"Stop," Kit said finally, through her fading tears. "Stop pushing the raft. I cannot go on."

"We have to go on," Violet said.

"We're almost at the beach," Klaus said.

"The shelf is flooding," Sunny said.

"Let it flood," Kit said. "I can't do it, Baudelaires. I've lost too many people—my parents, my true love, and my brothers."

At the mention of Kit's brothers, Violet thought to reach into her pocket, and she retrieved the ornate ring, emblazoned with the initial R. "Sometimes the things you've lost can be found again in unexpected places," she said, and held the ring up for Kit to see. The distraught woman removed her gloves, and held the ring in her bare and trembling hand.

"This isn't mine," she said. "It belonged to your mother."

"Before it belonged to our mother," Klaus said, "it belonged to you."

"Its history began before we were born," Kit said, "and it should continue after we die. Give it to my child, Baudelaires. Let my child be part of my history, even if the baby is an orphan, and all alone in the world."

"The baby will not be alone," Violet said fiercely. "If you die, Kit, we will raise this child as our own."

"I could not ask for better," Kit said quietly. "Name the baby after one of your parents, Baudelaires. The custom of my family is to name a baby for someone who has died."

"Ours too," Sunny said, remembering something her father had told her when she had inquired about her own name.

"Our families have always been close," Kit said, "even if we had to stay apart from one another. Now, finally, we are all together, as if we are one family."

"Then let us help you," Sunny said, and with a weepy, wheezy nod, Kit Snicket let the Baudelaires push her Vaporetto of Favorite Detritus off the coastal shelf and onto the shores of the island, where eventually everything arrives, just as the outrigger disappeared on the horizon. The children gazed at the islanders for the last time—at least as far as I know—and then at the cube of books, and tried to imagine how the injured, pregnant, and distraught woman could get to a safe place to birth a child.

"Can you lower yourself down?" Violet asked.

Kit shook her head. "It hurts," she said, her voice thick with the poisonous fungus.

"We can carry her," Klaus said, but Kit shook her head again.

"I'm too heavy," she said weakly. "I could fall from your grasp and hurt the baby."

"We can invent a way to get you to the shore," Violet said."Yes," Klaus said. "We'll just run to the arboretum to find what we need."

"No time," Sunny said, and Kit nodded in agreement.

"The baby's coming quickly," she said. "Find someone to help you."

"We're alone," Violet said, but then she and her siblings gazed out at the beach where the raft had arrived, and the Baudelaires saw, crawling out of Ishmael's tent, the one person for whom they had not shed a tear. Sunny slid down to the sand, bringing the stockpot with her, and the three children hurried up the slope to the struggling figure of Count Olaf.

"Hello, orphans," he said, his voice even wheezier and rougher from the spreading poison of the Medusoid Mycelium. Esme's dress had fallen away from his skinny body, and he was crawling on the sand in his regular clothes, with one hand holding a seashell of cordial and the other clutching at his chest. "Are you here to bow before the king of Olaf-Land?"

"We don't have time for your nonsense," Violet said. "We need your help."

Count Olaf's eyebrow raised, and he gave the children an astonished glare. "You need my help?" he asked. "What happened to all those island fools?"

"They abandoned us," Klaus said.

Olaf wheezed horridly, and it took the siblings a moment to realize he was laughing. "How do you like them apples?" he sputtered, using an expression which means "I find this situation quite remarkable."

"We'll give you apples," Sunny said, gesturing to the stockpot, "if you help."

"I don't want fruit," Olaf snarled, and tried to sit up, his hand still clutching his chest. "I want the fortune your parents left behind."

"The fortune isn't here," Violet said. "None of us may ever see a penny of that money."

"Even if it were here," Klaus said, "you might not live to enjoy it."

" McGuffin," Sunny said, which meant "Your scheming means nothing in this place."

Count Olaf raised the seashell to his lips, and the Baudelaires could see that he was trembling. "Then maybe I'll just stay here," he said hoarsely. "I've lost too much to go on—my parents, my true love, my henchfolk, an enormous amount of money I didn't earn, even the boat with my name on it."

The three children looked at one another, remembering their time on that boat and recalling that they had considered throwing him overboard. If Olaf had drowned in the sea, the Medusoid Mycelium might never have threatened the island, although the deadly fungus eventually would have washed up on its shores, and if the villain were dead then there would be no one on the beach who might help Kit Snicket and her child.

Violet knelt on the sand, and grabbed the villain's shoulders with both hands. "We have to go on," she said. "Do one good thing in your life, Olaf."

"I've done lots of good things in my life," he snarled. "I once took in three orphans, and I've been considered for several prestigious theatrical awards."

Klaus knelt down beside his sister, and stared into the villain's shiny eyes. "You're the one who made us orphans in the first place," he said, uttering out loud for the first time a secret all three Baudelaires had kept in their hearts for almost as long as they could remember. Olaf closed his eyes for a moment, grimacing in pain, and then stared slowly at each of the three children in turn.

"Is that what you think?" he said finally.

"We know it," Sunny said.

"You don't know anything," Count Olaf said. "You three children are the same as when I first laid eyes on you. You think you can triumph in this world with nothing more than a keen mind, a pile of books, and the occasional gourmet meal." He poured one last gulp of cordial into his poisoned mouth before throwing the seashell into the sand. "You're just like your parents," he said, and from the shore the children heard Kit Snicket moan.

"You have to help Kit," Violet said. "The baby is arriving."

"Kit?" Count Olaf asked, and in one swift gesture he grabbed an apple from the stockpot and took a savage bite. He chewed, wincing in pain, and the Baudelaires listened as his wheezing settled and the poisonous fungus was diluted by their parents' invention. He took another bite, and another, and then, with a horrible groan, the villain rose to his feet, and the children saw that his chest was soaked with blood.

"You're hurt," Klaus said.

"I've been hurt before," Count Olaf said, and he staggered down the slope and waded into the waters of the flooded coastal shelf. In one smooth gesture he lifted Kit from the raft and carried her onto the shores of the island. The distraught woman's eyes were closed, and as the Baudelaires hurried down to her they were not sure she was alive until Olaf laid her carefully down on the white sands of the beach, and the children saw her chest heaving with breath. The villain stared at Kit for one long moment, and then he leaned down and did a strange thing. As the Baudelaire orphans looked on, Count Olaf gave Kit Snicket a gentle kiss on her trembling mouth.

"Yuck," said Sunny, as Kit's eyes fluttered open.

"I told you," Count Olaf said weakly. "I told you I'd do that one last time."

"You're a wicked man," Kit said. "Do you think one kind act will make me forgive you for your failings?"

The villain stumbled a few steps away, and then sat down on the sand and uttered a deep sigh. "I haven't apologized," he said, looking first at the pregnant woman and then at the Baudelaires. Kit reached out and touched the man's ankle, right on the tattoo of an eye that had haunted the children since they had first seen it. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked at the tattoo, remembering all of the times it had been disguised and all the times it had been revealed, and they thought of all the other places they had seen it, for if you looked carefully, the drawing of an eye also spelled out the initials V.F.D., and as the children had investigated the Volunteer Fire Department, first trying to decode the organization's sinister mysteries and then trying to participate in its noble errands, it seemed that these eyes were watching them, though whether the eyes were noble or treacherous, good or evil, seemed even now to be a mystery. The whole story of these eyes, it seemed, might always be hidden from the children, kept in darkness along with all the other eyes watching all the other orphans every day and every night.