Excerpt of The End by Lemony Snicket
(Page 1 of 2)
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Chapter One
If you have ever peeled an onion, then you know that the first thin,
papery layer reveals another thin, papery layer, and that layer reveals
another, and another, and before you know it you have hundreds of
layers all over the kitchen table and thousands of tears in your eyes,
sorry that you ever started peeling in the first place and wishing that
you had left the onion alone to wither away on the shelf of the pantry
while you went on with your life, even if that meant never again
enjoying the complicated and overwhelming taste of this strange and
bitter vegetable.
In this way, the story of the Baudelaire orphans is like an onion, and
if you insist on reading each and every thin, papery layer in A Series
of Unfortunate Events, your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery
in your library and countless tears in your eyes. Even if you have read
the first twelve volumes of the Baudelaires' story, it is not too late
to stop peeling away the layers, and to put this book back on the shelf
to wither away while you read something less complicated and
overwhelming. The end of this unhappy chronicle is like its bad
beginning, as each misfortune only reveals another, and another, and
another, and only those with the stomach for this strange and bitter
tale should venture any farther into the Baudelaire onion. I'm sorry to
tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
The Baudelaire orphans would have been happy to see an onion, had
one come bobbing along as they traveled across the vast and empty sea
in a boat the size of a large bed but not nearly as comfortable. Had
such a vegetable appeared, Violet, the eldest Baudelaire, would have
tied up her hair in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes, and in moments
would have invented a device to retrieve the onion from the water.
Klaus, the middle sibling and the only boy, would have remembered
useful facts from one of the thousands of books he had read, and been
able to identify which type of onion it was, and whether or not it was
edible. And Sunny, who was just scarcely out of babyhood, would have
sliced the onion into bite-sized pieces with her unusually sharp teeth,
and put her newly developed cooking skills to good use in order to turn
a simple onion into something quite tasty indeed. The elder Baudelaires
could imagine their sister announcing "Soubise!" which was her way of
saying "Dinner is served."
But the three children had not seen an onion. Indeed, they had not
seen much of anything during their ocean voyage, which had begun when
the Baudelaires had pushed the large, wooden boat off the roof of the
Hotel Denouement in order to escape from the fire engulfing the hotel,
as well as the authorities who wanted to arrest the children for arson
and murder. The wind and tides had quickly pushed the boat away from
the burning hotel, and by sunset the hotel and all the other buildings
in the city were a distant, faraway blur. Now, the following morning,
the only things the Baudelaires had seen were the quiet, still surface
of the sea and the gray gloom of the sky. The weather reminded them of
the day at Briny Beach when the Baudelaires had learned of the loss of
their parents and their home in a terrible fire, and the children spent
much of their time in silence, thinking about that dreadful day and all
of the dreadful days that had followed. It almost would have been
peaceful to sit in a drifting boat and think about their lives, had it
not been for the Baudelaires' unpleasant companion.
Their companion's name was Count Olaf, and it had been the
Baudelaire orphans' misfortune to be in this dreadful man's company
since they had become orphans and he had become their guardian. Olaf
had hatched scheme after scheme in an attempt to get his filthy hands
on the enormous fortune the Baudelaire parents had left behind, and
although each scheme had failed, it appeared as if some of the
villain's wickedness had rubbed off on the children, and now Olaf and
the Baudelaires were all in the same boat. Both the children and the
count were responsible for a number of treacherous crimes, although at
least the Baudelaire orphans had the decency to feel terrible about
this, whereas all Count Olaf had been doing for the past few days was
bragging about it.
The foregoing is excerpted from A Series of Unfortunate Events #13:
The End by Lemony Snicket, and Brett Helquist. All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission
from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
