doing the polite thing and taking them to their new home personally' — he instructed them to report to the Town Hall of V.F.D., and made them promise not to do anything that would ruin his bank's reputation. Before they knew it, Violet was sitting in an aisle seat, brushing dirt off her coat and rubbing her sore toes, and Klaus was sitting in a window seat gazing at the scenery through a layer of dead bugs. Sunny sat between them, gnawing on the armrest.
'No lean!' she said sternly, and her brother smiled.
'Don't worry, Sunny,' he said. 'We'll make sure not to lean on you if we fall asleep. We don't have much time for napping, anyway — we should be at V.F.D. any minute now.'
'What do you think it could stand for?' Violet asked. 'Neither the brochure nor the map at the bus station showed anything more than the three initials.'
'I don't know,' Klaus said. 'Do you think we should have told Mr. Poe about the V.F.D. secret? Maybe he could have helped us.'
'I doubt it,' Violet said. 'He hasn't been very helpful before. I wish the Quagmires were here. I bet they could help us.'
'I wish the Quagmires were here even if they couldn't help us,' Klaus said, and his sisters nodded in agreement. No Baudelaire had to say anything more about how worried they were about the triplets, and they sat in silence for the rest of the ride, hoping that their arrival at V.F.D. would bring them closer to saving their friends.
'V.F.D.!' the bus driver finally called out. 'Next stop V.F.D.! If you look out the window, you can see the town coming up, folks!'
'What does it look like?' Violet asked Klaus.
Klaus peered out the window past the layer of dead bugs. 'Flat,' he said.
Violet and Sunny leaned over to look and saw that their brother had spoken the truth. The countryside looked as if someone had drawn the line of the horizon — the word 'horizon' here means 'the boundary where the sky ends and the world begins' — and then forgot to draw in anything else. The land stretched out as far as the eye could see, but there was nothing for the eye to look at but flat, dry land and the occasional sheet of newspaper stirred up by the passing of the bus.
'I don't see any town at all,' Klaus said. 'Do you suppose it's underground?'
'Novedri!' Sunny said, which meant 'Living underground would be no fun at all!'
'Maybe that's the town over there,' Violet said, squinting to try and see as far as she could. 'You see? Way out by the horizon line, there's a hazy black blur. It looks like smoke, but maybe it's just some buildings seen from far away.'
'I can't see it,' Klaus said. 'That smushed moth is blocking it, I think. But a hazy blur could just be fata morgana.'
'Fata?' Sunny asked.
'Fata morgana is when your eyes play tricks on you, particularly in hot weather,' Klaus explained. 'It's caused by the distortion of light through alternate layers of hot and cool air. It's also called a mirage, but I like the name 'fata morgana' better.'
'Me too,' Violet agreed, 'but let's hope it's not a mirage or fata morgana. Let's hope it's V.F.D.'
'V.F.D.!' the bus driver called, as the bus came to a stop. 'V.F.D.! Everyone off for V.F.D.!'
The Baudelaires stood up, gathered their belongings, and walked down the aisle, but when they reached the open door of the bus they stopped and stared doubtfully out at the flat and empty landscape.
'Is this really the stop for V.F.D.?' Violet asked the driver. 'I thought V.F.D. was a town.'
'It is,' the driver replied. 'Just walk toward that hazy black blur out there on the horizon. I know it looks like — well, I can't remember the phrase for when your eyes play tricks on you — but it's really the town.'
'Couldn't you take us a little closer?' Violet asked shyly. 'We have a baby with us, and it looks like a long way to walk.'
'I wish I could help you,' the bus driver said kindly, looking down at Sunny, 'but the Council of Elders has very strict rules. I have to let off all passengers for V.F.D. right here; otherwise I could be severely punished.'
'Who are the Council of Elders?' Klaus asked.
'Hey!' a voice called from the back of the bus. 'Tell those kids to hurry up and get off the bus! The open door is letting bugs in!'
