⇗ Chapter 14

Count Olaf gasped, and raised his one eyebrow very high as he gazed at the Baudelaires and their two companions, his eyes shinier than they had ever seen them. "Where is it?" he said, in a terrible, wheezing whisper. "Give it to me!"

Sabine was glad that she had thought to put on her mask, because it hid the way she was smiling triumphantly, proud of herself for remembering the sugar bowl. It was the perfect bargaining chip. "Not until you give us Sunny Baudelaire," she said.

"Never!" the villain replied. "Without that big-toothed brat, I'll never capture the Baudelaire fortune. You give me the sugar bowl this instant, or I'll throw all of you off this mountain!"

"If you throw us off the mountain," Klaus said, "you'll never know where the sugar bowl is."

Sabine was glad that he did not add that they actually had no idea where the sugar bowl was, why Esmé believed Sabine had it, or why in the world it was so important.

Esmé Squalor took a sinister step toward her boyfriend, her flame-imitating dress crackling against the cold ground.

"We must have that sugar bowl," she snarled. "Let the baby go. We'll cook up another scheme to steal the fortune."

"But stealing the fortune is the greater good," Count Olaf said. "We can't let the baby go."

"Getting the sugar bowl is the greater good," Esmé said, with a frown.

"Stealing the fortune," Olaf insisted.

"Getting the sugar bowl," Esmé replied.

"Fortune!"

"Sugar bowl!"

"Fortune!"

"Sugar bowl!"

"That's enough!" ordered the man with a beard but no hair. "Our recruitment scheme is about to be put into action. We can't have you arguing all day long."

"We wouldn't have argued all day long," Count Olaf said timidly. "After a few hours – "

"We said that's enough!" ordered the woman with hair but no beard. "Bring the baby over here!"

"Bring the baby at once!" Count Olaf ordered the two white-faced women. "She's napping in her casserole dish."

The two white-faced women sighed, but hurried over to the casserole dish and lifted it together, as if they were cooks removing something from the oven instead of villainous employees bringing over a prisoner, while the two sinister visitors reached down the necks of their shirts and retrieved something that was hanging around their necks. Sabine was surprised to see two shiny silver whistles, like the one Count Olaf had used as part of his disguise at Prufrock Preparatory School, when he was pretending to be a coach.

"Watch this, volunteers," said the sinister man in his hoarse voice, and the two mysterious villains blew their whistles.

Instantly, the children heard an enormous rustling sound over their heads, as if the Mortmain Mountain winds were as frightened as the youngsters, and it suddenly grew very dim, as if the morning sun had also put on a mask. But when they looked up, Violet, Klaus, and Quigley saw that the reason for the noisy sky and the fading light was perhaps more strange than frightened winds and a masked sun.

The sky above Mount Fraught was swarming with eagles. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, flying in silent circles high above the two sinister villains. They must have been nesting nearby to have arrived so quickly, and they must have been very thoroughly trained to be so eerily silent.

Some of them looked very old, old enough to have been in the skies when the children's parents were children themselves. Some of them looked quite young, as if they had only recently emerged from the egg and were already obeying the shrill sound of a whistle. But all of them looked exhausted, as if they would rather be anywhere else but the summit of the Mortmain Mountains, doing absolutely anything rather than following the orders of such wretched people.

"Look at these creatures!" cried the woman with hair but no beard. "When the schism occurred, you may have won the carrier crows, volunteers, and you may have won the trained reptiles."

"Not anymore," Count Olaf said. "All of the reptiles except one – "

"Don't interrupt," the sinister woman interrupted. "You may have the carrier crows, but we have the two most powerful mammals in the world to do our bidding – the lions and eagles!"

"Eagles aren't mammals," Klaus cried out in frustration. "They're birds!"

"They're slaves," said the man with a beard but no hair, and the two villains reached into the pockets of their suits and drew out two long, wicked-looking whips. With matching, sinister sneers the two mysterious villains cracked their whips in the air, and four eagles swooped down from the sky, landing on the strange thick pads that the villains had on their shoulders.

