⇗ Chapter 15

"Sabine? Wake up, please," Quigley choked, hovering over Sabine's barely moving body.

He had broken away from the Baudelaires to find her, and he'd managed to drag her out of the river just in time to save her life. Now they were sitting on a large rock by the side of the stream. He managed to get her to cough up most of the water she inhaled, but she wouldn't wake up.

"Sabine, please," he begged. A tear dripped down his face and he shivered as a cold burst of wind rushed through the air. He brushed his fingers against Sabine's face affectionately, her head in his lap. Her closed eyes twitched a bit, as did her fingers, but nothing more than a twitch. He sighed and ran a tired hand through his dripping wet hair, looking up at the top of the mountain.

A small, terrified whimper escaped Sabine, and Quigley's focus shot back to her immediately. He wrapped his arms around her limp shoulders and sat her up a bit. She whimpered again and rested her head on his shoulder, but then seemed to fall back asleep just as her eyelids started to twitch open. Quigley groaned in frustration but held her closer, trying to keep her warm and comfortable.

"Sabine? Come on, you have to wake up!" he pleaded quietly. They had been sitting on the large boulder by the side of stricken stream for about an hour, and Quigley was completely panicked. Sabine had only slightly moved throughout the hour, and her breaths seemed pained and forced.

Suddenly, she started violently coughing and her eyes opened all the way. Quigley cupped her face and lifted her head. She looked up at him in a mix of shock and relief. He smiled sweetly and hugged her tightly.

"W-where are we?" Sabine stammered, shivering in the cold air. Even though False Spring had arrived, Mortmain Mountain and the Valley of Four Drafts was still freezing.

"By Stricken Stream," Quigley replied, pulling away slightly to meet Sabine's gaze.

She took in a shaky breath, but winced as her chest started to burn. Quigley's smile faded and he wiped the pained tears off her face as they fell.

"Sabine? What's wrong?" he asked.

Sabine's stomach roiled and she slammed her hand over her mouth. She crawled off of Quigley's lap and over to the stream. Falling to her knees, she vomited up tons of salty stream water. It stung her throat and made her nose bleed. Quigley knelt beside her, holding her hair out of her face and rubbing her back.

After a few minutes she had finally vomited it all out and started coughing. Quigley wiped her mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and then hugged her again.

"I don't feel good," she mumbled weakly.

He chuckled and brushed her damp hair off her forehead. "Yeah, I can tell."

Sabine looked towards the still rushing stream and then backed as far away from it as she could.

"Sabine?" Quigley asked.

"I don't wanna be near that stream ever again," she said as she shook her head.

He sighed and crawled over to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. "Well, we should get out of here then. Are you up for a walk?" he asked.

She nodded and pulled herself to her feet. Her legs felt like jelly and she wobbled a bit before Quigley stood up too and wrapped his arm around her waist to steady her.

"Where do we go now?" Sabine asked as they limped along the cold, hard ground beside the stream.

"I don't know," Quigley admitted. He pulled his purple commonplace book out and flipped through the pages. "My journal got soaked, and all the ink from my pen smeared, so I can't read any of this stuff." He sighed and put the journal back in his pocket. "It's all useless now."

Sabine pulled out her own journal and found that it was completely ruined too. "Mine won't be much help either," she said. They walked in silence for a long time before they finally made it somewhere, a word which here means, "ended up back in the exact same place where they started."

"Did..." Quigley mumbled. "Weren't we just here?"

Sabine groaned disappointedly and dropped down on the rock. "We just walked in a big circle."

Quigley sat down next to her. "At least we got our steps in for the day," he joked.

She smiled slightly, but was still distressed. "What do we do?" she asked.

He sighed, then rested his elbows on his knees. "That I don't have an answer for," he said.

Sabine sighed too and they both laid back on the boulder, looking up at the sky. The sun had come out and different shaped clouds passed by. Sabine saw one shaped like a giraffe and pointed it out to Quigley. He laughed and pointed to one that looked like a kite. Soon, Sabine soon found that their hands were laced together as they laid next to each other and watched the clouds drift around above them.

~༄~

Sabine woke up a few hours later, her hand loosely wrapped around Quigley's hand. She had drifted off while they watched the clouds, still exhausted from nearly drowning. Yawning, she sat up and saw that Quigley had fallen asleep too. She smiled and gently kissed his forehead before carefully untangling her fingers from his.

She looked at the stream and sighed. It had calmed down by now, but she was still frightened by it. Suddenly, she noticed how dry her throat was. Her stomach rumbled too, a reminder that she hadn't eaten in a few days.

"Shush, stomach. I have nothing to give you, and your complaining is no help," she scolded it, knowing full well it couldn't understand her. Being hungry made her act a bit silly.

A salmon flicked its tail out of the water as it swam by, as if it were saying "hello" to Sabine.

She tiredly waved back at it. "Hello to you, too, little fish," she said, feeling once again like Alice in Wonderland: dizzy, confused, scolding herself and talking to animals. If only she had a cake...

"Sabine?" Quigley asked sleepily as he sat up. "Who are you talking to?"

"A fish," she sighed, cupping her chin in her hand as she slumped forward a little.