'Off you go, kids,' the bus driver said, and the Baudelaires stepped out of the bus onto the flat land of V.F.D. The doors shut, and with a little wave the bus driver drove off and left the children alone on the empty landscape. The siblings watched the bus get smaller and smaller as it drove away, and then turned toward the hazy black blur of their new home.
'Well, now I can see it,' Klaus said, squinting behind his glasses, 'but I can't believe it. It's going to take the rest of the afternoon to walk all that way.'
'Then we'd better get started,' Violet said, hoisting Sunny up on top of her suitcase. 'This piece of luggage has wheels,' she said to her sister, 'so you can sit on top of it and I can pull you along.'
'Sanks!' Sunny said, which meant 'That's very considerate of you!' and the Baudelaires began their long walk toward the hazy black blur on the horizon. After even the first few steps, the disadvantages of the bus ride seemed like small potatoes. 'Small potatoes' is a phrase which has nothing to do with root vegetables that happen to be tiny in size. Instead, it refers to the change in one's feelings for something when it is compared with something else. If you were walking in the rain, for instance, you might be worried about getting wet, but if you turned the corner and saw a pack of vicious dogs, getting wet would suddenly become small potatoes next to getting chased down an alley and barked at, or possibly eaten. As the Baudelaires began their long journey toward V.F.D., dead bugs, stepped-on toes, and the possibility of someone leaning on them became small potatoes next to the far more unpleasant things they were encountering. Without anything else on the flat land to blow up against, the wind concentrated its efforts on Violet, a phrase which here means that before long her hair was so wildly tangled that it looked like it had never seen a comb. Because Klaus was standing behind Violet, the wind didn't blow on him much, but without anything else in the empty landscape to cling to, the dust on the ground concentrated its efforts on the middle Baudelaire, and soon he was dusty from head to toe, as if it had been years since he'd had a shower. Perched on top of Violet's luggage, Sunny was out of the way of the dust, but without anything else in the desolate terrain to shine on, the sun concentrated its efforts on her, which meant that she was soon as sunburned as a baby who had spent six months at the seashore, instead of a few hours on top of a suitcase.
But even as they approached the town, V.F.D. still looked as hazy as it did from far away. As the children drew closer and closer to their new home, they could see a number of buildings of different heights and widths, separated by streets both narrow and wide, and the Baudelaires could even see the tall skinny shapes of lampposts and flagpoles stretching out toward the sky. But everything they saw — from the tip of the highest building to the curve of the narrowest street — was pitch black, and seemed to be shaking slightly, as if the entire town were painted on a piece of cloth that was trembling in the wind. The buildings were trembling, and the lampposts were trembling, and even the very streets were shaking ever so slightly, and it was like no town the three Baudelaires had ever seen. It was a mystery, but unlike most mysteries, once the children reached the outskirts of V.F.D. and learned what was causing the trembling effect, they did not feel any better to have the mystery solved.
The town was covered in crows. Nearly every inch of nearly every object had a large black bird roosting on it and casting a suspicious eye on the children as they stood at the very edge of the village. There were crows sitting on the roofs of all the buildings, perching on the windowsills, and squatting on the steps and on the sidewalks. Crows were covering all of the trees, from the very top branches to the roots poking out of the crow-covered ground, and were gathered in large groups on the streets for crow conversations. Crows were covering the lampposts and flagpoles, and there were crows lying down in the gutters and resting between fence posts. There were even six crows crowded together on the sign that read 'Town Hall,' with an arrow leading down a crow- covered street. The crows weren't squawking or cawing, which is what crows often do, or playing the trumpet, which crows practically never do, but the town was far from silent. The air was filled with the sounds the crows made as they moved around. Sometimes one crow would fly from one perch to another, as if it had suddenly become bored roosting on the mailbox and thought it might be more fun to perch on the doorknob of a building. Occasionally, several crows would flutter their wings, as if they were stiff from sitting together on a bench and wanted to stretch a little bit. And almost constantly, the crows would shift in their places, trying to make themselves as comfortable as they could in such cramped quarters. All this motion explained why the town had
