'I try to help everyone,' Olivia said sadly. 'My motto is 'give people what they want.' That's why I'm here at the carnival. I pretend to be a fortune-teller, and tell people whatever it is they want to hear. If Count Olaf or one of his henchmen steps inside and asks me where the Baudelaires are, I tell them. If Jacques Snicket or another volunteer steps inside and asks me if his brother is alive, I tell them.'
The Baudelaires felt so many questions tripping up inside them that they could scarcely decide which one to ask. 'But where do you learn the answers?' Violet asked, pointing to the piles of paper underneath the table. 'Where does all this information come from?'
'Libraries, mostly,' Olivia said, wiping her eyes. 'If you want people to think you're a fortune-teller, you have to answer their questions, and the answer to nearly every question is written down someplace. It just might take a while to find. It's taken me a long time to gather my archival library, and I still don't have all of the answers I've been looking for. So sometimes, when someone asks me a question and I don't know the answer, I just make something up.'
'When you told Count Olaf that one of our parents was alive,' Klaus asked, 'were you making it up, or did you know the answer?'
Olivia frowned. 'Count Olaf didn't ask anything about the parents of any carnival frea– wait a minute. Your voices sound different. Beverly, you have a ribbon in your hair, and your other head is wearing glasses. What's going on?'
The three children looked at one another in surprise. They had been so interested in what Olivia was saying that they had completely forgotten about their disguises, but now it appeared that disguises might not be necessary. The siblings needed to have their questions answered honestly, and it seemed more likely that Olivia would give them honest answers if the children were honest themselves. Without speaking, the Baudelaires stood up and removed their disguises. Violet and Klaus unbuttoned the shirt they were sharing, stretching the arms they had been keeping cooped up, and then stepped out of the fur-cuffed pants, while Sunny unwrapped the beard from around her. In no time at all the Baudelaires were standing in the tent in their regular clothing–except for Violet, who was still wearing a hospital gown from her stay in the Surgical Ward–with their disguises on the floor in a heap. The older Baudelaires even shook their heads vigorously, a word which here means 'in order to shake talcum powder out of their hair,' and rubbed at their faces so their disguised scars would disappear.
'I'm not really Beverly,' Violet said, 'and this is my brother, not my other head. And that's not Chabo the Wolf Baby. She's–'
'I know who she is,' Olivia said, looking at all of them amazedly. 'I know who all of you are. You're the Baudelaires!'
'Yes,' Klaus said, and he and his sisters smiled. It felt as if it had been one hundred years since someone had called the Baudelaires by their proper names, and when Olivia recognized them, it was as if they were finally themselves again, instead of carnival freaks or any other fake identity. 'Yes,' Klaus said again. 'We're the Baudelaires–three of them, anyway. We're not sure, but we think there may be a fourth. We think one of our parents may be alive.'
'Not sure?' Olivia asked. 'Isn't the answer in the Snicket file?'
'We just have the last page of the Snicket file,' Klaus said, and pulled page thirteen out of his pocket again. 'We're trying to find the rest of it before Olaf does. But the last page says that there may be a survivor of the fire. Do you know if that's true?'
'I have no idea,' Olivia admitted. 'I've been looking for the Snicket file myself. Every time I see a piece of paper blow by, I chase after it to see if it's one of the pages.'
'But you told Count Olaf that one of our parents is alive,' Violet said, 'and that they're hiding in the Mortmain Mountains.'
'I was just guessing,' Olivia said. 'If one of your parents has survived, though, that's probably where they'd be. Somewhere in the Mortmain Mountains is one of the last surviving headquarters of V.F.D. But you know that, of course.'
'We don't know that,' Klaus said. 'We don't even know what V.F.D. stands for.'
'Then how did you learn to disguise yourselves?' Olivia asked in astonishment. 'You used all three phases of V.F.D. Disguise Training– veiled facial disguises, with your fake scars, various finery disguises, with the clothing you wore, and voice fakery disguises, with the different voices you used. Now that I think of it, you're even using disguises that look like things in my disguise kit.'
