressure of Ishmael, and Friday, and Mrs. Caliban, and all of the other islanders who lived with the children in their new home. They sat in Ishmael's tent, and drank a bit of coconut cordial as they ate their lunch of spice-free ceviche, even though the drink left them feeling a bit dizzy and the food left them feeling a bit slimy, rather than leaving the colony and finding their own food and drink. They wore their white robes, even though they were a bit heavy for the warm weather, rather than trying to fashion garments of their own. And they kept quiet about the discouraged items they were keeping in their pockets—Violet's hair ribbon, Klaus's commonplace book, and Sunny's whisk—rather than rocking the boat, as the colony's facilitator had warned them, not even daring to ask Friday why she had given Sunny the kitchen implement in the first place.

     But despite the strong taste of cordial, the bland taste of the food, the unflattering robes, and the secret items, the Baudelaires still felt more at home than they had in quite some time. Although the children had always managed to find a companion or two no matter where they wandered, the Baudelaires had not really been accepted by any sort of community since Count Olaf had framed the children for murder, forcing them to hide and disguise themselves countless times. The Baudelaires felt safe living with the colony, knowing that Count Olaf was not allowed near them, and that their associates, if they, too, ended up as castaways, would be welcomed into the tent as long as they, too, succumbed to the islanders' peer pressure. Spiceless food, unflattering clothing, and suspicious beverages seemed a fair price to pay for a safe place to call home, and for a group of people who, if not exactly friends, were at least companions for as long as they wished to stay.

     The days passed, and the island remained a safe if bland place for the siblings. Violet would have liked to spend her days assisting the islanders in the building of the enormous outrigger, but at Ishmael's suggestion she assisted Friday, Robinson, and Professor Fletcher with the colony's laundry, and spent most of her time at the saltwater falls, washing everyone's robes and laying them out on rocks to dry in the sun. Klaus would have enjoyed walking over the brae to catalog all of the detritus the colonists had collected while storm scavenging, but everyone had agreed with the facilitator's idea that the middle Baudelaire would stay at Ishmael's side at all times, so he spent his days piling clay on the old man's feet, and running to refill his seashell with cordial.

     Only Sunny was allowed to do something in her area of expertise, but assisting Mrs. Caliban with the cooking was not very interesting, as the colony's three meals were very easy to prepare. Every morning, the youngest Baudelaire would retrieve the seaweed that Alonso and Ariel had harvested from the sea, after it had been rinsed by Sherman and Robinson and laid out to dry by Erewhon and Weyden, and simply throw it into a bowl for breakfast. In the afternoon, Ferdinand and Larsen would bring an enormous pile of fish they had captured in the colony's nets, so Sunny and Mrs. Caliban could mush it into ceviche with their runcible spoons, and in the evening the two chefs would light a fire and slowly simmer a pot of wild onions Omeros and Finn had picked, along with wild grasses reaped by Brewster and Calypso that served as dinner's only spice, and serve the soup alongside seashells full of the coconut cordial Byam and Willa had fermented from coconuts Mr. Pitcairn and Ms. Marlow had gathered from the island's coconut trees. None of these recipes was very challenging to prepare, and Sunny ended up spending much of her day in idleness, a word which here means “lounging around with Mrs. Caliban, sipping coconut cordial and staring at the sea.”

     After so many frantic encounters and tragic experiences, the children were not accustomed to leading such a calm life, and for the first few days they felt a bit restless without the treachery of Count Olaf and his sinister mysteries, and the integrity of V.F.D. and its noble deeds, but with every good night's sleep in the breezy comfort of a tent, and every day's work at easy tasks, and every sip of the sweet coconut cordial, the strife and treachery of the children's lives felt farther and farther away. After a few days, another storm arrived, just as Ishmael had predicted, and as the sky blackened and the island was covered in wind and rain, the Baudelaires huddled with the other islanders in the facilitator's tent, and they were grateful for their uneventful life on the colony, rather than the stormy existence they had endured since their parents had died.

     “Janiceps,” Sunny said to her siblings the next morning, as the Baudelaires walked along the coastal shelf. According to custom, the islanders were all storm scavenging, and here and there on the flat horizon, poking at the detritus of the storm. By “Janiceps,” the youngest Baudelaire meant “I'm of two minds about living here,” an expression which means that she couldn't decide if she liked the island colony or not.

     “I know what you mean,” Klaus said, who was carrying Sunny on his shoulders. “Life isn't very exciting here, but at least we're not in any danger.”

     “I suppose we should be grateful for that,” Violet said, “even though life in the colony seems quite strict.”

     “Ishmael keeps saying he won't force us to do anything,” Klaus said, “but everything feels a bit forced anyway.”

     “At least they forced Olaf away,” Violet pointed out, “which is more than V.F.D. ever accomplished.”

     “Diaspora,” Sunny said, which meant something like, “We live in such a distant place that the battle between V.F.D. and their enemies seems very far away.”

     “The only V.F.D. around here,” Klaus said, leaning down to peer into a pool of water, “is our Very Flavorless Diet.”

     Violet smiled. “Not so long ago,” she said, “we were desperate to reach the last safe place by Thursday. Now, everywhere we look is safe, and we have no idea what day it is.”