"These beasts will do anything we tell them to do," the woman said. "And today they're going to help us with our greatest triumph." She uncurled the whip and gestured to the ground around her, and the children noticed for the first time an enormous net on the ground, spread out over almost the entire peak and just stopping at their fork-assisted climbing shoes. "On my signal, these eagles will lift this net from the ground and carry it into the sky, capturing a group of young people who think they're here to celebrate False Spring."

"The Snow Scouts," Violet said in astonishment.

"We'll capture every one of those uniformed brats," the villainous man bragged, "and each one of them will be offered the exciting opportunity to join us."

"They'll never join you," Klaus said.

"Of course they will," said the sinister woman, in her deep, deep voice. "They'll either be recruited, or they'll be our prisoners. But one thing is for certain – we'll burn down every single one of their parents' homes."

All of the children shuddered, and even Count Olaf looked a bit uneasy. "Of course," he said quickly, "the main reason we're doing all this is to get our hands on all those fortunes."

"Of course," Esmé said with a nervous snicker. "We'll have the Spats fortune, the Kornbluth fortune, the Winnipeg fortune, and many others. I'll be able to afford the penthouse apartment of every single building that isn't on fire!"

"Once you tell us where the sugar bowl is," said the man with a beard but no hair, "you can leave, volunteers, and take your baby friend with you. But wouldn't you rather join us?"

"No, thank you," Quigley said. "We're not interested."

"It doesn't matter if you're interested or not," said the woman with hair but no beard. "Look around you. You're hopelessly outnumbered. Wherever we go, we find new comrades who are eager to assist us in our work."

"We have comrades, too," Violet said bravely. "As soon as we rescue Sunny, we're going to meet up with the other volunteers at the last safe place, and tell them about your terrible scheme!"

"It's too late for that, volunteers," said Count Olaf in triumph. "Here come my new recruits!"

With a horrible laugh, the villain pointed in the direction of the rocky path, and Sabine could see, past the covered casserole dish still held by the white-faced women, the arrival of the uniformed Snow Scouts, walking in two neat lines, more like eggs in a carton than young people on a hike. Apparently, the scouts had realized that the snow gnats were absent from this part of the Mortmain Mountains and had removed their masks, so Sabine could instantly spot Carmelita Spats, standing at the front of one of the lines with a tiara on her head and a large smirk on her face. Beside her, at the head of the other line, stood Bruce, holding the Spring Pole in one hand and a big cigar in the other.

"What are all you cakesniffers doing here?" demanded Carmelita, in her familiar, obnoxious voice. "I'm the False Spring Queen, and I order you to go away!"

"Now, now, Carmelita," Bruce said. "I'm sure these people are here to help celebrate your special day. Let's try to be accommodating. In fact we should try to be accommodating, basic, calm, darling – "

The scouts had begun to say the ridiculous pledge along with Bruce, but Sabine knew they could not wait for the entire alphabetical list to be recited.

"Bruce," Sabine interrupted quickly, "these people are not here to help you celebrate False Spring. They're here to kidnap all of the Snow Scouts."

"What?" Bruce asked with a smile, as if Sabine might have been joking.

"It's a trap," Klaus said. "Please, turn around and lead the scouts away from here."

"Pay no attention to these four masked idiots," Count Olaf said quickly. "The mountain air has gone to their heads. Just take a few steps closer and we'll all join in a special celebration."

"We're happy to accommodate," Bruce said. "After all, we're accommodating, basic – "

"No!" Sabine cried. "Don't you see the net on the ground? Don't you see the eagles in the sky?"

"The net is decoration," Esmé said, with a smile as false as the Spring, "and the eagles are wildlife."

"Please listen to us!" Klaus said. "You're in terrible danger!"

