The Carnivorous Carnival

our only chance to get to the Mortmain Mountains. You don't have time to invent something, and I don't have time to look through the library.'

'We could find one of the other carnival employees,' Violet said, 'and ask them if they would help us.'

'Everyone either thinks that we're freaks or murderers,' Klaus said. 'Sometimes even I think so.'

'If we join Count Olaf,' Violet said, 'we might become even more freakish and murderous.'

'But if we don't join him,' Klaus asked, 'where can we possibly go?'

'I don't know,' Violet said sadly, 'but this can't be the right thing to do, can it?'

'Maybe it's harum-scarum,' Klaus said, 'like Olivia said.'

'Maybe it is,' Violet said, and walked awkwardly with her brother to the cardboard box and picked it up. Klaus held the torch, and the two Baudelaires walked out of the fortune-telling tent for the last time.

When they first stepped out, still wearing the same pair of pants, it seemed as if night had already fallen, although the air was black and not the blue of the famous hinterlands sunsets. But then Violet and Klaus realized that the air was filling with smoke. Looking around, they saw that many of the tents and caravans were already on fire, as Count Olaf had said, and the flames were billowing black smoke up into the sky. Around them, the last of the carnival visitors were rushing to escape from Olaf's treachery, and in the distance the siblings could hear the panicked roars of the lions, who were still trapped in the pit.

'This isn't the kind of violence I like!' shouted the man with pimples on his face, coughing in the smoke as he ran by. 'I prefer it when other people are in danger!'

'Me, too!' said the reporter from The Daily Punctilio, running alongside him. 'Olaf told me that the Baudelaires are responsible! I can see the headline now: 'BAUDELAIRES CONTINUE THEIR LIVES OF CRIME!''

'What kind of children would do such a terrible thing?' asked the man with the pimpled chin, but Violet and Klaus could not hear the answer over the voice of Count Olaf.

'Hurry up, you two-headed freak!' he called from around the corner. 'If you don't come here right this minute, we're leaving without you!'

'Grr!' Sunny growled frantically, and at the sound of their baby sister's disguised voice, the older Baudelaires threw the lit torch into the fortune-telling tent, and ran toward Olaf's voice without looking back, although it wouldn't have mattered if they had looked. There was so much fire and smoke around them one more burning tent wouldn't have made the carnival look any different. The only difference was that they would have known that part of the fire was of their own devising, a phrase which here means 'because of their part in Count Olaf's treachery,' and although neither Violet nor Klaus saw this with their own eyes, they knew it in their hearts, and I doubt that they would ever forget it.

When the older Baudelaires rounded the corner, they saw that all of Olaf's other henchmen were already waiting at the long, black automobile, which was parked in front of the freaks' caravan. Hugo, Colette, and Kevin were crowded in the back seat with the two white-faced women, while Esmй Squalor sat in the front, with Sunny on her lap. The hook-handed man took the box out of the older Baudelaires' hands and threw it into the trunk while Count Olaf pointed to the caravan with his whip, which looked much shorter, and rough around the edges.

'You two will ride in that,' he said. 'We're going to attach it to the automobile and pull you along with us.'

'Isn't there room in the car?' Violet asked nervously.

'Don't be ridiculous,' the hook-handed man said with a sneer. 'It's too crowded. Good thing Colette is a contortionist, so she can curl into a ball at our feet.'

'Chabo already gnawed my whip down so it could be used as a connecting rope,' Count Olaf said. 'I'll just tie the caravan to the car with a double slipknot, and then we'll ride off into the sunset.'

'Excuse me,' Violet said, 'but I know a knot called the Devil's Tongue that I think will hold better.'

'And if I remember the map correctly,' Klaus said, 'we should ride east until we find Stricken Stream, so we should drive that way, away from the sunset.'

'Yes, yes, yes,' Count Olaf said quickly. 'That's what I meant. Tie it yourself if you want. I'll go start the engine.'

