The Grim Grotto

you were very young, Fiona, but your brother worked right alongside me. You should have seen him sneaking extra worms to his favorites! Aye! The program was a modest success! Aye! But then Cafй Salmonella came along, and took our entire fleet away. The Snicket siblings fought as best they could. Aye! Historians call it the Snicket Snickersnee! Aye! But as the poet wrote, 'Too many waiters turn out to be traitors.' '

'The Snicket siblings?' Klaus was quick to ask.

'Aye,' the captain said. 'Three of them, each as noble as the next. Aye! Kit Snicket helped build this submarine! Aye! Jacques Snicket proved that the Royal Gardens Fire was arson! Aye! And the third sibling, with the marmosets –'

'You Baudelaires knew Jacques Snicket, didn't you?' asked Fiona, who wasn't shy about interrupting her stepfather.

'Very briefly,' Violet said, 'and we recently found a message addressed to him. That's how we found about Thursday's gathering, at the last safe place.'

'Nobody would write a message to Jacques,' Captain Widdershins said. 'Aye! Jacques is dead!'

'Etartsigam!' Sunny said, and her siblings quickly explained that she meant 'The initials were J.S.'

'It must be some other J.S.,' Fiona said.

'Speaking of mysterious initials,' Klaus said, 'I wonder what G.G. stands for. If we knew what the cave was called, we might have a better idea of our journey.'

'Aye!' Captain Widdershins said. 'Let's guess! Great Glen! Aye! Green Glade! Aye! Glamorous Glacier! Aye! Gleeful Gameroom! Aye! Glass Goulash! Aye! Gothic Government! Aye! Grandma's Gingivitis! Aye! Girl Getting-up- from-table! Aye!'

Indeed, the captain's stepdaughter had stood up, wiped her mouth with a napkin embroidered with a portrait of Herman Melville, and walked over to a sideboard tucked into a far corner. Fiona opened a cabinet and revealed a few shelves stuffed with books.

'Yesterday I started reading a new addition to my mycological library,' she said, standing on tiptoes to reach the shelf. 'I just remembered reading something that might come in handy.'

The captain fingered his mustache in astonishment. 'You and your mushrooms and molds!' the captain said. 'I thought I'd never live to see your mycological studies be put to good use,' and I'm sorry to say he was right.

'Let's see,' Fiona said, paging through a thick book entitled Mushroom Minutiae, a word which here means 'obscure facts.'

'It was in the table of contents – that's all I've read so far. It was about halfway through.' She brought the book over to the table, and ran a finger down the table of contents while the Baudelaires leaned over to see. 'Chapter Thirty-Six, The Yeast of Beasts. Chapter Thirty-Seven, Morel Behavior in a Free Society. Chapter Thirty- Eight, Fungible Mold, Moldable Fungi. Chapter Thirty-Nine, Visitable Fungal Ditches. Chapter Forty, The Gorgonian Grotto – there!'

'Grotto?' Sunny asked.

' 'Grotto' is another word for 'cave',' Klaus explained, as Fiona flipped ahead to Chapter Forty.

' 'The Gorgonian Grotto,' ' she read, ' 'located in propinquity to Anwhistle Aquatics, has appropriately wraithlike nomenclature, with roots in Grecian mythology, as this conical cavern is fecund with what is perhaps the bugaboo of the entire mycological pantheon.' '

'Aye! I told you that book was too difficult!' Captain Widdershins said. 'A young child can't unlock that sort of vocabulary.'

'It's a very complicated prose style,' Klaus admitted, 'but I think I know what it says. The Gorgonian Grotto was named after something in Greek mythology.'

'A Gorgon,' Violet said. 'Like that woman with snakes instead of hair.'

'She could turn people into stone,' Fiona said.

'She was probably nice, when you got to know her,' Phil said.

'Aye! I think I went to school with such a woman!' the captain said.

