"Gibbon," Sunny said. She meant something like, "We want to read this history, no matter how miserable it is," and her siblings were quick to translate. But Ishmael tugged at his beard again, and shook his head firmly at the three children.
"Don't you see?" he asked. "I'm not just the island's facilitator. I'm the island's parent. I keep this library far away from the people under my care, so that they will never be disturbed by the world's terrible secrets." The facilitator reached into a pocket of his robe and held out a small object. The Baudelaires saw that it was an ornate ring, emblazoned with the initial R, and stared at it, quite puzzled.
Ishmael opened the enormous volume in his lap, and turned a few pages to read from his notes. "This ring," he said, "once belonged to the Duchess of Winnipeg, who gave it to her daughter, who was also the Duchess of Winnipeg, who gave it to her daughter, and so on and so on and so on. Eventually, the last Duchess of Winnipeg joined V.F.D., and gave it to Kit Snicket's brother. He gave it to your mother. For reasons I still don't understand, she gave it back to him, and he gave it to Kit, and Kit gave it to your father, who gave it to your mother when they were married. She kept it locked in a wooden box that could only be opened by a key that was kept in a wooden box that could only be opened by a code that Kit Snicket learned from her grandfather. The wooden box turned to ashes in the fire that destroyed the Baudelaire mansion, and Captain Widdershins found the ring in the wreckage only to lose it in a storm at sea, which eventually washed it onto our shores."
" Neiklot?" Sunny asked, which meant "Why are you telling us about this ring?"
"The point of the story isn't the ring," Ishmael said. "It's the fact that you've never seen it until this moment. This ring, with its long secret history, was in your home for years, and your parents never mentioned it. Your parents never told you about the Duchess of Winnipeg, or Captain Widdershins, or the Snicket siblings, or V.F.D. Your parents never told you they'd lived here, or that they were forced to leave, or any other details of their own unfortunate history. They never told you their whole story."
"Then let us read that book," Klaus said, "so we can find out for ourselves."
Ishmael shook his head. "You don't understand," he said, which is something the middle Baudelaire never liked to be told. "Your parents didn't tell you these things because they wanted to shelter you, just as this apple tree shelters the items in the arboretum from the island's frequent storms, and just as I shelter the colony from the complicated history of the world. No sensible parent would let their child read even the title of this dreadful, sad chronicle, when they could keep them far from the treachery of the world instead. Now that you've ended up here, don't you want to respect their wishes?" He closed the book again, and stood up, gazing at all three Baudelaires in turn. "Just because your parents have died," he said quietly, "doesn't mean they've failed you. Not if you stay here and lead the life they wanted you to lead." Violet thought of her mother again, bringing the cup of star anise tea on that restless evening. "Are you sure this is what our parents would have wanted?" she asked, not knowing if she could trust his answer.
"If they didn't want to keep you safe," he said, "they would have told you everything, so you could add another chapter to this unfortunate history." He put the book down on the reading chair, and put the ring in Violet's hand. "You belong here, Baudelaires, on this island and under my care. I'll tell the islanders that you've changed your minds, and that you're abandoning your troublesome past."
"Will they support you?" Violet asked, thinking of Erewhon and Finn and their plan to mutiny at breakfast.
"Of course they will," Ishmael said. "The life we lead here on the island is better than the treachery of the world. Leave the arboretum with me, children, and you can join us for breakfast."
"And cordial," Klaus said.
"No apples," Sunny said.
Ishmael gave the children one last nod, and led the children up through the gap in the roots of the tree, turning off the lights as he went. The Baudelaires stepped out into the arboretum, and looked back one last time at the secret space. In the dim light they could just make out the shape of the Incredibly Deadly Viper, who slithered over Ishmael's commonplace book and followed the children into the morning air. The sun filtered through the shade of the enormous apple tree, and shone on the gold block letters on the spine of the book. The children wondered whether the letters had been printed there by their parents, or perhaps by the previous writer of the commonplace book, or the writer before that, or the writer before that. They wondered how many stories the oddly titled history contained, and how many people had gazed at the gold lettering before paging through the previous crimes, follies, and misfortunes and adding more of their own, like the thin layers of an onion. As they walked out of the arboretum, led by their clay-footed facilitator, the Baudelaire orphans wondered about their own unfortunate history, and that of their parents and all the other castaways who had washed up on the shores of the island, adding chapter upon chapter to A Series of Unfortunate Events.
