The Slippery Slope

'Will you help me comb my hair? These hooks can make it difficult sometimes.'

'I'm jealous of your hooks,' Kevin replied. 'Having no hands is better than having two equally strong hands.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' one of the white-faced women replied. 'Having a white face is worse than both of your situations.'

'But you have a white face because you put makeup on,' Colette said, as Sunny climbed back out of the trunk and knelt down in the snow. 'You're putting powder on your face right now.'

'Must you bicker every single morning?' Count Olaf asked, and stomped back out of his tent carrying a blanket covered in images of eyes. 'Somebody take this blanket and set the table over there on that flat rock.'

Hugo walked out of the tent and smiled at his new boss. 'I'd be happy to,' he said.

Esmй stepped outside, having changed into a bright red snowsuit, and put her arm around Olaf. 'Fold the blanket into a large triangle,' she said to Hugo. 'That's the in way to do it.'

'Yes ma'am,' Hugo said, 'and, if you don't mind my saying so, that's a very handsome snowsuit you are wearing.'

The villainous girlfriend turned all the way around to show off her outfit from every angle. Sunny looked up from her cooking and noticed that the letter B was sewn onto the back of it, along with the eye insignia. 'I'm glad you like it, Hugo,' Esmй said. 'It's stolen.'

Count Olaf glanced at Sunny and quickly stepped in front of his girlfriend. 'What are you staring at, toothy?' he asked. 'Are you done making breakfast?'

'Almost,' Sunny replied.

'That infant never makes any sense,' Hugo said. 'No wonder she fooled us into thinkine she was a carnival freak.'

Sunny sighed, but no one heard her over the scornful laughter of Olaf's troupe. One by one, the villain's wretched employees emerged from the tent and strolled over to the flat rock where Hugo was laying out the blanket. One of the white-faced women glanced at Sunny and gave her a small smile, but nobody offered to help her finish with the breakfast preparations, or even to set the table with the eye-patterned dishes. Instead, they gathered around the rock talking and laughing until Sunny carefully carried the breakfast over to them, arranged on a large eye-shaped tray that she'd found in the bottom of the picnic basket. Although she was still frightened to be in Olaf's clutches and worried about her siblings, Sunny could not help but be a little proud as Count Olaf and his comrades looked at the meal she had prepared.

Sunny had kept in mind what her mother had said about presentation being as important as the food itself, and managed to put together a lovely breakfast despite the difficult circumstances. First, she had opened the jug of frozen orange juice and used a small spoon to chip away at the ice until she had a large heap of juice shavings, which she arranged into tiny piles on each plate to make orange granita, a cold and delicious concoction that is often served at fancy dinner parties and masked balls. Then, Sunny had rinsed her mouth out with melted snow so it would be as clean as possible, and chopped some of the coffee beans with her teeth. She placed a bit of the ground coffee inside each cup and combined it with more snow she had melted in her own hands to make iced coffee, a delicious beverage I first enjoyed when visiting Thailand to interview a taxi driver. Meanwhile, the youngest Baudelaire had put the chilled bread underneath her shirt to warm it up, and when it was warm enough to eat she put one slice on each plate, and using a small spoon, spread some boysenberry jam on each piece of bread. She did her best to spread the jam in the shape of an eye, to please the villains who would be eating it, and as a finishing touch she found a bouquet of ivy, which Count Olaf had given his girlfriend not so long ago, and placed it in the small pitcher of the tea set used for cream. There was no cream, but the ivy would help the presentation of the food by serving as a centerpiece, a word which here means 'a decoration placed in the middle of a table, often used to distract people from the food.' Of course, orange granita and iced coffee are not often served at al fresco breakfasts on cold mountain peaks, and bread with jam is more traditionally prepared as toast, but without a source of heat or any other cooking equipment, Sunny had done the best she could, and she hoped that Olaf and his troupe might appreciate her efforts.

'Caffefredde, sorbet, toast tartar,' she announced.

'What is this?' Count Olaf said suspiciously, peering into his coffee cup. 'It looks like coffee, but it's freezing cold!'