Carmelita glared at the children, and adjusted her tiara. "Why should I listen to cakesniffing strangers like you?" she asked. "You're so stupid that you've still got your masks on, even though there aren't any snow gnats around here."

Sabine looked at her friends through her mask. Carmelita's response had been quite rude, but she had to admit she had a point. They were unlikely to convince anyone that they were telling the truth while their faces were unnecessarily covered. They did not want to sacrifice their disguises and reveal their true identities to Count Olaf and his troupe, but they couldn't risk the kidnapping of all the Snow Scouts, even to save Sunny. The two Baudelaires nodded at one another, and then turned to see that Quigley and Sabine were nodding, too, and the four children reached up and took off their masks for the greater good.

Count Olaf's mouth dropped open in surprise. "You're dead!" he said to the eldest Baudelaire. "You fell to your death in the caravan, along with Klaus!"

Esmé stared at Klaus, looking just as astonished as her boyfriend. "You're dead, too!" she cried. "You fell off a mountain!"

"And you're one of those twins!" Olaf said to Quigley. "You died a long time ago!"

"I'm not a twin," Quigley said, "and I'm not dead."

Esmé turned to Sabine, an evil smile creeping up the villainous woman's face. "And you are the Trillian girl," she purred. "You really do know where the sugar bowl is."

"And," Count Olaf said with a sneer, "you're not a volunteer. None of you are members of V.F.D. You're just a bunch of orphan brats."

Sabine was about to correct him and say that she was, in fact, a volunteer, but the woman with hair but no beard started speaking first. "In that case," said the woman, in her deep, deep voice, "there's no reason to worry about that stupid baby any longer."

"That's true," Olaf said, and turned to the white-faced women. "Throw the baby off the mountain!" he ordered.

Violet and Klaus cried out in horror, but the two white-faced women merely looked at the covered casserole dish they were holding, and then at one another. Then, slowly, they looked at Count Olaf, but neither of them moved an inch.

"Didn't you hear me?" Olaf asked. "Throw that baby off this mountain!"

"No," said one of the white-faced women, and the two Baudelaires turned to them in relief.

"No?" asked Esmé Squalor in an astonished voice. "What do you mean, no?"

"We mean no," said the white-faced woman, and her companion nodded. Together they put the covered casserole dish down on the ground in front of them. Violet and Klaus were surprised to see that the dish did not move, and assumed that their sister must have been too scared to come out.

"We don't want to participate in your schemes anymore," said the other white-faced woman, and sighed. "For a while, it was fun to fight fire with fire, but we've seen enough flames and smoke to last our whole lives."

"We don't think that it was a coincidence that our home burned to the ground," said the first woman. "We lost a sibling in that fire, Olaf."

Count Olaf pointed at the two women with a long, bony finger. "Obey my orders this instant!" he screamed, but his two former accomplices merely shook their heads, turned away from the villain, and began to walk away. Everyone on the square peak watched in silence as the two white-faced women walked past Count Olaf, past Esmé Squalor, past the two sinister villains with eagles on their shoulders, past the two Baudelaires, Quigley Quagmire and Sabine Trillian, past the hook-handed man and the former employees of the carnival, and finally past Bruce and Carmelita Spats and the rest of the Snow Scouts, until they reached the rocky path and began to walk away from Mount Fraught altogether.

Count Olaf opened his mouth and let out a terrible roar, and jumped up and down on the net. "You can't walk away from me, you pasty-faced women!" he cried. "I'll find you and destroy you myself! In fact, I can do anything myself! I'm an individual practitioner, and I don't need anybody's help to throw this baby off the mountain!" With a nasty chuckle, he picked up the covered casserole dish, staggering slightly, and walked to the edge of the half-frozen waterfall.

"No!" Violet cried.

"Sunny!" Klaus and Sabine screamed in unison.

"Say good-bye to your baby sister, Baudelaires!" Count Olaf said, with a triumphant smile that showed all of his filthy teeth.

