Scarlet Morning

Wilmur wakes on a ship with many people in blue uniforms staring at him. It has been days since he left the Calamary Rose. The crew of the Queensmen ship Excelsis had found him asleep and rescued him off the pack. The Excelsis’s captain is Jacquelin Tavernier-Bleu, a petite but formidable woman. Also with them is Herman Ravenspurn, the head of the Queensmen, a bald man with a gilded breastbone across his chest like a large piece of jewelry. Wilmur explains that he is searching for his friend. One of the sailors, Derringer, kindly welcomes Wilmur aboard and offers him a bunk to sleep.

Viola and Chase become more friendly as they travel. One night, fog hangs low to the ground, and a silver ring forms around the moon, reminding Viola of Hestur’s warnings. They keep walking and find tracks in the salt. Chase says they have found her old friends.

An old woman named Quagga appears, greeting Chase as “Danny-Boy” (211). Quagga says that everyone else is dead. She thought that Chase was dead, too. She tells Chase that her friends are coming and that “The Silver Circle will find you, Danny-Boy. […] Did you think you could run from it forever?” (213). Chase draws her sword and cuts Quagga’s throat. Something dark and viscous rushes out of the body and toward Viola, but Chase shoots it with her pistol.

A noise like a thousand voices screaming fills the air, and Chase tells Viola to run. A dark cloud pours out of the sky toward them. Viola runs, but the cloud descends on her, and something pierces her shoulder. She screams and falls into darkness.

She hears voices and fragments of conversations in her head. Chase pulls a barbed feather out of her shoulder. Viola says that Quagga’s friends are in her head now. Chase offers to take Viola wherever she wants to go and promises not to leave her. Viola asks Chase to make sure Wilmur does not forget her, and then she passes out. The chapter closes with the full-page image of Chase cradling Viola against her chest (219).

This section of the novel includes facsimile pages from the Book. The pages are in a typewriter font and covered in ink blotches, paw prints, handwritten notes, and water rings. The last two pages are water-damaged and nearly unreadable. The pages start with the definition of “lacuna,” meaning “a gap, break, hole, or lack in a set of things; […] a vacancy caused by omission, loss, or obliteration of something…” (222). Next, there is an experiment in “Paradox Decay” (224) in which Alias takes a mother cat away from her newborn kittens, places her in something (the word is x-ed but refers to the Lacuna Laridae), to see what happens to the kittens. The kittens change, growing longer limbs and speaking a strange language.

Alias then experiments to see how the Lacuna affects language. He places a children’s book, titled “The Man on the Yellow [blotted out]” inside. He discovers that a word has disappeared from every text he owns. From context clues, including a photo of a man astride a horse with the horse’s head erased, it becomes clear that he has erased the word “horse” from the English language. The journal includes “A Treatise on Coincidence” (228) in which Alias Crowe insists that he has not “gone mad” (228). Then Alias describes a creature he calls the Angel, with leathery skin and wings. He describes hearing voices outside his room. One voice is Charlotte’s (presumably his wife), though he knows she is gone. The voice asks if he is dead yet. He finds a page he does not remember typing, with the words: “Do you want to die with me? Well, do you?” (232). The last page is torn, water-damaged, and unreadable except for lines that say: “I did not do this. I have committed no sin. […] I know that I can fix it. I know that next time I will get it right. Please, just give me one more chance…” (234).

Aboard the Excelsis, Wilmur adjusts to living with the Queensmen. Herman is always nearby. One day, Wilmur asks why Herman wears bones, and Jacquelin explains that it is an old mourning custom on Civilized islands to wear a piece of lost loved ones. Jacquelin also carries a small piece of her twin brother, who died at sea. She has a lock of his hair pinned inside her uniform. Quietly, she advises Wilmur to never “let anyone tell [him] the Massacre was justice” (238). People like Herman will claim it is because they cannot face their own guilt. Herman is the last surviving member of Parliament. He personally ordered the purge of the pirate islands that started the Massacre. Everyone around him died, but he lives in comfort.

