Chapter Text
Crows are remarkably good thinking companions. Klaus Baudelaire was discovering this as he stroked one absently and listened to the other crows caw and shriek around him. This was the only place in the Village of Fowl Devotees that he could be truly alone: his siblings were off doing what they did best, and his guardian was too scared to climb the tree after him, so it was only him and the crows.
Sure, it was a bit dirty and smelly and noisy, but the sensations kept Klaus grounded. Normally he'd have some sort of music in the background when he read (when he had music and books, both of which he had lacked for a very long time) to make sure he didn't space out completely.
The crows wouldn't help him with his problems, though. He missed talking to someone who at least seemed to understand. Violet wasn't compassionate, never had been, and Sunny was a literal infant. No, Klaus missed Duncan Quagmire.
Klaus leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and sighed with the mere thought of his name. The crows resting on the branch flew into a surprised panic and flapped off elsewhere. For a few weeks now, every time Klaus thought of Duncan, a strange stirring began in the middle of his chest, as if someone were trying to rearrange his heart. It had happened more often when Duncan was present with him, such as whenever he smiled or whenever Klaus happened to meet his bottomless green eyes. God, Duncan had beautiful eyes.
Duncan was the type of person that Klaus rarely ever came into contact with, especially since his parents died: a kindred soul. Sure, Isadora was sweet, but it was Duncan that Klaus loved to spend time with.
There it was again: that odd sort of twisty feeling that made shivers shoot through Klaus' bones. It startled the crow under his hand and it flew away, but not before a strip of paper unfurled itself from around the crow's leg. Klaus picked it up and smoothed it with his fingers. In a familiar flowy script, someone had written a couplet. Klaus' heart jumped.
For sapphires we are held in here,
Only you can end our fear.
"Isadora," Klaus murmured, smoothing his thumb over the words. The paper was unusually dry, like it had been left in someone’s pocket while the article of clothing was being washed. "Where are you?"
"Klaus!"
Klaus looked straight down beneath himself to find Violet with Sunny balanced on her hip.
"Yes?"
"Dinner!"
Klaus rolled his eyes. The crow next to him cocked its head to the side and nipped at his shirt sleeve. He shoved the paper into his pocket and placed a tentative foot on the branch below him, descending through the crows like a cat, until he could drop safely to the dry ground.
"I found something," he said, showing Violet the slip of paper. She frowned and hummed sadly. "Isadora," he added.
"She's somewhere close," she said. "I hope she and Duncan are alright,"
"Me, too," said Klaus, feeling a sharp pain shoot through his heart. If Count Olaf had done anything to them, Klaus was going to rip him limb from limb. Violet shook her head. "What?"
"Nothing,"
"Oh. You were just--"
"Am I not allowed to shake my head?" Violet smiled and shook her head again. "You're just acting strangely."
"Strange how?"
"You were up in Nevermore Tree," she said. "I'd think you'd hate it up there. All that noise and all those dirty crows." Violet shuddered. "I know I would."
Klaus shrugged. "The crows are nice," he said, starting up the stairs to Hector's house. "They don't bite or anything. And they're not that loud." Violet quirked an eyebrow and Sunny made a disapproving noise. "Okay, so they make a lot of noise, so what?"
" So , they're annoying," she said.
"Birba!" Sunny babbled, pointing to one of the crows. The crow squawked and hopped around on its branch.
"Children!" Hector's face appeared beyond the mesh of his screen door. "I made enchiladas,"
The crow hopped and cawed at Klaus once more, then the whole tree fell silent for the night.
Klaus thought he enjoyed washing windows, and then he was handed a bucket, a sponge, and a towel. He'd been washing windows for hours now, and still no sign of the Quagmires.
"We'll keep an eye out for them while we work," Violet had said before they left the barn. "Olaf is here, which means that they're here somewhere." She'd rubbed his shoulder in some sort of comforting gesture. "We'll find them, Klaus."
And they would, because Klaus didn't know what he'd do if he couldn't get rid of this strange lump in his chest. Something in him knew that only Duncan would be able to get rid of it.
Something red inside the old fire station caught Klaus's eyes as he moved over to wash those windows. He couldn't see it clearly through the thick coat of grime, but as he scrubbed, the shape of a red herring statue began to reveal itself.
