“I’ve read three books on crows,” Klaus said. “They’re perfectly harmless.”
“Yes, I know,” Violet said. “It’s unusual to see so many crows in one place, but they’re nothing to worry about. It’s small potatoes.”
“Zimuster,” Sunny agreed, but the three children still did not take a step closer to the crow-covered town. Despite what they had said to one another—that the crows were harmless birds, that they had nothing to worry about, and “Zimuster,” which meant something along the lines of “It would be silly to be afraid of a bunch of birds”—the Baudelaires felt they were encountering some very large potatoes indeed.
If I had been one of the Baudelaires myself, I would have stood at the edge of town for the rest of my life, whimpering with fear, rather than take even one step into the crow-covered streets, but it only took the Baudelaires a few minutes to work up the courage to walk through all of the muttering, scuffling birds to Town Hall.
“This isn’t as difficult as I thought it might be,” Violet said, in a quiet voice so as not to disturb the crows closest to her. “It’s not exactly small potatoes, but there’s enough space between the groups of crows to step.”
“That’s true,” Klaus said, his eyes on the sidewalk to avoid stepping on any crow tails. “And they tend to move aside, just a little bit, as we walk by.”
“Racah,” Sunny said, crawling as carefully as she could. She meant something along the lines of “It’s almost like walking through a quiet, but polite, crowd of very short people,” and her siblings smiled in agreement. Before too long, they had walked the entire block of the crow-lined street, and there at the far corner was a tall, impressive building that appeared to be made of white marble—at least, as far as the Baudelaires could tell, because it was as covered with crows as the rest of the neighborhood. Even the sign reading “Town Hall” looked like it read “wn Ha,” because three enormous crows were perched on it, gazing at the Baudelaires with their tiny beady eyes. Violet raised her hand as if to knock on the door, but then paused.
“What’s the matter?” Klaus said.
“Nothing,” Violet replied, but her hand still hung in the air. “I guess I’m just a little skittish. After all, this is the Town Hall of V.F.D. For all we know, behind this door may be the secret we’ve been looking for since the Quagmires were first kidnapped.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up,” Klaus said. “Remember, when we lived with the Squalors, we thought we had solved the V.F.D. mystery, but we were wrong. We could be wrong this time, too.”
“But we could be right,” Violet said, “and if we’re right, we should be prepared for whatever terrible thing is behind this door.”
“Unless we’re wrong,” Klaus pointed out. “Then we have nothing to be prepared for.”
“Gaksoo!” Sunny said. She meant something along the lines of “There’s no point in arguing, because we’ll never know whether we’re right or wrong until we knock on the door,” and before her siblings could answer her she crawled around Klaus’s legs and took the plunge, a phrase which here means “knocked firmly on the door with her tiny knuckles.”
“Come in!” called a very grand voice, and the Baudelaires opened the door and found themselves in a large room with a very high ceiling, a very shiny floor, and a very long bench, with very detailed portraits of crows hanging on the walls. In front of the bench was a small platform where a woman in a motorcycle helmet was standing, and behind the platform were perhaps one hundred folding chairs, most of which had a person sitting on them who was staring at the Baudelaire orphans. But the Baudelaire orphans were not staring back. The three children were staring so hard at the people sitting on the bench that they scarcely glanced at the folding chairs at all.
On the bench, sitting stiffly side by side, were twenty-five people who had two things in common. The first thing was that they were all quite old—the youngest person on the bench, a woman sitting on the far end, looked about eighty-one years of age, and everyone else looked quite a bit older. But the second thing they had in common was far more interesting. At first glance it looked like a few crows had flown in from the streets and roosted on the bench-sitters’ heads, but as the Baudelaires looked more closely, they saw that the crows did not blink their eyes, or flutter their wings or move at all in any way, and the children realized that they were nothing more than black hats, made in such a way as to resemble actual crows. It was such a strange kind of hat to be wearing that the children found themselves staring for quite a few minutes without noticing anything else.