Viola floats through scenes and conversations. The fragmented nature of her dreams is enhanced typographically by fragmented paragraphs and words scattered on the page. She sees a bedroom with a baby crying in a bassinet in the corner. A man is typing on a typewriter while a woman tells him not to work all night. The man says, “You’re not her […] the eyes are wrong” (242). She hears voices speaking all at once. Someone says, “I’m Annie, and I won’t be here long” (243).

Then she is standing in an opulent room. A beautiful girl with gold hair and violet eyes sits at a dressing table. It is Queen Hail Meridian. The gold hair is a wig, beneath which her hair is thin and pale. A man with green eyes and silver hair sneaks into the room. Hail Meridian calls him Ves, and he kisses her. She says that people are always watching her, and “plotting against her” (247). Ves calls her Elize and promises that no one suspects “their beloved queen has been a pirate all along” (247). Ves explains that he has made deals with the pirate courts. The last holdouts are the Requiem Sharks, and he will win them over soon. Then Elize will rule as the head of a “golden age of piracy” and “bring the Civilized world to its knees” (248). Anyone who raises a hand against her will face the Silver Circle. Viola tries to listen more, but the vision rips away, flinging her into light.

Viola wakes. Chase is holding her, and they are aboard the ship, SCS Brightest and Best. Captain Prickpost praises his men for rescuing two women off the salt pack. In his cabin, Chase claims to be Eribelle Swift and calls Viola her daughter. She tells a story about escorting her husband’s coffin home when their ship was attacked by a whale and they became stranded on the pack. Viola listens with wide eyes and notices that Chase tries not to meet Prickpost’s gaze. An illustration contrasts Viola’s panicked expression with Chase’s calm, unconcerned posture. At first, Prickpost commiserates and offers to take them to the nearest island, Wilder’s Green. Then Chase accidentally looks up, and Prickpost recognizes her, calling her Lenora de Merle-en-Sables.

Despite Chase’s protests, Prickpost is certain that she is a pirate called Lenora de Merle-en-Sables. His men throw them both in the brig. Now alone, Chase explains that Viola has been asleep for two weeks. She carried her across the pack until this merchant ship found them. Chase says she has escaped capture before and is confident she can do it again. The merchant crew put cuffs on Chase but not Viola. Chase talks Viola through the process of picking the lock on the cuffs.

Then Viola asks what happened to her. Chase explains that the cloud that attacked her was seagulls. Their blood contains poison that should have killed Viola. Viola describes her dreams, and Chase freezes. Viola realizes that it was not a dream, but real. She asks if Chase killed the queen to stop Ves’s plot. Chase claims she is the monster the stories make her out to be, but Viola thinks she is a good person who is trying to fix things. Chase yells at her to stop, warning that she will not like the answers she keeps digging for.

Wilmur writes a letter to Viola. He describes the Excelsis and crew, including his new friend, Derringer. He talks about Jacquelin, who is serious but nice, and about Herman, who stares at him a lot. Jacquelin has told him that a packet ship is meeting them soon to deliver supplies, and he can send his letter then, but he does not understand how the letter will get to Viola if he does not know where she is.

Viola wakes with Chase’s knife pressed to her throat. Viola tries to calm her, thinking she is sleepwalking again. Then Chase yells that she will kill her, and Viola screams. Outside, they hear men running. Chase whispers to Viola that she needs to convince Prickpost that Chase kidnapped her and threatened her to keep her quiet. Then they will let her go on Wilder’s Green, and she can start a new life. Viola cries, wanting to stay with Chase. Chase refuses, saying that something is coming for her and Viola needs to be safely away from her. She instructs Viola to look for a one-eyed man on Wilder’s Green named Ling Freshwater, tell him that Charley Noble was looking for him, and ask him to take her to the Second City. Just as the crew bursts in, Chase gives Viola her knife and yells again.

Viola does as she is told. Prickpost believes her story and gives her a place to sleep, saying they will reach Wilder’s Green in a week. Prickpost congratulates himself on rescuing her from the evil pirate, who will be executed as soon as he hands her over to the Queensmen.