     “I still miss home,” Sunny said.

     “Me too,” Klaus said. “For some reason I keep missing the library at Lucky Smells Lumbermill.”

     “Charles's library?” Violet asked, with an amazed smile. “It was a beautiful room, but it only had three books. Why on earth do you miss that place?”

     “Three books are better than none,” Klaus said. “The only thing I've read since we arrived here is my own commonplace book. I suggested to Ishmael that he could dictate a history of the colony to me, and that I'd write it down so the islanders would know about how this place came to be. Other colonists could write down their own stories, and eventually this island would have its own library. But Ishmael said that he wouldn't force me, but he didn't think it would be a good idea to write a book that would upset people with its descriptions of storms and castaways. I don't want to rock the boat, but I miss my research.”

     “I know what you mean,” Violet said. “I keep missing Madame Lulu's fortune-telling tent.”

     “With all those phony magic tricks?” Klaus said.

     “Her inventions were pretty ridiculous,” Violet admitted, “but if I had those simple mechanical materials, I think I could make a simple water filtration system. If we could manufacture fresh water, the islanders wouldn't have to drink coconut cordial all day long. But Friday said that the drinking of the cordial was inveterate.”

     “Nospine?” Sunny asked.

     “She meant people had been drinking it for so long that they wouldn't want to stop,” Violet said. “I don't want to rock the boat, but I miss working on inventions. What about you, Sunny? What do you miss?”

     “Fountain,” Sunny said.

     “The Fowl Fountain, at the Village of Fowl Devotees?” Klaus asked.

     “No,” Sunny said, shaking her head. “In city.”

     “The Fountain of Victorious Finance?” Violet asked. “Why on earth would you miss that?”

     “First swim,” Sunny said, and her siblings gasped.

     “You can't remember that,” Klaus said.

     “You were just a few weeks old,” Violet said.

     “ I remember," Sunny said firmly, as the Baudelaires shook their heads in wonder. Sunny was talking about an afternoon long ago, during an unusually hot autumn in the city. The Baudelaire parents had some business to attend to, and brought along the children, promising to stop at the ice cream store on the way home. The family had arrived at the banking district, pausing to rest at the Fountain of Victorious Finance, and the Baudelaires' mother had hurried into a building with tall, curved towers poking out in all directions, while their father waited outside with the children. The hot weather made Sunny very cranky, and she began to fuss. To quiet her, the Baudelaires' father dipped her bare feet in the water, and Sunny had smiled so enthusiastically that he had begun to dunk Sunny's body, clothes and all, into the fountain, until the youngest Baudelaire was screaming with laughter. As you may know, the laughter of babies is often very contagious, and before long not only were Violet and Klaus also jumping into the fountain, but the Baudelaires' father, too, all of them laughing and laughing as Sunny grew more and more delighted. Soon the Baudelaires' mother came out of the building, and looked in astonishment for a moment at her soaking and giggling family, before putting down her pocketbook, kicking off her shoes, and joining them in the refreshing water. They laughed all the way home, each footstep a wet squish, and sat out on their front steps to dry in the sun. It was a wonderful day, but very long ago—so long ago Violet and Klaus had almost forgotten it themselves. But as Sunny reminded them, they could almost hear her newborn laughter, and see the incredulous looks of the bankers who were passing by.

     “It's hard to believe,” Violet said, “that our parents could laugh like that, when they were already involved with V.F.D. and all its troubles.”

     “The schism must have seemed a world away that day,” Klaus said.

     “And now,” Sunny said, and her siblings nodded in agreement. With the morning sun blazing overhead, and the sea sparkling at the edge of the coastal shelf, their surroundings seemed as far from trouble and treachery as that afternoon in the Fountain of Victorious Finance. But trouble and treachery are rarely as far away as one thinks they are on the clearest of days. On that faraway afternoon in the banking district, for instance, trouble could be found in the corridors of the towered building, where the Baudelaires' mother was handed a weather report and a naval map that would reveal, when she studied them by candlelight that evening, far greater trouble than she had imagined, and treachery could be found just past the fountain, where a woman disguised as a pretzel vendor took a photograph of the laughing family, and slipped her camera into the coat pocket of a financial expert who was hurrying to a restaurant, where the coat-check boy would remove the camera and hide it in an enormous parfait glass of fruit that a certain playwright would order for dessert, only to have a quick-thinking waitress pretend that the cream in the zabaglione sauce had gone sour and dump the entire dish into a garbage can in the alley, where I had been sitting for hours, pretending to look for a lost puppy who was actually scurrying into the back entrance of the towered building, removing her disguise, and folding it into her handbag, and this morning on the coastal shelf was no different. The Baudelaires took a few more steps in silence, squinting into the sun, and then Sunny knocked gently on her brother's head and pointed out at the horizon. The three children looked carefully, and saw an object resting unevenly on the edge of the shelf, and this was trouble, even though it didn't look like trouble at the time. It was hard to say what it looked like, only that it was large, and square, and ragged, and the children hurried closer to get a better view. Violet led the way, stepping carefully around a few crabs snapping along the shelf, and Klaus followed behind, with Sunny still on his shoulders, and even when they reached the object they found it difficult to identify.