“Are you the Baudelaire orphans?” asked one of the old men who was sitting on the bench, in a gravelly voice. As he talked, his crow head flapped slightly, which only made it look more ridiculous. “We’ve been expecting you, although I wasn’t told you would look so terrible. You three are the most windswept, dusty, and sunburned children I have ever seen. Are you sure you’re the children we’ve been waiting for?”
“Yes,” Violet replied. “I’m Violet Baudelaire, and this is my brother, Klaus, and my sister, Sunny, and the reason why we—”
“Shush,” one of the other old men said. “We’re not discussing you right now. Rule #492 clearly states that the Council of Elders will only discuss things that are on the platform. Right now we are discussing our new Chief of Police. Are there any questions from the townspeople regarding Officer Luciana?”
“Yes, I have a question,” called out a man in plaid pants. “I want to know what happened to our previous Chief of Police. I liked that guy.”
The woman on the platform held up a white-gloved hand, and the Baudelaires turned to look at her for the first time. Officer Luciana was a very tall woman wearing big black boots, a blue coat with a shiny badge, and a motorcycle helmet with the visor pulled down to cover her eyes. The Baudelaires could see her mouth, below the edge of the visor, covered in bright red lipstick. “The previous Chief of Police has a sore throat,” she said, turning her helmet to the man who had asked the question. “He accidentally swallowed a box of thumbtacks. But let’s not waste time talking about him. I am your new Chief of Police, and I will make sure that any rulebreakers in town are punished properly. I can’t see how there’s anything more to discuss.”
“I quite agree with you,” said the first Elder who had spoken, as the people in folding chairs nodded. “The Council of Elders hereby ends the discussion of Officer Luciana. Hector, please bring the orphans to the platform for discussion.”
A tall skinny man in rumpled overalls stood up from one of the folding chairs as the Chief of Police stepped off the platform with a lipsticked smile on. His eyes on the floor, the man walked over to the Baudelaires and pointed first at the Council of Elders sitting on the bench and then at the empty platform. Although they would have preferred a more polite method of communication, the children understood at once, and Violet and Klaus stepped up onto the platform and then lifted Sunny up to join them.
One of the women in the Council of Elders spoke up. “We are now discussing the guardianship of the Baudelaire orphans. Under the new government program, the entire town of V.F.D. will act as guardian over these three children because it takes a village to raise a child. Are there any questions?”
“Are these the same Baudelaires,” came a voice from the back of the room, “who are involved in the kidnapping of the Quagmire twins by Count Omar?”
The Baudelaires turned around to see a woman dressed in a bright pink bathrobe and holding up a copy of The Daily Punctilio. “It says here in the newspaper that an evil count is coming after those children. I don’t want someone like that in our town!”
“We’ve taken care of that matter, Mrs. Morrow,” replied another member of the Council soothingly. “We’ll explain in a moment. Now, when children have a guardian, the guardian makes them do chores, so it follows that you Baudelaires will do all the chores for the entire village. Beginning tomorrow, you three children will be responsible for anything that anyone asks you to do.”
“Hush!” several members of the Council said in unison, and then the youngest-looking woman spoke up. “Rule #920 clearly states that no one may talk while on the platform unless you are a police officer. You’re orphans, not police officers, so shut up. Now, due to the V.F.D. crows, you will have to arrange your chore schedule as follows: In the morning, the crows roost uptown, so that’s when you will do all the downtown chores, so the crows don’t get in your way. In the afternoon, as you can see, the crows roost downtown, so you will do the uptown chores then. Please pay particular attention to our new fountain, which was just installed this morning. It’s very beautiful, and needs to be kept as clean as possible. At night, the crows roost in Nevermore Tree, which is on the outskirts of town, so there’s no problem there. Are there any questions?”
