The Slippery Slope

'Why?' asked Hugo, the hunchbacked man who had previously been employed at the carnival.

'Yes, please explain,' said Kevin, another former carnival worker. At Caligari Carnival, Kevin had been embarrassed to be ambidextrous, but Esmй had lured him into joining Olaf's troupe by tying Kevin's right hand behind his back, so no one would know it was as strong as his left. 'Remember, boss, we're new to the troupe, so we don't always know what's going on.'

'I remember when I first joined Olaf's troupe,' the other white-faced woman said. 'I'd never even heard of the Snicket file.'

'Working for me is a hands-on learning experience,' Olaf said. 'You can't rely on me to explain everything to you. I'm a very busy man.'

'I'll explain it, boss,' said the hook-handed man. 'Count Olaf, like any good businessman, has committed a wide variety of crimes.'

'But these stupid volunteers have gathered all sorts of evidence and filed it away,' Esmй said. 'I tried to explain that crime is very in right now, but apparently they weren't interested.'

Sunny wiped another tear from her eye and sighed. The youngest Baudelaire thought she'd almost rather be pinched again than hear any more of Esmй Squalor's nonsense about what was in — the word that Esmй used for 'fashionable' — and what was out.

'We need to destroy those files, or Count Olaf could be arrested,' the hook-handed man said. 'We have reason to believe that some of the files are at V.F.D. headquarters.'

'What does V.F.D. stand for?' The voice of Colette came from the floor of the automobile.

Count Olaf had ordered her to use her skills as a carnival contortionist to curl up at the feet of the other members of the troupe.

'That's top-secret information!' Olaf growled, to Sunny's disappointment. 'I used to be a member of the organization myself, but I found it was more fun to be an individual practitioner.'

'What does that mean?' asked the hook-handed man.

'It means a life of crime,' Esmй replied. 'It's very in right now.'

'Wrong def.' Sunny could not help speaking through her tears. By 'wrong def she meant something along the lines of, 'An individual practitioner means someone who works alone, instead of with a group, and it has nothing to do with a life of crime,' and it made her sad that there was no one around who could understand her.

'There you go, babbling away,' Esmй said. 'This is why I never want to have children.

Except as servants, of course.'

'This journey is easier than I thought,' Olaf said. 'The map says we just have to pass a few more caves.'

'Is there an in hotel near the headquarters?' Esmй asked.

'I'm afraid not, sweetheart,' the villain replied, 'but I have two tents in the trunk of the car. We'll be camping on Mount Fraught, the summit of the Mortmain Mountains.'

'The summit?' Esmй said. 'It'll be cold at the highest peak.'

'It's true,' Olaf admitted, 'but False Spring is on its way, so before long it'll be a bit warmer.'

'But what about tonight?' Esmй Squalor said. 'It is definitely not in for me to set up tents in the freezing cold.'

Count Olaf looked at his girlfriend and began to laugh, and Sunny could smell the foul breath of his nasty giggles. 'Don't be silly,' the villain said finally. 'You're not going to set up the tents, Esmй. You're going to stay nice and toasty in the car. The bucktoothed baby will set up the tents for us.'

Now Olaf's entire troupe laughed, and the car filled with the stench of so many villains' bad breath. Sunny felt a few more tears roll down her face, and turned to the window so no one would see. The car's windows were very dirty, but the youngest Baudelaire could see the strange, square peaks of the Mortmain Mountains and the dark waters of the Stricken Stream. By now the car had driven so high up in the mountains that the stream was mostly ice, and Sunny looked at the wide stripe of frozen blackness and wondered where her siblings were, and if they were coming to rescue her. She remembered the other time she had been in Count Olaf's clutches, when the villain had tied her up, locked her in a cage and dangled her outside his tower room as part of one of his schemes. It had been an absolutely terrifying experience for the youngest Baudelaire, and she often still had nightmares about the creaking of he cage and the distant sight of her two siblings looking up at her from Count Olaf's backyard. But Violet had built a grappling hook to rescue her, and Klaus had done some important legal research to defeat Olaf's scheme. As the car took Sunny farther and farther away from her siblings, and she stared out at the lonesome terrain, she knew that they could save her again.

