The Vile Village

Chapter Eleven

Inside these letters, the eye will see

Nearby are your friends, and V.F.D.

Isn't it marvelous?' Klaus said with a grin, as his sisters read the fourth couplet. 'Isn't it absolutely superlative?'

'Wibeon,' Sunny said, which meant 'It's more confusing than superlative — we still don't know where the Quagmires are.'

'Yes we do,' Klaus said, taking the other couplets out of his pocket.

'Think about all four poems in order, and you'll see what I mean.'

For sapphires we are held in here.

Only you can end our fear.

Until dawn comes we cannot speak.

No words can come from this sad beak.

The first thing you read contains the clue:

An initial way to speak to you.

Inside these letters the eye will see

Nearby are your friends, and V.F.D.

'I think you're much better at analyzing poetry than I am,' Violet said, and Sunny nodded in agreement. 'This poem doesn't make it any clearer.'

'But you're the one who first suggested the solution,' Klaus said. 'When we received the third poem, you thought that 'initial' meant 'initials,' like V.F.D.'

'But you said that it probably meant 'first,'' Violet said. 'The poems are the first way the Quagmires can speak to us from where they are hidden.'

'I was wrong,' Klaus admitted. 'I've never been so happy to be wrong in my life. Isadora meant 'initials' all along. I didn't realize it until I read the part that said 'Inside these letters the eye will see.' She's hiding the location inside the poem, like Aunt Josephine hid her location inside her note, remember?'

'Of course I remember,' Violet said, 'but I still don't understand.'

'The first thing you read contains the clue,'' Klaus recited. 'We thought that Isadora meant the first poem. But she meant the first letter. She couldn't tell us directly where she and her brother were hidden, in case someone else got the poems from the crows before we did, so she had to use a sort of code. If we look at the first letter of each line, and we can see the triplets' location.'

''For sapphires we are held in here.' That's F,' Violet said. ''Only you can end our fear' That's O.'

''Until dawn comes we cannot speak,'' Klaus said. 'That's U. 'No words can come from this sad beak.' That's N.'

''The first thing you read contains the clue' — T,' Violet said excitedly. ''An initial way to speak to you' — A.'

'I! N!' Sunny cried triumphantly, and the three Baudelaires cried out the solution together: 'FOUNTAIN!'

'Fowl Fountain!' Klaus said. 'The Quagmires are right outside that window.'

'But how can they be in the fountain?' Violet asked. 'And how could Isadora give her poems to the V.F.D. crows?'

'We'll answer those questions,' Klaus replied, 'as soon as we get out of jail. We'd better get back to the mortar-dissolver before Detective Dupin comes back.'

'Along with a whole town of people who want to burn us at the stake, thanks to mob psychology,' Violet said with a shudder.

Sunny crawled over to the loaf of bread and placed her tiny hand against the wall. 'Mush!' she cried, which meant something like, 'The mortar is almost dissolved — just a little bit longer!'

Violet took the ribbon out of her hair and then retied it, which was something she did when she needed to rethink, a word which here means 'Think even harder about the Baudelaire orphans' terrible situation.' 'I'm not sure we have even a little bit longer,' she said, looking up at the window. 'Look at how bright the sunlight is. The morning must be almost over.'

'Then we should hurry,' Klaus said.

'No,' Violet corrected. 'We should rethink. And I've been rethinking this bench. We can use it in another way, besides as a ramp. We can use it as a battering ram.'

'Honz?' Sunny asked.

'A battering ram is a large piece of wood or metal used to break down doors or walls ' Violet explained. 'Military inventors used it in medieval times to break into walled cities, and we're going to use it now, to break out of jail.' Violet picked up the bench so it was resting on her shoulder. 'The bench should be pointing as evenly as possible,' she said. 'Sunny, get on Klaus's shoulders. If the two of you hold the other end together, I think this battering ram will work.'

Klaus and Sunny scrambled into the position Violet had suggested, and in a moment the siblings were ready to operate Violet's latest invention. The two Baudelaire sisters had a firm hold on the wood, and Klaus had a firm hold on Sunny so she wouldn't fall to the floor of the Deluxe Cell as they battered.

'Now,' Violet said, 'let's step back as far as we can, and at the count of three, run quickly toward the wall. Aim the battering ram for the spot where the mortar-dissolver was working. Ready? One, two, three!'

Thunk! The Baudelaires ran forward and smacked the bench against the wall as hard as they could. The battering ram made a noise so loud that it felt as if the entire jail would collapse, but they left only a small dent in a few of the bricks, as if the wall had been bruised slightly. 'Again!' Violet commanded. 'One, two, three!'

Thunk! Outside the children could hear a few crows flutter wildly, frightened by the noise. A few more bricks were bruised, and one had a long crack down the middle. 'It's working!' Klaus cried. 'The battering ram is working!'

'One, two, minga!' Sunny shrieked, and the children smacked the battering ram against the wall again.

'Ow!' Klaus cried, and stumbled a little bit, almost dropping his baby sister. 'A brick fell on my toe!'

'Hooray!' Violet cried. 'I mean, sorry about your toe, Klaus, but if bricks are falling it means the wall is definitely weakening. Let's put down the battering ram and get a better look.'

'We don't need a better look,' Klaus said. 'We'll know it's working when we see Fowl Fountain. One, two, three!'

Thunk! The Baudelaires heard the sound of more pieces of brick hitting the filthy floor of the Deluxe Cell. But they also heard another sound — a familiar one. It began with a faint rustling, and then grew and grew until it sounded like a million pages were being flipped. It was the sound of the V.F.D. crows, flying in circles before departing for their afternoon roost, and it meant that the children were running out of time.

'Hurol!' Sunny cried desperately, and then, as loudly as she could, 'One! Two! Minga!'

At the count of 'Minga!' which of course meant something along the lines of 'Three!' the children raced toward the wall of the Deluxe Cell and smacked their battering ram against the bricks with the mightiest Thunk! yet, a noise that was accompanied by an enormous cracking sound as the invention snapped in two. Violet staggered in one direction, and Klaus and Sunny staggered in another, as each separate half made them lose their balance, and a huge cloud of dust sprang from the point where the battering ram had hit the wall.

A huge cloud of dust is not a beautiful thing to look at. Very few painters have done portraits of huge clouds of dust or included them in their landscapes or still lifes. Film directors rarely choose huge clouds of dust to play the lead roles in romantic comedies, and as far as my research has shown, a huge cloud of dust has never placed higher than twenty-fifth in a beauty pageant. Nevertheless, as the Baudelaire orphans stumbled around the cell, dropping