Klaus froze and cocked his head to the side. The rest of the fire station was empty; there was no way the Quagmires were actually in there. He called Violet over nonetheless.
"Look," he said, pointing through the glass. She hesitated, too, before she hoisted Sunny up onto her hip and began to examine the door.
"It's unlocked," she said, almost incredulous, after she tried the handle and the door swung in on squeaky hinges. "There's no way Olaf would do that."
"That's what I was thinking," said Klaus. "I don't think they're really in there."
Violet hummed and stepped inside. Through the glass, Klaus could see that her steps kicked up metric tons of dust, though she murmured something about footprints.
After a moment of debate, Klaus walked in behind her. The old fire station was more dilapidated than it appeared from the outside: the firepole in the corner was rusting; the painted VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT sign had faded and chipped to read VOUTER FRE DEPRTMT, and the firefighter's hat above it was a washed-out ivory; the eye-shaped window on the far wall was missing several panes. In fact, the only things in the building that looked to be less than fifty years old were the statue, a set of large, heavy boot prints in the dust (and, if Klaus looked closer, two pairs that appeared to have been covered up that were about the size of the Quagmires' feet), and the Baudelaires themselves.
"This place looks ancient," Klaus said with a hint of distaste. Violet was examining the herring statue and could only hum absently and grin.
"Kla-aus," she sang, straightening and pointing to the inside of the fish. Most of the red interior was out of Klaus's sight, but he moved to her side anyways.
D. Q. + K. B.
Klaus covered his mouth as his heart pounded in his throat. His stomach turned topside, and his head felt light. The inscription was in Duncan's typewriter handwriting, and though it had partially been scratched out, the bare metal stood out against the garishly red paint.
"He--" Klaus gasped. "God. Oh, God, I had no idea,"
Violet nudged her brother gently. Her grin was gone, replaced with a concerned frown.
"Violet, he-- oh, no. No. Vi, we gotta find them." Finally, Klaus had a name for the feeling he got whenever he thought about Duncan: love. Love. Affection, adoration. A crush.
"We will, Klaus," said Violet softly. "We'll find them, and we'll rescue them, and they'll be safe."
"We have to," he said. "Duncan needs us. He needs me ."
"And he'll get you. We won't lose them again." Violet wrapped her arm around Klaus's shoulders.
"Promise?"
Violet hesitated. "Promise," she said uneasily. "We should get back to the windows."
"Yeah," Klaus said absently, still staring at his initials in the inscription. A strange tingling began in his toes and his heels and spread up the rest of his feet before it stopped. Klaus dismissed it as some strange reaction to the pure shock he was feeling. Violet patted his shoulder twice and walked out, not waiting for her brother to follow.
Klaus stayed there for a while, standing and staring at the K. B. on the inside of the fish. A few minutes later he found his legs again- but not to leave, no, to move and sit in the bottom of the fish and think about Duncan. He ran his fingers over the inscription, trying his best to avoid chipping the paint, and thought about how Duncan could have written help me , or their location, or a clue, or something , but he chose to carve Klaus's and his own initials into this stupid fish.
Klaus's heart fluttered with the thought that he was as, if not more, important than trying to escape, at least to Duncan. It was touching, heartfelt, and Klaus couldn't help but wonder what it must have been like.
Horrible, probably. A bit of moss (or mold) spread from holes poked in the side, presumably for air; the interior of the fish was tiny, and Klaus probably couldn't have stood up straight inside it if he'd tried; and the inscription was right about where Duncan's thigh would have been, had he been standing upright, which he had to have been, wouldn't he, considering the extra room Isadora would have occupied.
But judging by the carving, Duncan had found a way to make this horrible experience just a little better. And Klaus had found the carving (well, technically Violet had, but it only really held significance to Klaus), so what did that mean?
Klaus leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling of the fire station. He was going to find Duncan and get him to safety if it was the last thing he did.
Dinner that night was something Hector didn't specify, but was delicious nonetheless. Klaus couldn't stop thinking about how close they had gotten and how far they still had to go in order to rescue the Quagmires. The footprints he'd seen looked about their size and fresh, but he and Violet had also been cavorting around in the old fire station. They might have been his own footprints, or Violet's.
