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Moxie had felt a lot of things as Snicket walked off. She felt confusion, and fear, and betrayal.
There was a lot of betrayal.
She felt scared and alone, and it only took her a few days to realize that Snicket must have felt scared and alone too.
The associates met up at Hungry’s, and Jake cooked them all something. Moxie didn’t have the energy to ask what it was.
“He’ll come back,” was the first thing anyone said. It was Kellar. “He’ll come back, right? When we least expect it?”
There was desperation in his voice and tears in his eyes. Moxie shook her head.
“He doesn’t think we’ll want him to come back,” she said. “He thinks we’re still angry at him.”
“Are we?” asked Ornette doubtfully.
“No,” said Moxie, Pip, and Cleo in unison.
“I was mad at him,” Squeak said quietly, “but I’m not anymore. Of course I’m not. He’s our friend. Friends don’t stay mad at friends.”
Moxie knew that, but Lemony didn’t. Lemony didn’t have friends, he had associates. There was a difference, but Lemony was taught not to mind loneliness, and he never learned it.
“He doesn’t know the difference and he won’t come back,” said Moxie bleakly. “He thinks he won’t be welcome.”
“But he’ll get lonely without us, won’t he?” asked Pip.
“He’s been taught not to mind,” Moxie replied. She liked the idea of a secret, noble organization. But at that moment, she really, really hated it.
“So we find him,” said Jake, refilling Cleo’s hot chocolate. “It can’t be that hard. We’ll just look for root beer floats and weird sayings, and he’ll be there.”
The attempt at a joke did not lighten the mood.
“He’s been trained not to be found,” said Cleo quietly. “And we haven’t been trained to look. How are we supposed to compete with that?”
“We can leave him a message,” said Kellar. “He’ll be watching over Stain’d by the Sea, I guarantee it. We can find somewhere to leave him a message.”
“The news,” said Moxie, a spark of inspiration hitting her. “When we start up the newspaper! He’ll read that for sure!”
They all agreed it was a fine idea, but they all had work to do besides that.
Cleo invented her ink, and Pip and Squeak ran the library, and Jake fixed up Hungry’s, and Stain’d by the Sea started bustling again.
Bustle was a weird thing to say. It was like cabbage, but for words. Lemony would like it, Moxie thought.
In the end, it took three years for them to figure out how to send a secret message. Moxie had trouble publishing, especially since she was still a teenager, and she had to fight the rising competition of The Daily Punctilio, which seemed very uncredible.
But her newspaper won out, in the end. The Mallahan News, as she creatively called it, bustled.
“How do we get a message to him?” asked Jake, when they met three years later.
“I suppose we can’t just write him a letter,” said Pip.
Cleo shook her head. “He’s supposed to be discreet, remember?”
“A code, then,” Moxie decided.
“Morse code?” suggested Ornette, her fingers flipping the blank paper around.
Kellar shook his head. “Too basic. Anyone could see it. It needs to be something that only Snicket and us would recognize.”
“Kenneth Graham,” they all said in unison.
And so it was set. Moxie had added a column to the newspaper: To the Editor.
It was a staple in every good newspaper, she told her friends. They could all be the editor, together, and answer questions (and question answers) that the people sent in.
And they got plenty of statements, questions, and in-betweens. Stain’d by the Sea civilians, and even people from out of town, were eager to let their voices be heard. In between the genuine letters, Moxie and her friends added an ersatz letter: In Praise of Kenneth Graham.
To the Editor, it read.
I have recently completed Kenneth Graham’s work: The Wind in the Willows. I enjoyed it, but I think it would be better to read with a friend. I’m lonely. Can you help?
Sincerely,
Veronica F. Dirnem
Of course, as the editor, they had to construct a response for Veronica. Here’s what their response said, and they were both posted in the newspaper:
Dear Veronica,
I agree with your opinion on Kenneth Grahame. If you’re lonely, perhaps you should seek out some old friends. That might help. They might be willing to help. I had a very friendly dormmate at my college, when I was younger, and he practically saved my life. I never got to thank him, and I’ve lost touch, and I hope that you don’t do that too, Veronica.
Sincerely,
The Editor.
“Do you think it’s too obvious?” asked Jake.
“I don’t care,” said Kellar crossly. “We’ve been re-writing this for days. Let’s send it.”
They sent it.
Less than a week later, Moxie found a letter in her mail.
To the editor,
I have wet socks, and I don’t like that. Do you know how to dry your socks while still wearing them?
There was a lot more written underneath that, but it was all crossed out, and Moxie couldn’t read it. Underneath that, there were a few tear stains and a few blood stains. Then the letter continued.
