Richard switched on the lamp of Rationality, searching for the load-bearing beam within those eight lines.
The second line: "I’m singing a song by the bed." The "I" who is singing is by the bed.
The fifth line: "Don’t answer, don’t answer, Mama’s still brewing tea."
In this line, "Mama" is brewing tea on the stove.
Richard’s pen tip paused.
The singing "I" was by the bed. The tea-brewing "Mama" was at the stove.
A song meant to lull a child to sleep, sung from beginning to end in a mother’s voice.
’But why would the singer call herself "Mama" while also saying "Mama" is at the stove?’
’A person is either by the bed or at the stove.’
’They can’t be both singing by the bed and brewing tea at the stove.’
’Unless the "I" by the bed and the "Mama" at the stove were not the same person at all.’
Richard’s breathing slowed.
He looked down at the sixth line.
"Little darling, remember clearly, it is not me, yet it is me."
Most of the class would read this line and take it to mean, "The one who’s pretending looks just like me."
Just a common phrase meant to scare children.
But that wasn’t what Richard took from it.
He thought of the power of definition.
’It is not me, yet it is me...’
’"It is not me" speaks to its origin—it was not your mother to begin with.’
’"Yet it is me" speaks to its status—if you call it ’Mother,’ then it becomes your Mother.’
Richard wrote down his interpretation, phrasing it entirely in the internal parlance of the Folklore Academy.
By the standards of the folklore assignment, this was already enough.
Going any deeper would mean either employing professional models from the Mysterious Side or delving into things that couldn’t be put down on paper for a homework assignment.
Richard put down his pen and leaned back in his chair.
Outside the window, the leaves of the plane tree rustled in the night wind.
The assignments were handed in on Friday morning.
Croft placed the stack of papers in the center of his lectern and began reading from the top.
He spent about half a minute on each, setting it aside to his right when he was done before pulling the next one from the stack. He didn’t say a single word the entire time.
Halfway through the stack, he looked up.
He patted the stack to his right. "I’ll start with this pile."
That pile accounted for nearly two-thirds of the class.
"For those of you in this pile, what you turned in was all more or less the same."
"’This is a cautionary song. At night, a tempting voice impersonates the Mother. It must not be answered.’"
"Which is correct, in a manner of speaking."
A few students in the class relaxed visibly.
"I told you all at the very beginning," Croft said, his tone shifting.
"A three-year-old could understand the literal meaning of this song."
"What you in this pile turned in is exactly what that three-year-old would say."
"Not a word out of place." He pushed the stack aside. "And not a single word more."
"You believe whatever the song says.
It says, ’Wait ’til dawn to answer,’ and you believe that means it’s safe to answer at dawn."
"You didn’t read it. You just listened to it."
The faces of the few students who had just relaxed tensed up again.
Richard sat in his seat, listening.
’A Scholar’s work is never about taking things at face value.’
Croft flipped through the large pile and pulled one out, his brow furrowing.
"Philips."
Philips stood up slowly.
"You managed to save even more trouble than they did."
Croft held up the paper for the class to see. It had only a few lines written on it.
"You wrote: ’This is a lullaby meant to encourage a child to sleep soundly through the night and not respond to noises from outside, so as to avoid catching a chill.’"
"The others at least recognized that this was about something unclean. You, however, did away with even that."
He slapped the paper onto the lectern.
"With that head full of Ovid, your eyes light up when you read Metamorphosis.
But when it comes to actual work, you can’t even be bothered to take a second glance at the phrase ’someone is calling in the night.’"
"Mr. Philips, you’re here for advanced studies, not to coast into retirement!"
"...Yes." Philips sat down. "At least what I wrote is true. My mom was always telling me not to catch a chill, too."
Someone in the class couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
Croft pushed the large pile from his right, along with Philips’s paper, to one side of the lectern.
Fewer than ten papers remained.
"The rest of you, at least, dug a little beneath the surface."
