But even as they approached the town, V.F.D. still looked as hazy as it did from far away. As the children drew closer and closer to their new home, they could see a number of buildings of different heights and widths, separated by streets both narrow and wide, and the Baudelaires could even see the tall skinny shapes of lampposts and flagpoles stretching out toward the sky. But everything they saw — from the tip of the highest building to the curve of the narrowest street — was pitch black, and seemed to be shaking slightly, as if the entire town were painted on a piece of cloth that was trembling in the wind. The buildings were trembling, and the lampposts were trembling, and even the very streets were shaking ever so slightly, and it was like no town the three Baudelaires had ever seen. It was a mystery, but unlike most mysteries, once the children reached the outskirts of V.F.D. and learned what was causing the trembling effect, they did not feel any better to have the mystery solved.
The town was covered in crows. Nearly every inch of nearly every object had a large black bird roosting on it and casting a suspicious eye on the children as they stood at the very edge of the village. There were crows sitting on the roofs of all the buildings, perching on the windowsills, and squatting on the steps and on the sidewalks. Crows were covering all of the trees, from the very top branches to the roots poking out of the crow-covered ground, and were gathered in large groups on the streets for crow conversations. Crows were covering the lampposts and flagpoles, and there were crows lying down in the gutters and resting between fence posts. There were even six crows crowded together on the sign that read "Town Hall," with an arrow leading down a crow-covered street. The crows weren't squawking or cawing, which is what crows often do, or playing the trumpet, which crows practically never do, but the town was far from silent. The air was filled with the sounds the crows made as they moved around. Sometimes one crow would fly from one perch to another, as if it had suddenly become bored roosting on the mailbox and thought it might be more fun to perch on the doorknob of a building. Occasionally, several crows would flutter their wings, as if they were stiff from sitting together on a bench and wanted to stretch a little bit. And almost constantly, the crows would shift in their places, trying to make themselves as comfortable as they could in such cramped quarters. All this motion explained why the town had looked so shivery in the distance, but it certainly didn't make the Baudelaires feel any better, and they stood together in silence for quite some time, trying to find the courage to walk among all the fluttering black birds.
"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.