He smiled softly and patted her shoulder gently. "Ah, I see. What did the fish say?" he asked.

She smiled too. "It waved its tail at me and said hello, and I thought it would be rude not to say hello back," she explained.

He chuckled. "You're hungry, huh?"

She shrugged. "A little, I guess."

Quigley reached into his pocket and pulled out his purple commonplace book. "I have some notes on the edible plants in the Valley-" He paused as he flipped through his notebook. The pages had dried by now, but the ink he had written his notes in remained smeared and unreadable. "Never mind." He sighed. "My journal is still no help."

"Should we try walking somewhere again? If we found the headquarters we could probably make it somewhere," Sabine said.

"Walking aimlessly to find some burnt down building that for all we know could have been swept away by the exploding waterfall that nearly killed you doesn't seem like the best idea," Quigley said all in one breath, then huffed in annoyance.

"Well, I don't have any other ideas," Sabine mumbled.

"...Me neither," Quigley admitted.

They sat in silence for a long time, staring at the stream as it quietly flowed along like it didn't have a care in the world. A few pieces of debris floated on top of the water, swirling around before being swept away to some far off ocean. Most of the debris looked like your run-of-the-mill trash, but something odd caught Sabine's eye.

"Hey, what's that?" Sabine asked as she looked farther down the river.

A large chunk of wood with a strip of cloth billowing in the wind was heading towards them. Quigley followed her gaze and squinted to see it better.

"It... it looks like a sailboat?" he said. "I'm not sure, I can't see it very well."

"What in the world is a sailboat doing out here?" Sabine mumbled, standing up to walk closer to the stream.

"Sabine, be careful," Quigley warned as Sabine stumbled close to the edge of the boulder. He stood up with her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her away from the river. She squirmed out of his arms and walked back to the edge of the rock.

"I'm trying to see what it is," she said.

Quigley sighed and held her hand. "Okay, well can you try and see it when you're not so close to the river? I don't want you falling in again," he replied.

"I'm fine," she argued.

"Come here, just wait for it to float over to us," Quigley said, trying to pull her away from the rock's edge.

"Quigley!" she whined as she stumbled backwards with him.

He kissed her cheek, wrapping his arms around her waist. She protested for a moment but let him hold her, a small smile tugging at her lips.

"Here it comes," she said after a second, wriggling out of his grasp again to walk over to the sailboat.

Quigley, suspicious of the thing, cautiously trailed behind her.

"Hello?" Sabine called, "Is anyone there?" A familiar face popped up and Sabine gasped. The girl in the boat smiled and waved in a friendly way. Sabine's eyes clouded with tears as she stared at the face of someone she thought she'd never see again. "T-Tracy?" she stammered.

Tracy's hazel eyes widened in recognition of her name, but she didn't seem to know who Sabine was. How do you know my name? You look familiar, Tracy signed.

Sabine laughed and walked closer. "Tracy, it's me. It's Sabine." Tracy stood up and her eyes glowed brightly. She smiled excitedly and hopped out of the boat, tackling her younger half-sister and hugging her tightly. The two girls fell to the ground, embracing each other with happy sobs and giggles.

"I missed you so much," Sabine whispered.

Tracy nodded her agreement and squeezed Sabine again.

"How are you here?" Sabine asked as the two finally pulled away from each other.

It's a long story, Tracy signed with a sad smile. Grandma and Grandpa died a couple years ago, so I got passed around to a lot of different people. Eventually, I ended up meeting a member of a secret organization. He recruited me and my first mission was to come rescue some volunteers stranded by the old headquarters.

"That would be us," Sabine sighed, glancing at Quigley who was watching them with a puzzled look. She took a moment to introduce the two of them, blushing and stumbling over the word "boyfriend" when Tracy asked how Sabine knew Quigley.

Tracy smiled and waved it off, helping the two kids onto her boat. With some translating from Sabine so Quigley could understand too, Tracy explained that she would be taking them back to the city.

The three young volunteers sailed down Stricken Stream for a few hours in tired silence. The inside of the boat was shabby and broken in places, like it had been built in five minutes with a bunch of trash. When Sabine asked Tracy about it, Tracy confirmed that she had made the boat out of debris floating in the water because she needed a way to get to Sabine and Quigley. The water from the waterfall suddenly unfreezing had flooded most of the Valley of Four Drafts, so there wasn't a lot of land to walk on.

Eventually, the rickety boat made it out of the valley, and the children climbed out and began walking through the hinterlands.

"How did you get out here in the first place?" Quigley asked, panting as they trudged down the long, abandoned road.

I walked. It was tiring then and it's tiring now, Tracy signed.

Sabine translated and Quigley groaned in exasperation.

"Next chance I get," he said, "I'm going to lay on a couch and do absolutely nothing for a whole week."

Sabine and Tracy had laughed at his comment, but little did they know, Quigley would never get a chance to do what he'd planned. None of them would. Everything was soon to go horribly wrong...