'How long will we stay on Mount Fraught?' Hugo asked.

'Until I say so, of course,' Count Olaf replied.

'You'll soon find out that much of this job involves a lot of waiting around,' the hook-handed man said. 'I usually keep something around to help pass the time, like a deck of cards or a large rock.'

'It can be dull,' admitted one of the white-faced women, 'and it can be dangerous. Several of our comrades have recently suffered terrible fates.'

'It was worth it,' Count Olaf said nonchalantly, a word which here means 'in a tone of voice that indicated he didn't care one bit about his deceased employees.' 'Sometimes a few people need to die in fires or get eaten by lions, if it's all for the greater good.'

'What's the greater good?' asked Colette.

'Money!' Esmй cried in greedy glee. 'Money and personal satisfaction, and we're going to get both of those things out of this whimpering baby on my lap! Once we have our hands on the Baudelaire fortune, we'll have enough money to live a life of luxury and plan several more treacherous schemes!'

The entire troupe cheered, and Count Olaf gave Sunny a filthy grin, but did not say anything more as the car raced up a steep, bumpy hill, and at last screeched to a halt, just as the last rays of the sun faded into the evening sky. 'We're here at last,' Count Olaf said, and handed the car keys to Sunny. 'Get out, baby orphan. Unload everything from the trunk and set up the tents.'

'And bring us some potato chips,' Esmй said, 'so we'll have something in to eat while we wait.'

Esmй opened the door of the car, placed Sunny on the frozen ground, and slammed the door shut again. Instantly, the chilly mountain air surrounded the youngest Baudelaire and made her shiver. It was so bitterly cold at the highest peak of the Mortmain Mountains that her tears froze in their tracks, forming a tiny mask of ice all over her face. Unsteadily, Sunny rose to her feet and walked to the back of the car. She was tempted to keep walking, and escape from Olaf while he waited in the car with his troupe. But where could she go? Sunny looked around at her surroundings and could not see a place where a baby would be safe by herself.

The summit of Mount Fraught was a small, flat square, and as Sunny walked to the trunk of the car, she gazed off each edge of the square, feeling a bit dizzy from the great height. From three of the edges, she could see the square and misty peaks of some of the other mountains, most of which were covered in snow, and twisting through the peaks were the strange, black waters of the Stricken Stream, and the rocky path that the car had driven along. But from the fourth side of the square peak, Sunny saw something so strange it took her a moment to figure out what it was.

Extending from the highest peak in the Mortmain Mountains was a glittering white strip, like an enormous piece of shiny paper folded downward, or the wing of some tremendous bird. Sunny watched the very last rays of the sunset reflect off this enormous surface and slowly realized what it was: the source of the Stricken Stream. Like many streams, the Stricken Stream originated within the rocks of the mountains, and in the warmer season, Sunny could see that it cascaded down from the highest peak in an enormous waterfall. But this was not a warm time of year, and just as Sunny's tears had frozen on her face, the waterfall had frozen solid, into a long, slippery slope that disappeared into the darkness below. It was such an eerie sight that it took Sunny a moment to wonder why the ice was white, instead of black like the waters of the Stricken Stream.

Honk! A loud blast from Count Olaf's horn made Sunny remember what she was supposed to be doing, and she hurriedly opened the trunk and found a bag of potato chips, which she brought back to the car. 'That took a very long time, orphan,' said Olaf, rather than 'Thank you.' 'Now go set up the tents, one for Esmй and me and one for my troupe, so we can get some sleep.'

'Where is the baby going to stay?' asked the hook-handed man. 'I don't want her in my tent. I hear that babies can creep up and steal your breath while you're sleeping.'

'Well, she's certainly not sleeping with me,' Esmй said. 'It's not in to have a baby in your tent.'