'I don't think she was a real person,' Klaus said. 'I think she was legendary. The book says it's appropriate that the grotto is named after a legendary monster, because there's a sort of monster living in a cave – a bugaboo.'

'Bugaboo?' Sunny asked.

'A bugaboo can be any kind of monster,' Klaus said. 'We could call Count Olaf a bugaboo, if we felt so inclined.'

'I'd rather not speak of him at all,' Violet said.

'This bugaboo is a fungus of some sort,' Fiona said, and continued reading from Mushroom Minutiae. ' 'The Medusoid Mycelium has a unique conducive strategy of waxing and waning: first a brief dormant cycle, in which the mycelium is nearly invisible, and then a precipitated flowering into speckled stalks and caps of such intense venom that it is fortunate the grotto serves as quarantine.' '

'I didn't understand all of that scientific terminology,' Klaus said.

'I did,' Fiona said. 'There are three main parts to a mushroom. One is the cap, which is shaped like an umbrella, and the second is the stalk, which holds the umbrella up. Those are the parts you can see.'

'There's part of a mushroom you can't see?' Violet asked.

'It's called the mycelium,' Fiona replied. 'It's like a bunch of thread, branching out underneath the ground. Some mushrooms have mycelia that go on for miles.'

'How do you spell 'mycelium'?' Klaus asked, reaching into his waterproof pocket. 'I want to write this down in my commonplace book.' Fiona pointed the word out on the page.

'The Medusoid Mycelium waxes and wanes,' she said, 'which means that the caps and stalks spring up from the mycelium, and then wither away, and then spring up again. It sounds like you wouldn't know the mushrooms are there until they poke up out of the ground.'

The Baudelaires pictured a group of mushrooms suddenly springing up under their feet, and felt a bit queasy, as if they already knew of the dreadful encounter they would soon have with this terrible fungus.

'That sounds unnerving,' Violet said.

'It gets worse,' Fiona said. 'The mushrooms are exceedingly poisonous. Listen to this: 'As the poet says, 'A single spore has such grim power / That you may die within the hour.' ' A spore is like a seed – if it has a place to grow, it will become another mycelium. But if someone eats it, or even breathes it in, it can cause death.'

'Within the hour?' Klaus said. 'That's a fast-acting poison.'

'Most fungal poisons have cures,' Fiona said. 'The poison of a deadly fungus can be the source of some wonderful medicines. I've been working on a few myself. But this book says it's lucky the grotto acts as quarantine.'

'Quarwa?' Sunny asked.

'Quarantine is when something dangerous is isolated, so the danger cannot spread,' Klaus explained. 'Because the Medusoid Mycelium is in uncharted waters, very few people have been poisoned. If someone brought even one spore to dry land, who knows what would happen?'

'We won't find out!' Captain Widdershins said. 'We're not going to take any spores! Aye! We're just going to grab the sugar bowl and be on our way! Aye! I'll set a course right now!' The captain bounded up from the table and began climbing the rope ladder to the Queequeg's controls.

'Are you sure we should continue our mission?' Fiona asked her stepfather, shutting the book. 'It sounds very dangerous.'

'Dangerous? Aye! Dangerous and scary! Aye! Scary and difficult! Aye! Difficult and mysterious! Aye! Mysterious and uncomfortable! Aye! Uncomfortable and risky! Aye! Risky and noble! Aye!'

'I suppose the fungus can't hurt us if we're inside the submarine,' Phil said, struggling to remain optimistic.

'Even if it could!' the captain cried, standing at the top of the rope ladder and gesturing dramatically as he delivered an impassioned oratory, a phrase which here means 'emotional speech that the Baudelaires found utterly convincing, even if they did not quite agree with every word.'

'The amount of treachery in this world is enormous!' he cried. 'Aye! Think of the crafts we saw on the sonar screen! Think of Count Olaf's enormous submarine, and the even more enormous one that chased it away! Aye!