I recently read a very fascinating dialect of an old play. There was a king and there was a friend and the king killed the friend. The king turned mad and started killing everyone What I wanted to ask was, do you think murderers can be
The rest of that sentence was crossed out. The next legible words were,
Forgiven? I don’t. I’ve been arguing with my brother over this story, and I wanted to know what other people’s opinions are. What is yours?
Sincerely,
Athem Garnkehn
“Kenneth Grahame,” said Moxie, buzzing with excitement. “It’s an anagram. It’s Lemony.”
“I will never understand how he can be so obscure and so obvious at the same time,” Jake observed. “What shall we say?”
They re-wrote the letter, just a little, too make it less suspicious, then published it in the newspaper with this response:
Dear Athem,
I think it depends on the situation. If the king’s friend was noble, then the king was not right. But if the king’s friend was villainous, then it’s more understandable for the king. Personally, I would forgive the king.
Sincerely,
The Editor.
A letter came a week later.
The content itself was something boring about weather, and Moxie was going to toss it in the junk bin when the name at the bottom caught her eye.
Conemy L. Setinek.
It could be a coincidence, she told herself, but she wouldn’t pass it up. She brought the letter to Hungry’s, and they all examined it together.
To the Kind Editor,
I think that it will rain next week, which will get my socks wet. I prefer snow, except when it’s winter, at which point I prefer warmth. But when it’s summer, I prefer cold. I always long for what I don’t have. How perfectly dreary, but I’ve been assured that everyone feels that way. This only makes it sadder.
Sincerely,
Conemy L. Setinek
“Lemony Snicket,” Kellar said at Hungry’s, when they all examined the letter.
After that, nobody said anything for a good while. Jake scratched his head. Ornette folded and re-folded her business card. Moxie adjusted her hat. Pip accidentally elbowed Squeak. Squeak purposefully elbowed Pip.
“I can’t make heads or tails of this,” Jake finally admitted. “I know it’s Snicket because of the wet socks, but I haven’t the faintest clue what he means.”
“Maybe it’s a warning?” Pip tried. “For bad weather?”
“Or fair-riding friends,” said Ornette.
“Maybe he’s saying he’ll come next week…” Kellar trailed off, then shook his head, frustrated.
Cleo stayed silent, studying the letter intently. Suddenly, she laughed.
“It’s not the letter at all,” she said, “it’s the ink!”
Cleo pointed at the splotches along the side of the paper, ink blotches that looked carefully placed, and the associates all leaned in. Pip and Squeak bumped heads.
“Of course,” Moxie breathed, surprised that she hadn’t realized it earlier. “It’s morse code!”
The ink blotches, once you knew to look, were longer splashes or simple points. Morse code, disguised as a mistake.
Kellar dug out his pencil. “I know this. Hold on.”
They waited with baited breath as he translated the morse code onto the back of a business card, and then Kellar showed his writing to them:
CANTVISITNOWTOODANGEROUSBUTTHANKYOUFORTHEOFFERWILLKEEPWRITINGLIKEACLIPPEDBIRDKEEPSSINGINGLEMONY
“Butt hank you?” asked Squeak, wrinkling his nose.
“But thank you,” Ornette corrected, then read the whole thing out. “He said, ‘Can’t visit now, too dangerous, but thank you for the offer. Will keep writing, like a clipped bird keeps singing. -Lemony.’” She looked up at the others. “Well, it’s him, all right.”
That made Kellar snort and Moxie giggle.
“How’d he fit all that onto morse code?” asked Jake incredulously.
Ornette held the letter up. “He wrote on both sides.”
“Snicket for sure,” said Cleo. “what do we do?”
“Let him know that we got his message,” said Moxie, “and that it’s safe to write.”
They snuck that message into a new letter to the editor, a letter from Tennekh Hagram.
Next time Lemony wrote, it was not in code.
To the kind editor,
I trust you will not publish this, because I trust you. I’m glad to have heard from you again. I’ve missed you all.
I’m working with my brother, and I’m sorry to say that it’s gotten very dangerous and HI! NICE TO MEET YOU AL
I apologize. That was my brother. He writes like a five year old, and keeps reading my personal letters.
(Scribbled in the margins was I DO NOT! I DO NOT WRITE LIKE A FIVE YEAR OLD, THAT IS. I DO READ MY BROTHER’S PERSONAL LETTERS.)
The letter continued as if there was no interruption.
I can’t visit. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to. People have their eyes on this town, and on me, and the two of those things cannot meet right now. I will be fine, or it won’t, but either way I’ll recover. Don’t worry
.
No need to write back unless you want to
It’s
nice to hear from you all again.
It was brutally honest, and, honestly, brutal. To hear Snicket sound so bleak, but so honest, and so- so Snicket was quite a trip for the association.
There was no signature, but it was undeniably him.