Olivia stood up and walked over to the trunk that sat in the corner. Taking a key out of her pocket, she unlocked it and began to go through its contents. The siblings watched as she lifted an assortment of things out of the trunk, all of which the children recognized. First she removed a wig that looked like the one Count Olaf had used when he was pretending to be a woman named Shirley, and then a fake wooden leg he had used as part of his ship captain disguise. She removed a pair of pots that Olaf's bald associate had used when the children were living in Paltryville, and a motorcycle helmet that looked identical to the one Esmй Squalor had used to disguise herself as a police officer. Finally, Olivia held up a shirt with fancy ruffles all over it, exactly like the one that lay at the Baudelaires' feet. 'You see,' she said. 'This is the same shirt as the one you two were wearing.'
'But we got ours from Count Olaf's trunk,' Violet said.
'That makes sense,' Olivia replied. 'All volunteers have the same disguise kit. There are people using these disguises all over the world, trying to bring Count Olaf to justice.'
'What?' Sunny asked.
'I'm confused, too,' Klaus said. 'We're all confused, Olivia. What is V.F.D.? Sometimes it seems like they're good people, and sometimes it seems like they're bad people.'
'It's not as simple as all that,' Olivia said sadly. She took a surgical mask out of the trunk and held it in her hand. 'The items in the disguise kit are just things, Baudelaires. You can use these things to help people or to harm them, and many people use them to do both. Sometimes it's hard to know which disguise to use, or what to do once you've put one on.'
'I don't understand,' Violet said.
'Some people are like those lions Olaf brought here,' Olivia said. 'They start out being good people, but before they know it they've become something else. Those lions used to be noble creatures. A friend of mine trained them to smell smoke, which was very helpful in our work. But now Count Olaf is denying them food, and hitting them with his whip, and tomorrow afternoon they'll probably devour one of the freaks. The world is a harum-scarum place.'
'Harum?' Sunny asked.
'It's complicated and confusing,' Olivia explained. 'They say that long ago it was simple and quiet, but that might be a legend. There was a schism in V.F.D.–a great big fight between many of the members–and since then it's been hard for me to know what to do. I never thought I'd be the sort of person who helps villains, but now I do. Haven't you ever found yourself doing something you never thought you'd do?'
'I guess so,' Klaus said, and turned to his sisters. 'Remember when we stole those keys from Hal, at the Library of Records? I never thought I'd be a thief.'
'Flynn,' Sunny said, which meant something like, 'And I never thought I would become a violent person, but I engaged in a sword fight with Dr. Orwell.'
'We've all done things we never thought we'd do,' Violet said, 'but we always had a good reason.'
'Everybody thinks they have a good reason,' Olivia said. 'Count Olaf thinks getting a fortune is a good reason to slaughter you. Esmй Squalor thinks being Olaf's girlfriend is a good reason to join his troupe. And when I told Count Olaf where to find you, I had a good reason– because my motto is 'give people what they want.''
'Dubious,' Sunny said.
'Sunny's not sure that's a very good reason,' Violet translated, 'and I must say I agree with her. You've caused a lot of grief, Olivia, to a lot of people, just so you could give Count Olaf what he wanted.'
Olivia nodded, and tears appeared in her eyes once more. 'I know it,' she said miserably. 'I'm ashamed of myself. But I don't know what else to do.'
'You could stop helping Olaf,' Klaus said, 'and help us instead. You could tell us everything you know about V.F.D. And you could take us to the Mortmain Mountains to see if one of our parents is really alive.'
'I don't know,' Olivia said. 'I've behaved so badly for so long, but maybe I could change.' She stood up straight, and looked sadly around the darkening tent. 'I used to be a noble person,' she said. 'Do you think I could be noble again?'
