Except as servants, of course."
"This journey is easier than I thought," Olaf said. "The map says we just have to pass a few more caves."
"Is there an in hotel near the headquarters?" Esmé asked.
"I'm afraid not, sweetheart," the villain replied, "but I have two tents in the trunk of the car. We'll be camping on Mount Fraught, the summit of the Mortmain Mountains."
"The summit?" Esmé said. "It'll be cold at the highest peak."
"It's true," Olaf admitted, "but False Spring is on its way, so before long it'll be a bit warmer."
"But what about tonight?" Esmé Squalor said. "It is definitely not in for me to set up tents in the freezing cold."
Count Olaf looked at his girlfriend and began to laugh, and Sunny could smell the foul breath of his nasty giggles. "Don't be silly," the villain said finally. "You're not going to set up the tents, Esmé. You're going to stay nice and toasty in the car. The bucktoothed baby will set up the tents for us."
Now Olaf's entire troupe laughed, and the car filled with the stench of so many villains' bad breath. Sunny felt a few more tears roll down her face, and turned to the window so no one would see. The car's windows were very dirty, but the youngest Baudelaire could see the strange, square peaks of the Mortmain Mountains and the dark waters of the Stricken Stream. By now the car had driven so high up in the mountains that the stream was mostly ice, and Sunny looked at the wide stripe of frozen blackness and wondered where her siblings were, and if they were coming to rescue her. She remembered the other time she had been in Count Olaf's clutches, when the villain had tied her up, locked her in a cage and dangled her outside his tower room as part of one of his schemes. It had been an absolutely terrifying experience for the youngest Baudelaire, and she often still had nightmares about the creaking of he cage and the distant sight of her two siblings looking up at her from Count Olaf's backyard. But Violet had built a grappling hook to rescue her, and Klaus had done some important legal research to defeat Olaf's scheme. As the car took Sunny farther and farther away from her siblings, and she stared out at the lonesome terrain, she knew that they could save her again.
"How long will we stay on Mount Fraught?" Hugo asked.
"Until I say so, of course," Count Olaf replied.
"You'll soon find out that much of this job involves a lot of waiting around," the hook-handed man said. "I usually keep something around to help pass the time, like a deck of cards or a large rock."
"It can be dull," admitted one of the white-faced women, "and it can be dangerous. Several of our comrades have recently suffered terrible fates."
"It was worth it," Count Olaf said nonchalantly, a word which here means "in a tone of voice that indicated he didn't care one bit about his deceased employees." "Sometimes a few people need to die in fires or get eaten by lions, if it's all for the greater good."
"What's the greater good?" asked Colette.
"Money!" Esmé cried in greedy glee. "Money and personal satisfaction, and we're going to get both of those things out of this whimpering baby on my lap! Once we have our hands on the Baudelaire fortune, we'll have enough money to live a life of luxury and plan several more treacherous schemes!"
The entire troupe cheered, and Count Olaf gave Sunny a filthy grin, but did not say anything more as the car raced up a steep, bumpy hill, and at last screeched to a halt, just as the last rays of the sun faded into the evening sky. "We're here at last," Count Olaf said, and handed the car keys to Sunny. "Get out, baby orphan. Unload everything from the trunk and set up the tents."
"And bring us some potato chips," Esmé said, "so we'll have something in to eat while we wait."
Esmé opened the door of the car, placed Sunny on the frozen ground, and slammed the door shut again. Instantly, the chilly mountain air surrounded the youngest Baudelaire and made her shiver. It was so bitterly cold at the highest peak of the Mortmain Mountains that her tears froze in their tracks, forming a tiny mask of ice all over her face. Unsteadily, Sunny rose to her feet and walked to the back of the car. She was tempted to keep walking, and escape from Olaf while he waited in the car with his troupe. But where could she go? Sunny looked around at her surroundings and could not see a place where a baby would be safe by herself.
The summit of Mount Fraught was a small, flat square, and as Sunny walked to the trunk of the car, she gazed off each edge of the square, feeling a bit dizzy from the great height. From three of the edges, she could see the square and misty peaks of some of the other mountains, most of which were covered in snow, and twisting through the peaks were the strange, black waters of the Stricken Stream, and the rocky path that the car had driven along. But from the fourth side of the square peak, Sunny saw something so strange it took her a moment to figure out what it was.