After some picking and choosing, he was left with three papers on the lectern.
Croft picked up the one on top.
"Montague."
The blond young man stood up, his posture poised and calm.
"This paper of yours," Croft said, unfolding it, "is flawless."
"You recognized the ’Stove Woman Variant,’ and you even clearly explained which lines led you to it."
"The ’warm hands’ and ’cold hands’—a half-asleep child wouldn’t notice the difference, but you did.
The mother tucking in the blanket—at first her hands are warm, but later they’re cold.
The one with warm hands is the real mother; the one with cold hands is a replacement."
"Following that thread, you unraveled the entire mechanism... Don’t answer at night; wait until dawn, wait for the warm hand to return. Only then is it the real mother."
"The vulnerability, the mechanism, the preventative measures." Croft set the paper down. "You’ve missed nothing. This is a model answer."
Montague gave a slight nod and sat down.
Croft picked up the second paper.
"Williams."
Richard stood up.
Several students turned to look at him.
’Let’s see what the guy the professor picks on every single day has written this time.’
"This paper of yours," Croft said, unfolding it.
"You accomplished everything Montague did. You also picked up on the ’warm’ and ’cold’."
"But you added another passage."
"The one that calls at dawn... its hands are cold, too."
’Richard knew.’
’The one calling in the night was an imposter.’
’But the one calling at dawn was likely an imposter, too.’
’You couldn’t answer at night, but you probably couldn’t answer at dawn, either.’
’Time was unreliable. The voice was unreliable. Warm hands, cold hands—in the end, there was nothing you could trust.’
Croft fixed his gaze on Richard.
"The core of this song is, ’Without verification, grant no name.’"
"It’s about the power of definition. That is the core of what I am trying to teach you in these folklore classes."
He waved a hand, dismissing Richard to his seat.
Croft picked up the last paper.
"Carter."
The plainly dressed girl in the back row stood up.
Richard’s gaze swept towards the back row.
"This paper of yours," Croft said, unfolding it.
"As for the ’Name Guardian’ principle, you and Williams arrived at the same conclusion."
"But you peeled back one more layer than he did."
Richard was taken aback.
His own paper had already pushed the limits of what could be said within the framework of the Folklore Academy.
’Edith had peeled back another layer?’
"You say that this type of Stove Woman Variant doesn’t imitate the ’Mother’."
"It imitates ’the first person in the household to get up and boil water.’"
Some in the class didn’t understand, so Croft explained.
"In a country home, the first person in the entire house to wake up and put the water on to boil is almost always the woman of the house."
"The Stove Woman Variant takes on that role; it isn’t always the Mother.
It could be the grandmother, the sister-in-law, or the eldest sister. It recognizes the role, not the individual."
"Carter mentioned that back home, they have an old custom.
Every year, on the first night of spring, they change who gets up first to boil the water."
"It can be anyone, as long as they’re the head of the household."
"This is a custom you won’t find in any folklore registry. It’s passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth."
"The point of this rotation is to make the entity that takes on that role mistake its target.
From then on, it can no longer accurately call out the name of any child in the house."
Richard understood.
’He had arrived at the "Name Guardian" principle: keep the power of naming in your own hands. Without verification, grant no name.’
’But the layer Edith had uncovered wasn’t in any book.’
’The Stove Woman Variant haunted a role; and the country folk’s way of dealing with it was to have a different person occupy that role.’
This was a layer of understanding Richard could never have reached, no matter how many case files he pored over.
Because Edith hadn’t learned it from a book.
She had grown up, until the age of sixteen, in the kind of house where someone boiled water in the middle of the night, and where they changed who that person was at the start of spring.
Croft closed the paper and placed it back in the center of the lectern.
He stared at the girl in the back row for a long time without speaking.
The bell rang, signaling the end of class.
The students began to file out of the classroom.
Richard walked to the door and glanced back.
Croft was still standing behind the lectern, holding Edith’s paper in his hands, slowly turning its pages.

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