"I'm not a baby!" cried a familiar voice from under the villain's long, black automobile, and the two elder Baudelaires watched with pride and relief as Sunny emerged from behind the tire Violet had punctured, and ran to hug her siblings. Klaus had to take his glasses off to wipe the tears from his eyes as he was finally reunited with the young girl who was his sister. "I'm not a baby!" Sunny said again, turning to Olaf in triumph.

"How could this be?" Count Olaf said, but when he removed the cover from the casserole dish, he saw how this could be, because the object inside, which was about the same size and weight as the youngest Baudelaire, wasn't a baby either.

"Babganoush!" Sunny cried, which meant something along the lines of, "I concocted an escape plan with the eggplant that turned out to be even handier than I thought," but there was no need for anyone to translate, as the large vegetable slid out of the casserole dish and landed with a plop! at Olaf's feet.

"Nothing is going right for me today!" cried the villain. "I'm beginning to think that washing my face was a complete waste of time!"

"Don't upset yourself, boss," said Colette, contorting herself in concern. "I'm sure that Sunny will cook us something delicious with the eggplant."

"That's true," the hook-handed man said. "She's becoming quite a cook. The False Spring Rolls were quite tasty, and the lox was delicious."

"It could have used a little dill, in my opinion," Hugo said, but the three reunited Baudelaires turned away from this ridiculous conversation to face the Snow Scouts.

"Now do you believe us?" Violet asked Bruce. "Can't you see that this man is a terrible villain who is trying to do you harm?"

"Don't you remember us?" Klaus asked Carmelita Spats. "Count Olaf had a terrible scheme at Prufrock Prep, and he has a terrible scheme now!"

"Of course I remember you," Carmelita said. "You're those cakesniffing orphans who caused Vice Principal Nero all that trouble. And now you're trying to ruin my very special day! Give me that Springpole, Uncle Bruce!"

"Now, now, Carmelita," Bruce said, but Carmelita had already grabbed the long pole from Bruce's hands and was marching across the net toward the source of the Stricken Stream. The man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard clasped their wicked whips and raised their shiny whistles to their sinister mouths, but the Baudelaires could see they were waiting to spring their trap until the rest of the scouts stepped forward, so they would be inside the net when the eagles lifted it from the ground.

"I crown myself False Spring Queen!" Carmelita announced, when she reached the very edge of Mount Fraught. With a nasty laugh of triumph, she elbowed the Baudelaires aside and drove the Spring Pole into the half-frozen top of the waterfall. There was a slow, loud shattering sound, and Sabine looked down the slope and saw that an enormous crack was slowly making its way down the center of the waterfall, toward the pool and the two tributaries of the Stricken Stream. She gasped in horror. Although it was only the ice that was cracking, it looked as if the mountain were beginning to split in half, and that soon an enormous schism would divide the entire world.

"What are you looking at?" Carmelita asked scornfully. "Everybody's supposed to be doing a dance in my honor."

"That's right," Count Olaf said, "why doesn't everybody step forward and do a dance in honor of this darling little girl?"

"Sounds good to me," Kevin said, leading his fellow employees onto the net. "After all, I have two equally strong feet."

"And we should try to be accommodating," the hook-handed man said. "Isn't that what you said, Uncle Bruce?"

"Absolutely," Bruce agreed, with a puff on his cigar. He looked a bit relieved that all the arguing had ceased, and that the scouts finally had an opportunity to do the same thing they did every year. "Come on, Snow Scouts, let's recite the Snow Scout Alphabet Pledge as we dance around the Springpole."

The scouts cheered and followed Bruce onto the net. "Snow Scouts," the Snow Scouts said, "are accommodating, basic, calm, darling, emblematic, frisky, grinning, human, innocent, jumping, kept, limited, meek, nap-loving, official, pretty, quarantined, recent, scheduled, tidy, understandable, victorious, wholesome, xylophone, young, and zippered, every morning, every afternoon, every night, and all day long!"