Extending from the highest peak in the Mortmain Mountains was a glittering white strip, like an enormous piece of shiny paper folded downward, or the wing of some tremendous bird. Sunny watched the very last rays of the sunset reflect off this enormous surface and slowly realized what it was: the source of the Stricken Stream. Like many streams, the Stricken Stream originated within the rocks of the mountains, and in the warmer season, Sunny could see that it cascaded down from the highest peak in an enormous waterfall. But this was not a warm time of year, and just as Sunny's tears had frozen on her face, the waterfall had frozen solid, into a long, slippery slope that disappeared into the darkness below. It was such an eerie sight that it took Sunny a moment to wonder why the ice was white, instead of black like the waters of the Stricken Stream.
Honk! A loud blast from Count Olaf's horn made Sunny remember what she was supposed to be doing, and she hurriedly opened the trunk and found a bag of potato chips, which she brought back to the car. "That took a very long time, orphan," said Olaf, rather than "Thank you." "Now go set up the tents, one for Esmé and me and one for my troupe, so we can get some sleep."
"Where is the baby going to stay?" asked the hook-handed man. "I don't want her in my tent. I hear that babies can creep up and steal your breath while you're sleeping."
"Well, she's certainly not sleeping with me," Esmé said. "It's not in to have a baby in your tent."
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"She's not going to sleep in either tent," Olaf decided. "There's a large covered casserole dish in the trunk. She can sleep in there."
"Will she be safe in a casserole dish?" Esmé said. "Remember, Olaf honey, if she dies then we can't get our hands on the fortune."
"There are a few holes in the top so she can breathe," Olaf said, "and the cover will protect her from the snow gnats."
"Snow gnats?" asked Hugo.
"Snow gnats are well-organized, ill-tempered insects," Count Olaf explained, "who live in cold mountain areas and enjoy stinging people for no reason whatsoever. I've always been fond of them."
"Nonat," Sunny said, which meant "I didn't notice any such insects outside," but no one paid any attention.
"Won't she run away if no one's watching her?" asked Kevin.
"She wouldn't dare," Count Olaf said, "and even if she tried to survive in the mountains by herself, we could see where she went. That's why we're staying here at the summit. We'll know if the brat escapes, or if anyone's coming after us, because we can see everything and everyone for miles and miles."
"Eureka," Sunny said, before she could stop herself. She meant something along the lines of, "I've just realized something," but she had not meant to say it out loud.
"Stop your babbling and get busy, you fanged brat!" Esmé Squalor said, and slammed the car door shut. Sunny could hear the laughing of the troupe and the crunching of potato chips as she walked slowly back to the trunk to find the tents.
It is often quite frustrating to arrange all of the cloth and the poles so that a tent works correctly, which is why I have always preferred to stay in hotels or rented castles, which also have the added attractions of solid walls and maid service. Sunny, of course, had the extra disadvantages of trying to do it herself, in the dark, when she was still fairly new at walking and was worried about her siblings. But the youngest Baudelaire had a history of performing Herculean tasks, a phrase which here means "managing to do incredibly difficult things." As I'm sure you know, if you are ever forced to do something very difficult, it often helps to think of something inspiring to keep you going. When Sunny had engaged in a sword-and-tooth fight at Lucky Smells Lumbermill, for instance, she thought of how much she cared for her siblings, and it helped her defeat the evil Dr. Orwell. When Sunny climbed up an elevator shaft at 667 Dark Avenue, she had concentrated on her friends the Quagmires, and how much she wanted to rescue them, and before too long she had reached the penthouse apartment. So, as Sunny dug a hole in the frozen ground with her teeth so the tent poles would stay in place, she thought of something that inspired her, and oddly enough it was something that Count Olaf had said, about being able to see everything and everyone for miles and miles. As Sunny assembled the tents, and gazed down every so often at the slippery slope of the frozen waterfall, she decided that she would not try to sneak away from Olaf and his troupe. She would not to try to sneak anywhere. Because if you could see everything and everyone from Mount Fraught, that also meant everything and everyone, including Violet and Klaus Baudelaire, would be able to see her.