Klaus didn't go straight to the barn after dinner. It was still light out, which meant that there was still enough time to climb the Nevermore Tree and look amongst the crows for another clue.
The crows welcomed him with soft wings and frequent caws, a sound he emulated a few times without thinking about it. He climbed the tree as if he'd done it a hundred times before, putting hand over hand until he could settle in the hollow in the center of all the tree's branches.
This time, the clue did not fall into his lap like he'd been expecting and hoping. It was hand- (or rather beak-) delivered by a crow that had peeled it off of its leg and decided to give it to Klaus. The paper was the same texture that the last one had been, dry and peeling, though this one was curled more significantly than the other had been.
Until dawn we cannot speak,
No words can come from this sad beak.
This note was in Duncan's handwriting, neat and meticulous like a typewriter. The strange tingling feeling he'd felt before was creeping up his ankles now, and he decided that since he was here and sitting down, he might as well check it out.
A crow landed on his knee and squawked angrily as he began to remove his shoe. It pecked his thigh, apparently against the idea that Klaus was a curious boy by nature, and Klaus winced as its blows landed but didn't stop.
He was forced to shoo the bird off of himself in order to inspect his own foot, only to find it missing .
The crow that he'd shooed came back to peck his foot and Klaus winced in pain, then gasped. His foot was not missing, apparently, just… on loan to somewhere else. He was turning invisible.
One of the branches shook behind his back and he hurried to put his sock and shoe back on. Violet's face appeared right next to him; thankfully, she recognized that there wasn't enough space for her to settle in beside him.
"What are you-- God, these birds-- what's going on? Did you find any other clues?" Klaus held up the curl of paper, mirroring Violet's grin. "Any idea what they mean yet?"
Klaus shook his head. "I wish," he said quietly, petting a crow that had hopped onto his stomach. "Maybe there's more coming." He unrolled the paper and stared at the poem, tracing Duncan's handwriting with his thumb. The way his f curled at the bottom, the loop in his k , the oddly uncharacteristic sharp angles of his w s, the way he connected his t s to the next letter. Everything he wrote had a purpose.
Klaus just had to figure out what it was.
"You should come down," said Violet. "Sleep on it. Maybe something will come to you later." Klaus shrugged as best he could in his position.
"I'll be down in a minute," he replied absently.
Violet disappeared, making the branches shake against Klaus's back. His mind was on his foot, and how that could possibly fit into all of this, because it definitely wasn't a coincidence that his foot turned invisible only now; besides, feet don't turn invisible for no reason. Something was making that happen, and Klaus was going to find out what it was.
The Quagmires were more important, though. He could figure that out later. The Quagmires are smart , he thought, they can help me somehow.
Klaus heaved himself up and out of the hollow of the tree, pausing to pop his back. The tingling feeling began to creep up his calves, and now he knew that the feeling was his skin disappearing. Klaus ignored it and began to descend through the bare branches of Nevermore Tree.
He decided, as he lowered himself, that Violet could never know about the Feeling, as he'd dubbed it. The Feeling, capitol F , seemed appropriate. Violet could never know, because she would never understand, and Klaus shuddered to think of what might happen if she found out. His mind imagined scenes ranging from the practical to the bizarre, all of them at least slightly unrealistic.
The Feeling crept up his legs slightly, ending just below his knees when his eye caught the red of the sunset and his mind turned to the red herring statue and its carving. The note in Klaus's pocket weighed heavy on his mind, and he had a sneaking suspicion he wouldn't be sleeping well that night.
Klaus was wet and cold the next day, even in the heat of the Hinterlands sun; he'd been assigned to clean the new (and somehow already coated in moss) Fowl Fountain, and for whatever reason, when he'd stepped around to clean the back, all the moss on the front had regrown almost immediately. Violet attested to this phenomenon and volunteered to help him, so that the moss would not have a chance to regrow.
So Klaus was standing in the bottommost pool of the fountain with a scraper and a bucket, trying to get every last bit of moss off of the fountain, even though it was slightly pointless.
"Violet," he said, "don't you think it's odd that all this moss is here already?"
Violet hummed for a moment. Klaus could see her hand drop a bit of moss into her bucket on the other side of the statue in silence before she answered.
"I do think it's odd, but you know more about moss than I do," she replied. "Does moss grow this fast?"