“I have a question,” said the man in plaid pants. He stood up from his folding chair and pointed at the Baudelaires. “Where are they going to live? It may take a village to raise a child, but that doesn’t mean that our homes have to be disturbed by noisy children, does it?”
“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Morrow. “I’m all for the orphans doing our chores, but I don’t want them cluttering up my house.”
Several other townspeople spoke up. “Hear, hear!” they said, using an expression which here means “I don’t want Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire to live with me, either!”
One of the oldest-looking Elders raised both his hands up in the air. “Please,” he said. “There is no reason for all this fuss. The children will live with Hector, our handyman. He will feed them, clothe them, and make sure they do all the chores, and he is responsible for teaching them all of the rules of V.F.D., so they won’t do any more terrible things, such as talking while on the platform.”
“Thank goodness for that,” muttered the man in plaid pants.
“Now, Baudelaires,” said yet another member of the Council. She was sitting so far from the platform that she had to crane her head to look at the children, and her hat looked like it would fall off her head. “Before Hector takes you to his house, I’m sure you have some concerns of your own. It’s too bad you’re not allowed to speak right now, otherwise you could tell us what they were. But Mr. Poe sent us some materials regarding this Count Olaf person.”
“Omar,” corrected Mrs. Morrow, pointing to the headline in the newspaper.
“Silence!” the Elder said. “Now, Baudelaires, I’m sure you are very concerned about this Olaf fellow, but as your guardian, the town will protect you. That is why we have recently made up a new rule, Rule #19,833. It clearly states that no villains are allowed within the city limits.”
“Hear, hear!” the townspeople cried, and the Council of Elders nodded in appreciation, bobbing their crow-shaped hats.
“Now, if there are no more questions,” an Elder concluded, “Hector, please take the Baudelaires off the platform and take them to your house.”
Still keeping his eyes on the floor, the man in overalls strode silently to the platform and led them out of the room. The children hurried to catch up with the handyman, who had not said one word all this time. Was he unhappy to be taking care of three children? Was he angry at the Council of Elders? Was he unable to speak at all? It reminded the Baudelaires of one of Count Olaf’s associates, the one who looked like neither a man nor a woman and who never seemed to speak. The children kept a few steps behind Hector as he walked out of the building, almost afraid to get any closer to a man who was so strange and silent.
When Hector opened the door of Town Hall and led the children back out onto the crow-covered sidewalk, he let out a big sigh—the first sound the children had heard from him. Then he looked down at each Baudelaire and gave them a gentle smile. “I’m never truly relaxed,” he said to them in a pleasant voice, “until I have left Town Hall. The Council of Elders makes me feel very skittish. All those strict rules! It make me so skittish that I never speak during one of their council meetings. But I always feel much better the moment I walk out of the building. Now, it looks like we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time together, so let’s get a few things straight. Number one, call me Hector. Number two, I hope you like Mexican food, because that’s my specialty. And number three, I want you to see something marvelous, and we’re just in time. The sun is starting to set.”
It was true. The Baudelaires hadn’t noticed, when they stepped out of Town Hall, that the afternoon light had slipped away and that the sun was now just beginning to dip below the horizon. “It’s lovely,” Violet said politely, although she had never understood all the fuss about standing around admiring sunsets.
“Shh,” Hector said. “Who cares about the sunset? Just be quiet for a minute, and watch the crows. It should happen any second now.”
“What should happen?” Klaus said.
“Shh,” Hector said again, and then it began to happen. The Council of Elders had already told the Baudelaires about the roosting habits of the crows, but the three children hadn’t really given the matter a second thought, a phrase which here means “considered, even for a second, what it would look like when thousands of crows would fly together to a new location.” One of the largest crows, sitting on top of the mailbox, was the first to fly up in the air, and with a rustle of wings he—or she; it was hard to tell from so far away—began to fly in a large circle over the children’s heads. Then a crow from one of Town Hall’s windowsills flew up to join the first crow, and then one from a nearby bush, and then three from the street, and then hundreds of crows began to rise up at once and circle in the air, and it was as if an enormous shadow was being lifted from the town. The Baudelaires could finally see what all the streets looked like, and they could gaze at each detail of the buildings as more and more crows left their afternoon roosts. But the children scarcely looked at the town. Instead they looked straight up, at the mysterious and beautiful sight of all those birds making a huge circle in the sky.