~༄~

Days passed, but the Trillian girls and the Quagmire boy made it back to the city at long last. Tracy told the two younger children that she had been told to meet up with a volunteer at the library to be given their newest instructions after she returned from the mountain with Quigley and Sabine. So, tired as they were, they started to walk towards the large library in the city when suddenly a taxi pulled up next to them. Its faded yellow paint was unfamiliar to Sabine, but Tracy didn't seem fazed by it, as if she had seen it a million times before. She also didn't seem fazed by the face of the driver, a man who looked like he was maybe a year older than Tracy was.

"Need a ride, volunteers?" the man said.

Quigley and Sabine eyed the man suspiciously, but Tracy smiled and climbed into the front passenger seat. The man noticed the younger children's hesitation and laughed in a friendly manner.

"You can trust me," he said with a smile that reached his icy blue eyes.

Sabine shot a questioning glance to Quigley, silently asking if it was a good idea to go with this person.

"My mother taught me never to get in a car with a stranger," Quigley said slowly as he glared at the man.

"That's some very good advice, but I'm not exactly a stranger," the man said.

He's my friend, Tracy signed. We can trust him.

"Tracy says we can trust him," Sabine whispered to Quigley.

Quigley thought for a moment in silence, watching the man with his eyes narrowed. The man smiled again.

"I admire your suspicion, Quigley," he said. "But we are on a tight schedule, so I need you to make a decision soon."

Quigley's eyes widened. "How do you know my name?"

"I can explain on the way, but I need you to get in the taxi," the man said. "Your siblings are in danger and we need to get to them."

"M-my siblings?" Quigley stammered.

"Duncan and Isadora?" Sabine asked.

"Yes, and the only way we can help them is if we leave right now," the man said, with a nod.

Quigley turned to Sabine, and the pleading in his eyes broke her heart. She took his hand and smiled softly, then pulled the two of them into the back of the strange man's taxi. The man smiled too, then took off down the road, going well over the speed limit.

"I apologize for speeding, I don't usually do this," he said, "but as I said, we are on a very strict schedule."

Tracy looked back at Quigley and Sabine with a grin. He always speeds, she signed.

"I do not!" the man laughed.

You do too! Tracy countered with a smile.

"Well, it's not on purpose," the man smiled back. He glanced at Quigley and Sabine in the rearview mirror, his messy, caramel colored hair falling in his eyes.

Can you stop flirting with my sister and start helping Duncan and Isadora? Sabine thought at the man. She knew the man couldn't hear her thoughts, but she was still hungry and dazed.

"Anyways, we are on a very tight schedule, so-"

"Where are my siblings?" Quigley interrupted. "Are they okay? What did you mean when you said they were in danger? Who even are you?"

"That's a lot of questions," the man said. "Your siblings are still in the Hot Air Mobile Home, but they are under attack by trained eagles that used to be a part of our side of the schism."

"We saw those eagles on Mount Fraught!" Sabine exclaimed. "They kidnapped a bunch of Snow Scouts."

"Yes, I'm aware," the man nodded. "We're working on rescuing the Snow Scouts but we haven't found their location yet."

"Who are you?" Quigley asked again.

"I'm Morgan Blake, it's nice to meet you," Morgan said politely.

Quigley was too worried about his siblings to return the greeting, so Sabine introduced herself and Quigley to Morgan.

Morgan was about to say something else when he seemed to notice something behind the taxi. "Looks like we've got a tail," he muttered.

Sabine, Quigley, and Tracy looked through the back window too and saw an ominous black limo following them.

"Hold on tight," Morgan warned, then took a sharp right turn down a road.

Sabine gripped Quigley's hand to try and steady herself as the taxi sped down towards a dock. At the dock, Sabine could see an assortment of boats anchored to a wooden deck, waiting to be boarded and sailed out to sea. Amidst the assortment of boats was a single submarine, but Sabine didn't know that yet.

"I'm going to drop Quigley and Sabine off at the docks up there," Morgan said, "You two will be meeting up with Kit Snicket and she'll help you rescue the other Quagmire triplets."

"What about Tracy?" Sabine asked.

"We... have a different mission," Morgan said, slowly and reluctantly, as if he were choosing his words very carefully. Tracy nodded, a little too eagerly.

"Okay..." Quigley drawled, suspicion evident in his voice.

Morgan sped up and they reached the dock in seconds.

"Alright, we lost our tail," he said, with another glance out the rear window. "Go ahead and get out here, kids. Kit will find you."

Sabine sighed and unbuckled her seatbelt, then leaned forward and gave her sister a hug. Tracy smiled and hugged her back, patting Sabine's head of dark hair.

"Thanks for your help, Morgan," Sabine said as she crawled out of the car.

She and Quigley gave Morgan and Tracy a wave goodbye, then walked quickly down the wooden dock, afraid that they were still being followed.

The yellow taxi sped away, and Sabine felt very alone. She hadn't seen Tracy in years, and once they were finally reunited, they were torn apart again. She hoped that she would see her sister again soon, but, sadly, this was not the case. Sabine would never see Tracy again.

If you would like, you could close this book now, and pretend that Sabine lives happily ever after with her family forever. In fact, you could imagine that her parents never died in the first place and that all of the treachery she went through didn't happen at all. But, that's not how this story goes.

𝔼𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕗 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