ChapterEleven
Perhaps one night, when you were very small, someone tucked you into bed and read you a story called "The Little Engine That Could," and if so then you have my profound sympathies, as it is one of the most tedious stories on Earth. The story probably put you right to sleep, which is the reason it is read to children, so I will remind you that the story involves the engine of a train that for some reason has the ability to think and talk. Someone asks the Little Engine That Could to do a difficult task too dull for me to describe, and the engine isn't sure it can accomplish this, but it begins to mutter to itself, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," and before long it has muttered its way to success. The moral of the story is that if you tell yourself you can do something, then you can actually do it, a moral easily disproved if you tell yourself that you can eat nine pints of ice cream in a single sitting, or that you can shipwreck yourself on a distant island simply by setting off in a rented canoe with holes sawed in it.
I only mention the story of the Little Engine That Could so that when I say that the Baudelaire orphans, as they left the arboretum with Ishmael and headed back toward the island colony, were on board the Little Engine That Couldn't, you will understand what I mean. For one thing, the children were being dragged back to Ishmael's tent on the large wooden sleigh, helmed by Ishmael in his enormous clay chair and dragged by the island's wild sheep, and if you have ever wondered why horse-drawn carriages and dogsleds are far more common modes of travel than sheep-dragged sleighs, it is because sheep are not well-suited for employment in the transportation industry. The sheep meandered and detoured, lollygagged and moseyed, and occasionally stopped to nibble on wild grass or simply breathe in the morning air, and Ishmael tried to convince the sheep to go faster through his facilitation skills, rather than through standard shepherding procedures. "I don't want to force you," he kept saying, "but perhaps you sheep could go a bit faster," and the sheep would merely stare blankly at the old man and keep shuffling along.
But the Baudelaire orphans were on board the Little Engine That Couldn't not only because of the sheep's languor—a word which here means "inability to pull a large, wooden sleigh at a reasonable pace" — but because their own thoughts were not spurring them to action. Unlike the engine in the tedious story, no matter what Violet, Klaus, and Sunny told themselves, they could not imagine a successful solution to their difficulties. The children tried to tell themselves that they would do as Ishmael had suggested, and lead a safe life on the colony, but they could not imagine abandoning Kit Snicket on the coastal shelf, or letting her return to the world to see that justice would be served without accompanying her on this noble errand. The siblings tried to tell themselves that they would obey their parents' wishes, and stay sheltered from their unfortunate history, but they did not think that they could keep themselves away from the arboretum, or from reading what their parents had written in the enormous book. The Baudelaires tried to tell themselves that they would join Erewhon and Finn in the mutiny at breakfast, but they could not picture threatening the facilitator and his supporters with weapons, particularly because they had not brought any from the arboretum. They tried to tell themselves that at least they could be glad that Count Olaf was not a threat, but they could not quite approve of his being locked in a bird cage, and they shuddered to think of the fungus hidden in his gown and the scheme hidden in his head. And, throughout the entire journey over the brae and back toward the beach, the three children tried to tell themselves that everything was all right, but of course everything was not all right. Everything was all wrong, and Violet, Klaus, and Sunny did not quite know how a safe place, far from the treachery of the world, had become so dangerous and complicated as soon as they had arrived. The Baudelaire orphans sat in the sleigh, staring at Ishmael's clay-covered clay feet, and no latter how many times they thought they could, they thought they could, they thought they could think of an end to their troubles, they knew it simply was not the case.