As the Snow Scouts promised to be "xylophone," the man with a beard but no hair cracked his whip in the air, and the eagles sitting on both villains' shoulders began to flap their wings and, digging their claws into the thick pads, lifted the two sinister people high in the air, and when the pledge neared its end, and the Snow Scouts were all taking a big breath to make the snowy sound, the woman with hair but no beard blew her whistle, making a loud shriek Sabine remembered from running laps as part of Olaf's scheme at Prufrock Prep.

The three siblings stood with Quigley and Sabine, and watched as the rest of the eagles quickly dove to the ground, picked up the net, and, their wings trembling with the effort, lifted everyone who was standing on it into the air, the way you might remove all the dinner dishes from the table by lifting all the corners of the tablecloth. In moments, all of the Snow Scouts and Olaf's hench folk were in an aerial heap, struggling together inside the net that the eagles were holding.

The only person who escaped recruitment – besides the Baudelaires, Quigley, and Sabine, of course – was Carmelita Spats, standing next to Count Olaf and his girlfriend.

"What's going on?" Bruce asked Count Olaf from inside the net. "What have you done?"

"I've triumphed," Count Olaf said, "again. A long time ago, I tricked you out of a reptile collection that I needed for my own use. And now, I've tricked you out of a collection of children!"

"What's going to happen to us?" asked one of the Snow Scouts fearfully.

"I don't care," said another Snow Scout, who seemed to be afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome already. "Every year we hike up to Mount Fraught and do the same thing. At least this year is a little different!"

"Why are you recruiting me, too?" asked the hook-handed man, and the Baudelaires could see one of his hooks frantically sticking out of the net. "I already work for you."

"Don't worry, hooky," Esmé replied mockingly. "It's all for the greater good!"

"Mush!" cried the man with a beard but no hair, cracking his whip in the air. Squawking in fear, the eagles began to drag the net across the sky, away from Mount Fraught.

"You get the sugar bowl from those bratty orphans, Olaf," ordered the woman with hair but no beard, "and we'll all meet up at the last safe place!"

"With these eagles at our disposal," the sinister man said in his hoarse voice, "we can finally catch up to that self-sustaining hot air mobile home and destroy those volunteers!"

The Baudelaires gasped, and shared an astonished look with Quigley and Sabine. The villain was surely talking about the device that Hector had built at the Village of Fowl Devotees, in which Duncan and Isadora had escaped.

"We'll fight fire with fire!" the woman with hair but no beard cried in triumph, and the eagles carried her away.

Count Olaf muttered something to himself and then turned and began creeping toward the Baudelaires. "I only need one of you to learn where the sugar bowl is," he said, his eyes shining brightly, "and to get my hands on the fortune. But which one should it be?"

"That's a difficult decision," Esmé said. "On one hand, it's been enjoyable having an infant servant. But it would be a lot of fun to smash Klaus's glasses and watch him bump into things."

"But Violet has the longest hair," Carmelita volunteered, as the Baudelaires backed toward the cracked waterfall with Quigley and Sabine right behind them. "You could yank on it all the time, and tie it to things when you were bored."

"Those are both excellent ideas," Count Olaf said. "I'd forgotten what an adorable little girl you are. Why don't you join us?"

"Join you?" Carmelita asked.

"Look at my stylish dress," Esmé said to Carmelita. "If you joined us, I'd buy you all sorts of in outfits."

Carmelita looked thoughtful, gazing first at the children, and then at the two villains standing next to her and smiling. The three Baudelaires shared a look of horrified disappointment with Quigley and Sabine. Sabine remembered how monstrous Carmelita had been at school, but it had never occurred to her that she would be interested in joining up with even more monstrous people.

"Don't believe them, Carmelita," Quigley said, and took his purple notebook out of his pocket. "They'll burn your parents' house down. I have the evidence right here, in my commonplace book."

"What are you going to believe, Carmelita?" Count Olaf asked. "A silly book, or something an adult tells you?"