'And what is this orange stuff?' Esmй asked suspiciously. 'I want fashionable, in food, not a handful of ice!'

Colette picked up a piece of the bread and stared at it suspiciously. 'This toast feels raw,' she said. 'Is it safe to eat raw toast?'

'Of course not,' Hugo said. 'I bet that baby is trying to poison us.'

'Actually, the coffee isn't bad,' one of the white-faced women said, 'even if it is a little bitter. Could someone pass the sugar, please?'

'Sugar?' shrieked Count Olaf, erupting in anger. He stood up, grabbed one end of the blanket, and pulled as hard as he could, scattering all of Sunny's hard work. Food, beverages, and dishes fell everywhere, and Sunny had to duck to avoid getting hit on the head with a flying fork. 'All the sugar in the world couldn't save this terrible breakfast!' he roared, and then leaned down so that his shiny, shiny eyes stared right into Sunny's. 'I told you to make a nice, hot breakfast, and you gave me cold, disgusting nonsense!' he said, his smelly breath making a cloud in the chilly air. 'Don't you see how high up we are, you sabertoothed papoose? If I threw you off Mount Fraught, you'd never survive!'

'Olaf!' Esmй said. 'I'm surprised at you! Surely you remember that we'll never get the Baudelaire fortune if we toss Sunny off the mountain. We have to keep Sunny alive for the greater good.'

'Yes, yes,' Count Olaf said. 'I remember. I'm not going to throw the orphan off the mountain. I just wanted to terrify her.' He gave Sunny a cruel smirk, and then turned to the hook-handed man. 'Walk over to that frozen waterfall,' he said, 'and crack a hole in the ice with your hook. The stream is full of Stricken Salmon. Catch enough for all of us, and we'll have the baby prepare us a proper meal.'

'Good idea, Olaf,' the hook-handed man said, standing up and walking toward the icy slope. 'You're as smart as you are intelligent.'

'Sakesushi,' Sunny said quietly, which meant 'I don't think you'll enjoy salmon if it's not cooked.'

'Stop your baby talk and wash these dishes,' Olaf ordered. 'They're covered in lousy food.'

'You know, Olaf,' said the white-faced woman who had asked for sugar, 'it's none of my business, but we might put someone else in charge of cooking. It was probably difficult for a baby to prepare a hot breakfast without a fire.'

'But there is a fire,' said a deep, low voice, and everyone turned around to see who had arrived.

Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do it makes you want to hide under the coffee table. An aura of menace is simply a distinct feeling of evil that accompanies the arrival of certain people, and very few individuals are evil enough to produce an aura of menace that is very strong. Count Olaf, for example, had an aura of menace that the three Baudelaires had felt the moment they met him, but a number of other people never seemed to sense that a villain was in their midst, even when Olaf was standing right next to them with an evil gleam in his eye. But when two visitors arrived at the highest peak of the Mortmain Mountains, their aura of menace was unmistakable. Sunny gasped when she saw them. Esmй Squalor shuddered in her snowsuit. The members of Olaf's troupe — all except the hook-handed man, who was busy fishing for salmon and so was lucky enough to miss the visitors' arrival — gazed down at the snowy ground rather than take a further look at them. Count Olaf himself looked a bit nervous as the man, the woman, and their aura of menace drew closer and closer. And even I, after all this time, can feel their aura of menace so strongly, just by writing about these two people, that I dare not say their names, and will instead refer to them the way everyone who dares refer to them refers to them, as 'the man with a beard, but no hair' and 'the woman with hair, but no beard.'

'It's good to see you, Olaf,' continued the deep voice, and Sunny realized that the voice belonged to the sinister-looking woman. She was dressed in a suit made of a strange blue fabric that was very shiny, decorated with two large pads, one on each shoulder. She was dragging a wooden toboggan — a word which here means 'a sled big enough to hold several people,' which made an eerie scraping sound against the cold ground. 'I was worried that the authorities might have captured you.'

'You look well,' said the man with a beard but no hair. He was dressed identically to the woman with hair