"Which parent," he said, "do you think is the survivor?"
Violet opened her mouth to answer, but at that moment another question immediately occupied the minds of the elder Baudelaires. It is a dreadful question, and nearly everyone who has found themselves asking it has ended up wishing that they'd never brought up the subject. My brother asked the question once, and had nightmares about it for weeks. An associate of mine asked the question, and found himself falling through the air before he could hear the answer. It is a question I asked once, a very long time ago and in a very timid voice, and a woman replied by quickly putting a motorcycle helmet on her head and wrapping her body in a red silk cape. The question is, "What in the world is that ominous-looking cloud of tiny, white buzzing objects coming toward us?" and I'm sorry to tell you that the answer is "A swarm of well-organized, ill-tempered insects known as snow gnats, who live in cold mountain areas and enjoy stinging people for no reason whatsoever."
"What in the world," Violet said, "is that ominous-looking cloud of tiny, white buzzing objects coming toward us?"
Klaus looked in the direction his sister was pointing and frowned. "I remember reading something in a book on mountainous insect life," he said, "but I can't quite recall the details."
"Try to remember," Violet said, looking nervously at the approaching swarm. The ominous-looking cloud of tiny, white buzzing objects had appeared from around a rocky corner, and from a distance it looked a bit like the beginnings of a snowfall. But now the snowfall was organizing itself into the shape of an arrow, and moving toward the two children, buzzing louder and louder as if it were annoyed. "I think they might be snow gnats," Klaus said. "Snow gnats live in cold mountain areas and have been known to group themselves into well-defined shapes."
Violet looked from the approaching arrow to the waters of the stream and the steep edge of the mountain peak. "I'm glad gnats are harmless," she said. "It doesn't look like there's any way to avoid them."
"There's something else about snow gnats," Klaus said, "that I'm not quite remembering."
The swarm drew quite close, with the tip of the fluttering white arrow just a few inches from the Baudelaires' noses, and then stopped in its path, buzzing angrily. The two siblings stood face-to-face with the snow gnats for a long, tense second, and the gnat at the very, very tip of the arrow flew daintily forward and stung Violet on the nose.
"Ow!" Violet said. The snow gnat flew back to its place, and the eldest Baudelaire was left rubbing a tiny red mark on her nose. "That hurt," she said. "It feels like a pin stuck me."
"I remember now," Klaus said. "Snow gnats are ill-tempered and enjoy stinging people for no reason whatso "
But Klaus did not get to finish his sentence, because the snow gnats interrupted and gave a ghastly demonstration of just what he was talking about. Curling lazily in the mountain winds, the arrow twisted and became a large buzzing circle, and the gnats began to spin around and around the two Baudelaires like a well-organized and ill-tempered hula hoop. Each gnat was so tiny that the children could not see any of its features, but they felt as if the insects were smiling nastily.
"Are the stings poisonous?" Violet asked.
"Mildly," Klaus said. "We'll be all right if we get stung a few times, but many stings could make us very ill. Ow!"
One of the gnats had flown up and stung Klaus on the cheek, as if it were seeing if the middle Baudelaire was fun to hurt. "People always say that if you don't bother stinging insects, they won't bother you," Violet said nervously. "Ow!"
"That's scarcely ever true," Klaus said, "and it's certainly not true with snow gnats. Ow! Ow! Ow!"
"What should we Ow!" Violet half asked.
"I don't Ow!" Klaus half answered, but in moments the Baudelaires did not have time for even half a conversation. The circle of snow gnats began spinning faster and faster, and the insects spread themselves out so it looked as if the two siblings were in the middle of a tiny, white tornado. Then, in a series of maneuvers that must have taken a great deal of rehearsal, the gnats began stinging the Baudelaires, first on one side and then on the other. Violet shrieked as several gnats stung her chin. Klaus shouted as a handful of gnats stung his left ear. And both Baudelaires cried out as they tried to wave the gnats away only to feel the stingers all over their waving hands. The snow gnats stung to the left, and stung to the right. They approached the Baudelaires from above, making the children duck, and then from below, making the children stand on tiptoe in an effort to avoid them. And all the while, the swarm buzzed louder and louder, as if wishing to remind the Baudelaires how much fun the insects were having. Violet and Klaus closed their eyes and stood together, too scared to walk blindly and find themselves falling off a mountain peak or sinking into the waters of the Stricken Stream.
"Coat!" Klaus managed to shout, then spit out a gnat that had flown into his open mouth in the hopes of stinging his tongue. Violet understood at once, and grabbed the extra coat in her hands and draped it over Klaus and herself like a large, limp umbrella of cloth. The snow gnats buzzed furiously, trying to get inside to continue stinging them, but had to settle for stinging the Baudelaires' hands as they held the coat in place.
Violet and Klaus looked at one another dimly underneath the coat, wincing as their fingers were stung, and tried to keep walking.
"We'll never reach the Valley of Four Drafts like this," Violet said, speaking louder than usual over the buzzing of the gnats. "How can we stop them, Klaus?"
"Fire drives them away," Klaus said. "In the book I read, the author said that even the smell of smoke can keep a whole swarm at bay. But we can't start a fire underneath a coat."
"Ow!" A snow gnat stung Violet's thumb on a spot that had already been stung, just as the Baudelaires rounded the rocky corner where the swarm had first appeared. Through a worn spot in the fabric, the Baudelaires could just make out a dark, circular hole in the side of the mountain.
"That must be an entrance to one of the caves," Klaus said. "Could we start a fire in there?"
"Maybe," Violet said. "And maybe we'd annoy a hibernating animal."
"We've already managed to annoy thousands of animals," Klaus said, almost dropping the pitcher as a gnat stung his wrist. "I don't think we have much choice. I think, we have to head into the cave and take our chances."
Violet nodded in agreement, but looked nervously at the entrance to the cave. Taking one's chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck. The two Baudelaires walked carefully toward the dark, circular hole, making sure to stay clear of the nearby edge of the peak and pulling the coat tightly around them so the snow gnats could not find a way inside, but what worried them most was not the height of the peak or the stingers of the gnats but the chances they were taking as they ducked inside the gloomy entrance of the cave.
The two Baudelaires had never been in this cave before, of course, and as far as I have been able to ascertain, they were never in it again, even on their way back down the mountain, after they had been reunited with their baby sister and learned the secret of Verbal Fridge Dialogue. And yet, as Violet and Klaus took their chances and walked inside, they found two things with which they were familiar. The first was fire. As they stood inside the entrance to the cave, the siblings realized at once that there was no need to worry about the snow gnats any longer, because they could smell nearby smoke, and even see, at a great distance, small orange flames toward the back of the cave. Fire, of course, was very familiar to the children, from the ashen smell of the remains of the Baudelaire mansion to the scent of the flames that destroyed Caligari Carnival. But as the snow gnats formed an arrow and darted away from the cave and the Baudelaires took another step inside, Violet and Klaus found another familiar thing a familiar person, to be exact, who they had thought they would never see again.