Olaf tossed the rope to Klaus while the hook-handed man reached into the trunk again, and brought out a pair of walkie-talkies the children remembered from when they were living in Olaf's home. 'Take one of these,' he said, putting one in Violet's hand, 'so we can contact you if we need to tell you something.'

'Hurry up,' Count Olaf snapped, taking the other walkie-talkie. 'The air is filling with smoke.'

The villain and his henchmen got into the automobile, and Violet and Klaus knelt down to attach the caravan. 'I can't believe I'm using this knot to help Count Olaf,' she said. 'It feels like I'm using my inventing skills to participate in something wicked.'

'We're all participating,' Klaus said glumly. 'Sunny used her teeth to turn that whip into a connecting rope, and I used my map skills to tell Olaf which direction to head.'

'At least we'll get there, too,' Violet said, 'and maybe one of our parents will be waiting for us. There. The knot's tied. Let's get in the caravan.'

'I wish we were riding with Sunny,' Klaus said.

'We are,' Violet said. 'We're not getting to the Mortmain Mountains the way we want, but we're getting there, and that's what counts.'

'I hope so,' Klaus said, and he and his sister stepped into the freaks' caravan and shut the door. Count Olaf started the engine of the car, and the caravan began to rock gently back and forth as the automobile pulled them away from the carnival. The hammocks swayed above the two siblings, and the rack of clothing creaked beside them, but the knot Violet had tied held fast, and the two vehicles began traveling in the direction Klaus had pointed.

'We might as well get comfortable,' Violet said. 'We'll be traveling a long time.'

'All night at least,' Klaus said, 'and probably most of the next day. I hope they'll stop and share the food.'

'Maybe we can make some hot chocolate later,' Violet said.

'With cinnamon,' Klaus said, smiling as he thought of Sunny's recipe. 'But what should we do in the meantime?'

Violet sighed, and she and her brother sat down on a chair so she could lay her head on the table, which was shaking slightly as the caravan headed out into the hinterlands. The eldest Baudelaire put down the walkie-talkie next to the set of dominoes. 'Let's just sit,' she said, 'and think.'

Klaus nodded in agreement, and the two Baudelaires sat and thought for the rest of the afternoon, as the automobile pulled them farther and farther away from the burning carnival. Violet tried to imagine what the V.F.D. headquarters might look like, and hoped that one of their parents would be there. Klaus tried to imagine what Olaf and his troupe were talking about, and hoped that Sunny was not too frightened. And both the older Baudelaires thought about all that had happened at Caligari Carnival, and wondered whether or not they had done the right things. They had disguised themselves in order to find the answers to their questions, and now the answers were burning up under Madame Lulu's table, as her archival library went up in smoke. They had encouraged their coworkers to find employment someplace where they wouldn't be considered freaks, and now they had joined Count Olaf's evil troupe. And they had promised Madame Lulu that they would take her with them, so she could lead them to V.F.D. and become a noble person again, but she had fallen into the lion pit and become nothing but a meal. Violet and Klaus thought about all of the trouble they were in, and wondered if it was all due to simple misfortune, or if some of it was of their own devising. These were not the most pleasant thoughts in the world, but it still felt good to sit and think about them, instead of hiding and lying and frantically thinking up plans. It was peaceful to sit and think in the freaks' caravan, even when the caravan tilted slightly as they reached the beginning of the Mortmain Mountains and began to head uphill. It was so peaceful to sit and think that both Violet and Klaus felt as if they were waking up from a long sleep when Count Olaf's voice came out of the walkie-talkie.

'Are you there?' Olaf asked. 'Press the red button and speak to me!'

Violet rubbed her eyes, picked up the walkie-talkie, and held it so both she and her brother could hear. 'We're here,' she said.

'Good,' Count Olaf replied, 'because I wanted to tell you that I learned something else from Madame Lulu.'

'What did you learn?' Klaus asked.