"Look at us, you adorable little girl," Esmé said, her yellow, orange, and red dress crackling on the ground. "Do we look like the sort of people who like to burn down houses?"

"Carmelita!" Violet cried. "Don't listen to them!"

"Carmelita!" Klaus cried. "Don't join them!"

"Carmelita, please!" Sabine begged.

"Carmelita," Count Olaf said, in a sickeningly sweet voice. "Why don't you choose one orphan to live, and push the others off the cliff, and then we'll all go to a nice hotel together."

"You'll be like the daughter we never had," Esmé said, stroking her tiara.

"Or something," added Olaf, who looked like he would prefer having another employee rather than a daughter.

Carmelita glanced once more at the Baudelaires, and then smiled up at the two villains. "Do you really think I'm adorable?" she asked.

"I think you're adorable, beautiful, cute, dainty, eye-pleasing, flawless, gorgeous, harmonious, impeccable, jaw-droppingly adorable, keen, luscious, magnificent, nifty, obviously adorable, photogenic, quite adorable, ravishing, splendid, thin, undeformed, very adorable, well-proportioned, xylophone, yummy, and zestfully adorable," Esmé pledged, "every morning, every afternoon, every night, and all day long!"

"Don't listen to her!" Quigley pleaded.

"A person can't be 'xylophone'!" Sabine added.

"I don't care!" Carmelita said. "I'm going to push these cakesniffers off the mountain, and start an exciting and fashionable new life!"

The Baudelaires took another step back, and Quigley and Sabine followed, giving the children a panicked look. Above them they could hear the squawking of the eagles as they took the villains' new recruits farther and farther away. Behind them they could feel the four drafts of the valley below, where the headquarters had been destroyed by people the children's parents had devoted their lives to stopping.

"Poor Baudelaires," Count Olaf said mockingly. "You might as well give up. You're hopelessly outnumbered."

"We're not outnumbered at all," Klaus said. "There are five of us, and only three of you."

"I count triple because I'm the False Spring Queen," Carmelita said, "so you are outnumbered, cakesniffers."

She counts triple because she's False Spring Queen? Sabine thought. That's utter nonsense! But before she could explain this to Evil Queen Carmelita, Sunny had devised a plan.

"Rosebud!'' Sunny cried, which meant "In some situations, the location of a certain object can be much more important than being outnumbered," and it was true. As the villains gasped in astonishment, Violet sat down in the toboggan, grabbing the leather straps. Sabine sat down behind her, clinging tightly to her friend. Quigley and Klaus then climbed on the toboggan behind them and there was just enough room in back for a young girl, so Sunny sat behind her brother and hung on tight as Violet pushed off from the peak of Mount Fraught and sent the four children hurtling down the slope.

"We'll be right behind you, Baudelaires!" Count Olaf roared, as the toboggan raced toward the Valley of Four Drafts, bumping and splashing against the cracked and melting ice.

"He won't be right behind us," Violet said. "My shoes punctured his tire, remember?"

Sabine nodded. "And he'll have to take that path," she said. "A car can't go down a waterfall."

"We'll have a head start," Violet said. "Maybe we can reach the last safe place before he does."

"Overhear!" Sunny cried. "Hotel Denouement!"

"Good work, Sunny!" Violet said proudly, pulling on the leather straps to steer the toboggan away from the large crack. "I knew you'd be a good spy."

"Hotel Denouement," Quigley said. "I think I have that in one of my maps. I'll check my commonplace book when we get to the bottom."

"Bruce!" Sunny cried.

"That's another thing to write down in our commonplace books," Klaus agreed. "That man Bruce was at Dr. Montgomery's house at the end of our stay. He said he was packing up Monty's reptile collection for the herpetological society."

"Do you think he's really a member of V.F.D.?" Violet asked.

