"You can't abandon me," the villain snarled to the islander. "I'm the king of Olaf-Land."
"This isn't Olaf-Land," Ishmael said, with a stern tug on his beard, "and you're no king, Olaf."
Count Olaf threw back his head and laughed, his tattered dress quivering in mirth, a phrase which here means "making unpleasant rustling noises." With a sneer, he pointed at Ishmael, who still sat in the chair. "Oh, Ish," he said, his eyes shining bright, "I told you many years ago that I would triumph over you someday, and at last that day has arrived. My associate with the weekday for a name told me that you were still hiding out on this island, and—"
"Thursday," Mrs. Caliban said.
Olaf frowned, and blinked at the freckled woman. "No," he said."Monday. She was trying to blackmail an old man who was involved in a political scandal."
"Gonzalo," Alonso said.
Olaf frowned again. "No," he said. "We'd gone bird-watching, this old man and I, when we decided to rob a sealing schooner owned by-"
"Humphrey," Weyden said.
"No," Olaf said with another frown. "There was some argument about his name, actually, as a baby adopted by his orphaned children also bore the same name."
"Bertrand," Omeros said.
"No," Olaf said, and frowned yet another time. "The adoption papers were hidden in the hat of a banker who had been promoted to Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs."
"Mr. Poe?" asked Sadie.
"Yes," Olaf said with a scowl, "although at the time he was better known under his stage name. But I'm not here to discuss the past. I'm here to discuss the future. Your mutineering islanders let me out of this cage, Ishmael, to force you off the island and crown me as king!"
"King?" Erewhon said. "That wasn't the plan, Olaf."
"If you want to live, old woman," Olaf said rudely, "I suggest that you do whatever I say."
You're already giving us suggestions?" Brewster said incredulously. "You're just like Ishmael, although your outfit is prettier."
"Thank you," Count Olaf said, with a wicked smile, "but there's another important difference between me and this foolish facilitator."
"Your tattoo?" Friday guessed.
"No," Count Olaf said, with a frown. "If you were to wash the clay off Ishmael's feet, you'd see he has the same tattoo as I do."
"Eyeliner?" guessed Madame Nordoff.
"No," Count Olaf said sharply. "The difference is that Ishmael is unarmed. He abandoned his weapons long ago, during the V.F.D. schism, refusing to use violence of any sort. But today, you'll all see how foolish he is." He paused, and ran his filthy hands along his bulging belly before turning to the facilitator, who was taking something from Omeros's hands. "I have the only weapon that can threaten you and your supporters," he bragged. "I'm the king of Olaf-Land, and there's nothing you and your sheep can do about it."
"Don't be so sure about that," Ishmael said, and raised an object in the air so everyone could see it. It was the harpoon gun that had washed ashore with Olaf and the Baudelaires, after being used to fire at crows at the Hotel Denouement, and at a self-sustaining hot air mobile home in the Village of Fowl Devotees, and at a cotton-candy machine at a county fair when the Baudelaires' parents were very, very young. Now the weapon was adding another chapter to its secret history, and was pointing right at Count Olaf. "I had Omeros keep this weapon handy," Ishmael said, "instead of tossing it in the arboretum, because I thought you might escape from that cage, Count Olaf, just as I escaped from the cage you put me in when you set fire to my home."
"I didn't set that fire," Count Olaf said, his eyes shining bright.
"I've had enough of your lies," Ishmael said, and stood up from his chair. Realizing that the facilitator's feet were not injured after all, the islanders gasped, which requires a large intake of breath, a dangerous thing to do if spores of a deadly fungus are in the air. "I'm going to do what I should have done years ago, Olaf, and slaughter you. I'm going to fire this harpoon gun right into that bulging belly of yours!"
"No!" screamed the Baudelaires in unison, but even the combined voices of the three children were not as loud as Count Olaf's villainous laughter, and the facilitator never heard the children's cry as he pulled the bright red trigger of this terrible weapon. The children heard a click! and then a whoosh! as the harpoon was fired, and then, as it struck Count Olaf right where Ishmael had promised, they heard the shattering of glass, and the Medusoid Mycelium, with its own secret history of treachery and violence, was free at last to circulate in the air, even in this safe place so far from the world. Everyone in the tent gasped—islanders and colonists, men and women, children and orphans, volunteers and villains and everyone in between. Everyone breathed in the spores of the deadly fungus as Count Olaf toppled backward onto the sand, still laughing even as he gasped himself, and in an instant the schism of the island was over, because everyone in this place—including, of course, the Baudelaire orphans—was suddenly part of the same unfortunate event.
Chapter Twelve
It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may be not quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of the soda jerk, a phrase which here means "ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue," and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase "root beer float" without bursting into tears. It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it. As the glass shattered in the tent, the Baudelaire orphans stood and stared at the standing figure of Ishmael, but even as they felt the Medusoid Mycelium drift into their bodies, each tiny spore feeling like the footstep of an ant walking down their throats, they could not believe that their own story could contain such despair once more, or that such a terrible thing had happened.
"What happened?" Friday cried. "I heard glass breaking!"
"Never mind the breaking glass," Erewhon said. "I feel something in my throat, like a tiny seed!"
"Never mind your seedy throat," Finn said. "I see Ishmael standing up on his own two feet!"
Count Olaf cackled from the white sand where he lay. With one dramatic gesture he yanked the harpoon out of the mess of broken helmet and tattered dress at his stomach, and threw it at Ishmael’s clay feet. "The sound you heard was the shattering of a diving helmet," he sneered. "The seeds you feel in your throats are the spores of the Medusoid Mycelium, and the man standing on his own two feet is the one who has slaughtered you all!"
"The Medusoid Mycelium?" Ishmael repeated in astonishment, as the islanders gasped again."On these shores? It can't be! I've spent my life trying to keep the island forever safe from that terrible fungus!"