A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village Read Online Free PDF Page A

man who was so strange and silent. When Hector opened the door of Town Hall and led the children back out onto the crow-covered sidewalk, he let out a big sigh, the first sound the children had heard from him. Then he looked down at each Baudelaire and gave them a gentle smile. "I'm never truly relaxed," he said to them in a pleasant voice, "until I have left Town Hall. The Council of Elders makes me feel very skittish. All those strict rules! It makes me so skittish that I never speak during one of their council meetings. But I always feel much better the moment I walk out of the building. Now, it looks like we're going to be spending quite a bit of time together, so let's get a few things straight. Number one, call me Hector. Number two, I hope you like Mexican food, because that's my specialty. And number three, I want you to see something marvelous, and we're just in time. The sun is starting to set." It was true. The Baudelaires hadn't noticed, when they stepped out of Town Hall, that the afternoon light had slipped away and that the sun was now just beginning to dip below the horizon. "It's lovely," Violet said politely, although she had never understood all the fuss about standing around admiring sunsets. "Shh," Hector said. "Who cares about the sunset? Just be quiet for a minute, and watch the crows. It should happen any second now." "What should happen?" Klaus said. "Shh," Hector said again, and then it began to happen. The Council of Elders had already told the Baudelaires about the roosting habits of the crows, but the three children hadn't really given the matter a second thought, a phrase which here means "considered, even for a second, what it would look like when thousands of crows would fly together to a new location." One of the largest crows, sitting on top of the mailbox, was the first to fly up in the air, and with a rustle of wings he or she; it was hard to tell from so far away, began to fly in a large circle over the children's heads. Then a crow from one of Town Hall's windowsills flew up to join the first crow, and then one from a nearby bush, and then three from the street, and then hundreds of crows began to rise up at once and circle in the air, and it was as if an enormous shadow was being lifted from the town. The Baudelaires could finally see what all the streets looked like, and they could gaze at each detail of the buildings as more and more crows left their afternoon roosts. But the children scarcely looked at the town. Instead they looked straight up, at the mysterious and beautiful sight of all those birds making a huge circle in the sky. "Isn't it marvelous?" Hector cried. His long skinny arms were outstretched, and he had to raise his voice over the sound of all the fluttering wings. "Isn't it marvelous?" Violet, Klaus, and Sunny nodded in agreement, and stared at the thousands of crows circling and circling above them like a mass of fluttering smoke or like black, fresh ink such as the ink I am using now, to write down these events, that somehow had found its way to the heavens. The sound of the wings sounded like a million pages being flipped, and the wind from all that fluttering blew in their grinning faces. For a moment, with all that air rushing toward them, the Baudelaire orphans felt as if they too could fly up into the air, away from Count Olaf and all their troubles, and join the circle of crows in the evening sky.
    Chapter Three
    "Wasn't that marvelous?" Hector said, as the crows stopped circling and began to fly, like an enormous black cloud, over the buildings and away from the Baudelaire orphans. "Wasn't that just marvelous? Wasn't that absolutely superlative? That means the same thing as 'marvelous,' by the way." "It certainly was," Klaus agreed, not adding that he had known the word "superlative" since he was eleven. "I see that just about every evening," Hector said, "and it always impresses me. It always makes me hungry, too. What shall we eat this evening? How about