Klaus scoffed. "No," he said, stepping up onto the lip of the next pool. "Not any moss I've ever heard of, anyways."
Violet hummed again, and from his angle, Klaus could see her frown.
"What is it?"
"This moss… hold on a moment." Violet bent down out of Klaus's vision, and there was a brief moment when he slipped slightly trying to see her; The Feeling breached over his knee and up onto his thigh. He shrugged and picked up his scraper again, hoping that the moss that Violet had left behind wouldn't grow back.
Klaus watched his sister beeline for the old fire station with a bit of moss in her hand; he watched her wrench the door open and stomp over to the red herring through the windows that he'd cleaned the day previous; he watched her frown deepen as she compared the moss from the statue to the moss on the herring. The moss doubled in size while Klaus was distracted.
He sighed dejectedly, resigning himself to the task at hand. He could have sworn he heard a voice --Duncan's voice?-- seemingly from inside the statue, calling his name, but he brushed it off as his own imagination wishing that he were here with him.
"The moss is the same," said Violet, climbing back into the water. "It looks the same, anyways. I don't know anything beyond that."
Klaus hummed pensively, scraping at a particular patch of moss. Violet sighed and turned back to the fountain.
"I give up," she announced. Klaus blinked at her for a moment and she gestured vaguely to the front of the fountain. "There's no way we're getting all of this off, and even if we did, wouldn't it just grow back?"
Klaus shrugged and dropped his scraper into his bucket. Violet had a point, even if the Council wouldn't acknowledge it. Again, someone whispered his name; again, Klaus brushed it off. His socks were wet, he was cold, and there was a hot meal and a fire waiting for him back at Hector's when he was done.
He spent the rest of the day washing windows and polishing shoes until they gleamed. This, too, was pointless considering all the dust that they would immediately kick up, but Mrs. Morrow insisted that her shoes shine like the sun. Klaus had rolled his eyes when she left, but placed the first shoe on his lap regardless.
From the spot where he sat under the awning of an old, abandoned store, Klaus had a perfect view of Fowl Fountain and its rapidly growing moss. Every so often he would put down a shoe and pause in his work to just stare at the fountain; every so often he would pause to let his shoulders rest and try to figure out what might have happened to the Quagmires. He'd long since dried off from his dip in the fountain, and more often than he'd have liked, he was forced to shove his frizzy hair out of his face in order to see properly.
When he was done polishing Mrs. Morrow's shoes and had returned them to her ("Took you long enough, stupid boy," she'd said) he didn't make the trek back to Hector's right away. Instead he went into the old fire station and sat himself in the red herring and traced the carving there over and over, hoping that something would reveal itself to him, but nothing ever did. He knew better than to expect something to jump out at him right away, especially after his jaunt in 667 Dark Avenue, but he did dearly hope that something would come to him soon. The longer it took, the longer Count Olaf would have to hurt his friends-- no. He couldn't call Duncan his friend anymore, could he? Not with the feelings stirring his heart into mush. The only problem was, he didn't know what to call him instead.
Lover seemed too intimate; sweetheart too friendly; boyfriend too formal; crush too childish. What did that leave?
His fingernail caught on a bit of paint that had chipped away long before, revealing a panel that came up quite easily, even with Klaus's short nails. It seemed to be the hollow of one of the fins, and inside was a deep forest green notebook.
Duncan's commonplace book .
Obviously he had placed it there with the intention of discovery. Klaus pulled it out gingerly, carefully, like he was afraid it would run away if he didn't treat it with care. There was a moment of debate in which he argued with himself over whether or not he should open it; after all, it belonged to Duncan, and should he really be opening something so personal without his permission? He considered putting it back in the hollow and closing it back up-- but what if there was something important inside? Something that could point Klaus in the right direction?
He cracked the book open slowly to the page that the ribbon marked and was greeted with an assault of words. It seemed to be a recollection of things Olaf said to them, from the time they were kidnapped presumably up until Duncan hid his book. Klaus felt a rush of anger at some of the things he had the audacity to say to children , but he brushed it aside. There was a better time for that anger.
On a whim, he flipped back a while. He found a page dated September 3rd , the day the Baudelaires arrived at Prufrock; the page was covered in Duncan's handwriting, backwards, upside-down, sideways, chicken scratch covering misspelled words. It felt incredibly like him , and suddenly Klaus had the distinct feeling he was treading somewhere he should not be, but his curiosity pushed him forward.