“Isn’t it marvelous?” Hector cried. His long skinny arms were outstretched, and he had to raise his voice over the sound of all the fluttering wings. “Isn’t it marvelous?”
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny nodded in agreement, and stared at the thousands of crows circling and circling above them like a mass of fluttering smoke or like black, fresh ink—such as the ink I am using now, to write down these events—that somehow had found its way to the heavens. The sound of the wings sounded like a million pages being flipped, and the wind from all that fluttering blew in their grinning faces. For a moment, with all that air rushing toward them, the Baudelaire orphans felt as if they too could fly up into the air, away from Count Olaf and all their troubles, and join the circle of crows in the evening sky.
CHAPTER
Three
“Wasn’t that marvelous?” Hector said, as the crows stopped circling and began to fly, like an enormous black cloud, over the buildings and away from the Baudelaire orphans. “Wasn’t that just marvelous? Wasn’t that absolutely superlative? That means the same thing as ‘marvelous,’ by the way.”
“It certainly was,” Klaus agreed, not adding that he had known the word “superlative” since he was eleven. “I see that just about every evening,” Hector said, “and it always impresses me. It always makes me hungry, too. What shall we eat this evening? How about chicken enchiladas? That’s a Mexican dish consisting of corn tortillas rolled around a chicken filling, covered with melted cheese and a special sauce I learned from my second-grade teacher. How does that sound?”
“That sounds delicious,” Violet said.
“Oh, good,” Hector said. “I despise picky eaters. Well, it’s a pretty long walk to my house, so let’s talk as we go. Here, I’ll carry your suitcases and you two can carry your sister. I know you had to walk from the bus stop, so sh
e’s had more than enough exercise for a baby.”
Hector grabbed the Baudelaires’ bags and led the way down the street, which was now empty except for a few stray crow feathers. High above their heads, the crows were taking a sharp left-hand turn, and Hector raised Klaus’s suitcase to point at them. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the expression ‘as the crow flies,’” Hector said, “but it means ‘the most direct route.’ If something is a mile away as the crow flies, that means it’s the shortest way to get there. It usually has nothing to do with actual crows, but in this case it does. We’re about a mile away from my home as the crow flies—as all those crows fly, as a matter of fact. At night, they roost in Nevermore Tree, which is in my backyard. But it takes us longer to get there, of course, because we have to walk through V.F.D. instead of flying up in the air.”
“Hector,” Violet said timidly, “we were wondering exactly what V.F.D. stands for.”
“Oh yes,” Klaus said. “Please tell us.”
“Of course I’ll tell you,” Hector said, “but I don’t know why you’re so excited about it. It’s just more nonsense from the Council of Elders.”
The Baudelaires looked at one another uncertainly. “What do you mean?” Klaus asked.
“Well, about three hundred and six years ago,” Hector said, “a group of explorers discovered the murder of crows that we just saw.”
“Sturo?” Sunny asked.
“We didn’t see any crows get killed,” Violet said.
“‘Murder’ is the word for a group of crows, like a flock of geese or a herd of cows or a convention of orthodontists. Anyway, the explorers were impressed with their patterns of migration—you know, they always fly uptown in the morning, downtown in the afternoon and over to Nevermore Tree in the evening. It’s a very unusual pattern, and the explorers were so excited by it that they decided to live here. Before too long, a town sprung up, and so they named it V.F.D.”
A Series of Unfortunate Events Collection: Books 1-13 with Bonus Material Page 63