They snuck a reply into the Editor column.
Lemony kept writing. With every letter, he said that he could stop writing at any point if the editor so wished. With every newspaper, the editor encouraged frequent and constant letters from the civilians.
The years passed.
I met a young woman, said one letter, and she is very nice. I’ve known her for a long time, actually, but I only really met her just now. You haven’t met someone until you see them cry and you see them laugh and you see them do both at the same time. I like writing her name down, but I will not, for safety reasons.
“Ooh, he’s smitten again,” said Kellar. They wrote a letter in the column, to a person named Honey Melon, advising against rushing into relationships.
I’m not rushing into anything , came Lemony’s indignant response. I’ve had this planned out for a while.
And then,
B is not like E. She’s noble, through and through. While she will do anything for those she loves, she also won’t compromise on her goodness. That’s why she’s amazing: she finds a way to do both. Also-
The rest of the letter was, as Kellar put it, a love letter to a person who wasn’t the person that the love letter was written to. From then on, every single one of his letters mentioned Beatrice.
He hadn’t actually said her name, but it was what they all called her, because what other names started with a B?
(“Barbara,” said Pip. “Bernard. Becca. Bellerophon.”)
(“Beatrice is the most elegant one,” Moxie responded airily. “And so it must be hers.”)
Kellar and Cleo took bets on how long it would take for Lemony to propose. Cleo also became pregnant. Lemony sent his congratulations.
He was engaged to B, Lemony sent, but the engagement was broken off for safety reasons. That last part made Moxie feel terribly sad. Lemony had promised that, if everything worked out, the association would be invited to their wedding. Now she would not get the chance.
(B is eager to meet you all, he had said. And I think you all would like to meet her.)
His letters were quieter, after the engagement was broken off, and usually stained with tears. To Moxie’s relief, though, they still came.
And then one day, around fourteen years later, they stopped.
Lemony had been irregularly regular. One letter per month. If he missed a month, he would send two letters the next month.
No letters came for five months. Jake, who had three children now, grew sick with worry.
And then, out of nowhere, an entire book came.
After everything they’d not read, the book was incredibly open (figuratively and literally). It had names, dates, details. Lemony Snicket was written along the spine. Moxie inhaled the words like medicine. She hadn’t read that name in years.
They all read the book together, but first they read the opening note.
To my kind editor,
I am looking for the Baudelaires. I won’t publish this book till much, much later, but if worse comes to worst, I will publish it, because I think it will help me find them. If not, it will be a good thing anyway, I think. I cannot find the Baudelaires, but it always helps to have an honest account written out, just in case. Perhaps an honest account could have saved an honest librarian. Unfortunately, some of this was written in the dark and some of it was written while I was weeping and one chapter was written while surrounded by deadly snakes and unfortunately, I made a few typos, as everyone does. I would appreciate it greatly if you edited this before the final print, because books should be as perfect as possible. If you find it too dangerous, that is all right. Just mail it back to the address enclosed.
Your friend,
Lemony Snicket
They wrote back. Of course they did. Lemony had included an address, for once, and they sent the book back with notes and scribbles and suggestions on improvement.
(the suggestions had been quite a process. Imagine two little children scribbling on the walls. Now shrink that wall to the size of a page, age up the children, and multiply the children by four and the wall by one hundred and sixty two.)
(They made it work.)
The books kept coming. Lemony also sent prequels, a chronicle of his time in Stain’d by the Sea, but for privacy’s sake he asked that only Pip and Squeak read it. Because they were friends, the rest of the associates respected his privacy.
And more books came. Lemony sent the second with the news that Beatrice had died. He sent the seventh with the news that his brother had died. He sent the eleventh with the news that his sister had died.
Moxie didn’t personally know them, but she’d heard plenty about them all, and she cried at every one.
Lemony sent the thirteenth years after the rest, with the news that he had a niece.
I am not an honest person, in person, he wrote. It’s easier to be honest on paper, because on paper you don’t have to look someone in the eyes. You can be as honest or dishonest as you want, and the paper won’t tell. It’s been very nice to be honest. I have been dishonest to quite a few people, as happens when you are pretending to be dead.
I will be honest again now. My siblings are dead, and Beatrice is dead, and my sister’s husband (a librarian) is dead, and the two noblest librarians I met are dead, and my daughter is probably dead, and sometimes I wish I could join them. But I know that I have associates friends still, and I will stay alive.
I met my niece. Her name is Beatrice. It's a good name. I am helping her look for the Baudelaires. If I find Klaus, there will be another honest librarian. If I find Sunny, there will be quite possibly the second honest chef I’ve met. If I find Violet, I will find much more than I dare to hope for.
Quite a few of the people who hunted me are as dead as my sister. Would you like to meet Beatrice II?