Scarlet Morning

Wilmur, a 15-year-old boy, and Viola, a 14-year-old girl, walk by salt-frosted houses to the shore. The small village on Caveat is silent and empty. Wilmur and Viola rarely see anyone else. Wilmur is tall and thin, with red hair and a baby face. Viola is much shorter with brown eyes and brown skin. A full-page illustration highlights their personalities: Wilmur is depicted flailing enthusiastically while Viola walks more calmly, with a smirk on her face (15).

The children walk out onto the salt floes that surround the island, where many ships have become trapped and half-buried beneath the salt. They often scavenge for food and supplies from the wrecks. Today, they use a trawling net and fireplace tongues to fish through the salt pack, which would burn their skin like acid if they touched it, in search of treasures. They find a jar of “Merrytree’s Miraculous Ever Eggs” (19), pickled eggs that make up most of their diet. As they return home, they spot a strange blot on the horizon. Wilmur thinks it is a ship, but Viola says that ships do not come to Caveat.

Wilmur and Viola walk as fog blows across the island. Viola whispers to Wilmur that someone is following them. Wilmur turns and shouts, but the figure is gone. They run home and lock the door. Wilmur complains that he’s sick of eating the eggs, and laments that they are stuck there forever. Viola suggests that the blot they saw was a ship and that someone may finally be looking for them.

A storm rolls in. Wilmur and Viola stay safely in their home alone. When Wilmur was seven and Viola six, Hestur disappeared. One day, they woke up and she was gone, her shawl and shoes missing, her bed neatly made, and the door still latched from the inside. Viola tries to talk about Hestur often because Wilmur seems to be forgetting her.

The children have many books, and Viola reads aloud most nights. As the storm rages, she reads from a history book about Scarlet Morning, who has red hair, wears black clothes, and a pale mask over her face, and has a star-shaped scar on her left hand from a bullet wound. The book claims that Scarlet Morning “cannot be killed by Blade nor Bullet” (32).

Wilmur asks Viola to read something else. She retrieves the Book, Hestur’s prized possession. This Book is bound in brass and covered in ivory dials. Its full title is “Journals and Proceedings Relating to the Study of Bizarre Occurrences in the Curious Region Known as Dickerson’s Sea; Being a Record of Events Since the Crossing of Icharus Bend, Thus Written by one Alias Crowe” (33), but they just call it the Book. Each section is locked by a different series of dials. It contains research notes, letters, and strange stories about a phenomenon Alias Crowe calls the Lacuna Laridae. Viola has unlocked every section but the last. She reads from a section in which Alias describes a strange creature he calls a mogrim. It has legs made up of tentacles intertwined into a vaguely bipedal shape and a head with no eyes or mouth. A spot illustration shows Alias’s rough sketch of a mogrim (34). Alias brags that his discovery is more exciting than “Darwin with his ruddy finches” (34).

They wake to an enormous sound like a bellow. Afraid, Viola remembers Hestur’s warning about the signs of Scarlet Morning’s arrival, like a silver ring around the moon, a fog that smells like blood, or a howling sound like “the voices of a thousand drowning sailors” (37).

Suddenly, they hear a knock on the door. Viola grabs the Book and hides it under her mattress. The door crashes inward, and a figure walks in, covered in a huge cloak and hat, depicted in a full-page illustration (40). It is a woman with long black hair, sharp features, and men’s clothes. Viola is relieved that she does not match Scarlet Morning’s description. The woman says she is a sailor called Cadence Chase, captain of the Calamary Rose. The children tell her their names, and Chase remarks that Wilmur is not a real name.

Chase demands the Book. Viola refuses, but Wilmur offers a deal: Chase can have it if she gives them passage on her ship to Faire Distance. They believe their parents left them with Hestur to keep them safe during the Pirate Massacre and want to find them. Chase explains that they must wait for the storm to end and takes a nap.

When the storm quiets down, someone else arrives—a “sweet-faced woman” (55) with short blonde hair and broad shoulders, whom Chase introduces as her first mate, Clem, who came looking for Chase when she did not return. Chase explains her deal with the children, and they return to the ship, ugly and tub-shaped with iron bands to help it push through the saltpack. A diverse and eclectic crew waits for them on board. One crewmember is a large white bear wearing an ascot. Clem puts the children in a broom closet to sleep, claiming it is the cabin boy’s quarters. Wilmur is excited, but Viola does not trust Chase or her crew. Before long, they fall asleep.

Laddie, the kitchen boy, wakes the children in the morning and says that Chase wants to see them. Viola and Wilmur are stunned by the sun, which they have never seen so bright and clear before. In the captain’s cabin, Chase demands the Book, and Viola hands it over. Viola asks why Chase wants it, and Chase claims that it belonged to a friend and has sentimental value.

They are interrupted by a blast that shoots a large hole in her floor from the ship’s hold below. Several sailors stand beneath, looking guilty. One sailor, Coot, says he was trying to clean a cannon and accidentally shot it. Viola is concerned that the ship has a cannon, but Chase says that every ship needs cannons in the Bleachfields—the stretch of ocean where the salt is so thick it could trap a ship without warning, even a pack-breaker like the Calamary Rose. The sailors return to work. Viola asks Chase what happened to the friend who owned the Book, and Chase blithely responds that she killed him.

The sky in the Bleachfields is streaked with green, gold, and violet. Clem explains that it has looked like that since the Great Blow 15 years ago. Sometimes the fractured lights create mirages of the sun that the crew calls sun dogs. Sometimes it creates ghostly copies of the ship, or casts shadows on the horizon that look like monsters.

Viola spends her time up on the rigging, where she can avoid people. A full-page illustration shows Viola perched in the rigging, watching the sea and salt pack sparkling, evoking a sense of wonder and adventure (77). Wilmur befriends the crew easily. They call him cabin boy affectionately, and he does any menial chore they give him. Viola, on the other hand, feels awkward and tongue-tied around them. She doesn’t appreciate being called cabin girl.

Clem gives Wilmur a tattoo. One sailor, Jacoby, says that every sailor has at least one. Jacoby is covered in tattoos, each representing an adventure. Another sailor, Fives, teases Jacoby for bragging about his exploits, and they fight. A third sailor, Zope the Neversinking, confides to Viola that Jacoby and Fives were once matelots (married) but now only fight. Zope is famous among the crew as either the luckiest or unluckiest person alive. They have “escaped no fewer than seven shipwrecks, four lightning strikes, two volcanic eruptions, a harpoon through the head…” (82). A woman sailor, Alma, then points out that not all sailors have tattoos. Chase does not. Alma believes that Chase is secretly an heiress. Clem tells her to stop spreading rumors.

Wilmur is pleased with his tattoo. He is happy with the food on the ship and his new friends. He loves that after dinner every night, the sailors celebrate “Christmas […] a sort of after-dinner feast, with music and dancing” (86). He does not even mind that another crewmember, a Sister Mauritia who is a nun of the Floating Chapel, leads them in prayer to “Cod Above and in the Deep” (88) before every meal. However, Viola remains suspicious of Chase.

One evening, they are surprised when Chase joins them for Christmas. She invites Clem to a duel in the galley. Clem declines, saying that Chase is drunk, but Jacoby offers to duel her instead. He says that if he kills her, he gets to be captain. They duel with swords. At first, Chase looks amused, but she quickly becomes serious and merciless. Jacoby surrenders, and she drives her sword into the wood, pinning Jacoby by his shirt.