"We can't be sure," Quigley said. "We've managed to investigate so many mysteries, and yet there's still so much we don't know." He sighed thoughtfully, and gazed down at the ruins of headquarters rushing toward them. "My siblings – "

But the Baudelaires never got to hear any more about Quigley's siblings, because at that moment the toboggan, despite Violet's efforts with the leather straps, slipped against a melted section of the waterfall, and the large sled began to spin. The children screamed, and Violet grabbed the straps as hard as she could, only to have them break in her hands. "The steering mechanism is broken!" she yelled. "Dragging Esmé Squalor up the slope must have weakened the straps!"

"Uh-oh!" Sunny cried, which meant something along the lines of, "That doesn't sound like good news."

"At this velocity," Violet said, using a scientific word for speed, "the toboggan won't stop when we reach the frozen pool. If we don't slow down, we'll fall right into the pit we dug."

Sabine was getting dizzy from all the spinning, and closed her eyes in an attempt to steady herself. "What can we do?" she asked.

"Drag your shoes against the ice!" Violet cried. "The forks should slow us down!"

Quickly, the four elder children dragged their feet down of the ice, but Sunny, who of course was not wearing fork-assisted climbing shoes, could do nothing but listen to the scraping and splashing of the forks against the thawing ice of the stream as the toboggan slowed ever so slightly.

"It's not enough!" Klaus cried.

As the toboggan continued to spin, Sabine caught brief glimpses of the pit the Baudelaires and Quigley had dug, covered with a thin layer of weakened wood, getting closer and closer as the four children hurtled toward the bottom of the waterfall.

"Bicuspid?" Sunny asked, which meant something like "Should I drag my teeth against the ice, too?"

"It's worth a try," Klaus said, but as soon as the youngest Baudelaire leaned down and dragged her teeth along the thawing waterfall, the Baudelaires could see at once that it was not really worth a try at all, as the toboggan kept spinning and racing toward the bottom.

"That's not enough, either," Violet said. She thought hard for a moment, her eyes shut tightly. "Hang on!" Violet finally cried, but she did not hang on herself. Dropping the broken straps of the toboggan, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a large bread knife.

"How is that going to help?" Sabine cried in confusion.

"You'll see," Violet replied. Gritting her teeth, she leaned out of the spinning toboggan and thrust the knife as hard as she could into the ice of the slippery slope.

The tip of the blade hit the crack caused by Carmelita's Springpole, and then the entire knife sank into the slope just as the toboggan reached the bottom. There was a sound the likes of which Sabine had never heard, like a combination of an enormous window shattering and the deep, booming sound of someone firing a cannon.

The knife had widened the crack, and in one tremendous crash, the last of the ice fell to pieces and all of the forks, sunlight, teeth, and tobogganing finally took their toll on the waterfall. In one enormous whoosh!, the waters of the Stricken Stream came rushing down the slope, and in a moment the children were no longer on a frozen pool at the bottom of a strange curve of ice, but simply at the bottom of a rushing waterfall, with gallons and gallons of water pouring down on them.

Sabine didn't even have time to hold her breath before she was thrust under the ice cold water. She tried to take in oxygen, but she was already submerged and started to choke. Panicking, she let go of Violet and the wooden toboggan, swimming quickly up to the surface. She coughed out the ashy water as best as she could, but was pulled under again. She thrashed wildly, trying to keep her head above the choppy stream.

"Quigley!" she screamed when she finally got some air.

"Sab-"

She heard part of his scream, but was tossed under the water again. Her foot caught on something at the bottom of the stream, and no matter how hard she tried to kick herself free, the violent waters would not release her. She screamed again, but it only came out as quiet air bubbles under the water.

She kicked and squirmed and shouted for help, but no one could hear her except for the frightened salmon that swam by. The salty water quickly began to fill her lungs, and hysteria set in. Her vision started to get clouded by black spots.

She couldn't see.

She couldn't hear.

She couldn't breathe.

"Quigley!" she shouted one last time before the darkness overtook her and she passed out.

𝔼𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕗 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