He flipped to the next page, where he was surprised to find a (very nice) portrait of himself. This page was covered in writing he couldn't understand, in an apparently archaic language. He hadn't known Duncan was bilingual. He'd have to ask if he ever saw Duncan again-- when he saw Duncan next . He couldn't allow himself to fall into that pit, because it was just what Count Olaf would want: for him to be so sad about Duncan's disappearance that he can't think to look for him.
Klaus ran his finger over the inscription again and shut Duncan's commonplace book. He simply sat for a moment, debating whether or not he should put Duncan's book back in the hollow; he shoved it in and replaced the panel in just the right way so that to the average person, it disappeared, but if one knew what one was looking for, one could spot it immediately. Olaf hadn't found it yet, and Klaus wasn't about to ruin that.
He shoved his hands in his pockets as he stomped back out into the sunset. Neither of the notes were there, in case Olaf caught him, but he wished they were, if only to have the reminder that his friends were alive.
The trek back to Hector's was long and dusty, and Klaus had to jump out of the way several times to avoid tumbleweeds bouncing across the dusty earth like in the cowboy films his parents liked to watch. It had been a long time since he'd snuck out of bed on one of those nights to hide in the doorway and watch, silent until a gunshot inevitably went off and startled him, and his parents would notice him and invite him up onto the couch until he fell asleep.
Tears pricked at the edges of Klaus's eyes, blurring the dirt beneath his feet and the silhouette of Hector's house against the crimson sunset. He could see the branches of Nevermore Tree swaying in the wind, covered in crows, and he hoped that among them was one that carried a bit of dried paper around its leg.
He managed to climb the tree without falling, miraculously, and he settled himself in the hollow in the middle of all the branches. The crows surrounded him almost immediately, and one dropped something metal on his stomach: a key. Klaus didn't want to think about what it unlocked or where the crow got it from.
Another picked at something on its leg, and Klaus's heart skipped a beat: it could only have been paper, with another clue written on it.
He grabbed the crow as gently as he could and unwound the scroll from its leg, heart pounding. Another note in Duncan's handwriting:
The first thing you read contains the clue:
An initial way to speak to you.
Again, Klaus was met with the odd feeling to keep this to himself; he ignored both this and The Feeling that crept up his thighs and onto his hips. Instead, he focused on the way Duncan dotted his i s and the curl of the y s and tried to think .
Obviously the notes were clues, but Klaus had no idea what the first thing he read was. Frustration welled up, though he forced it down. He heaved himself out of the hollow, down the branches, and into the barn. He handed the note to Violet and stepped around the divider between their beds, completely wordless. Nothing he had to say would matter to her, could matter to her.
"Nothing?" Violet said softly.
"No," he said, staring at the whorls in the wood above his head, wishing that Duncan could lay next to him.
"Shame," Violet murmured. She dropped the note onto the desk they shared, currently covered in half-finished books and sketches, and slunk off somewhere else. Klaus couldn't bring himself to care. All he could feel was loneliness, bone-deep and unending, as he listened to the crows nest down for the night. His bed felt both too large for him and too small at the same time, and the persistent Feeling creeping up his torso did nothing to help.
Why, why, why did the Quagmires have to be so cryptic? Klaus was sure that Count Olaf was not reading their messages, so why not just leave their location in full terms? Maybe they didn't know. Maybe they didn't know who was receiving the messages, and decided that they had to encrypt them just in case; that he could forgive them for.
Still. A hollow settled in his chest and threatened to swallow him. The only thing that helped was imagining Duncan's form next to him, speaking softly and fighting the darkness merely with his presence. Klaus wondered how Duncan would look amongst the crows in the fading light of the amaranth Hinterlands sunset; how he might look here, in the darkness of the barn, right beside Klaus; how he might look with his sleeves rolled up, hard at work; what he might say when Klaus told him that he'd found the inscription.
And all of that could happen, if only Klaus could figure out the notes. Something told him that he didn't have all the information that he needed, and the only way he could get that information is if he sat and waited.
Waiting made him antsy, though, especially when he knew that with every passing second, his friends were in more danger than the last.