Chapter 250: The Stove-Wife Transformation

In the time that followed, the folklore class moved through a few more sessions.

Croft never arranged his lectures by the academy's standard curriculum.

He drew up no syllabus and separated nothing into categories. He would lecture on one subject today and another the next, picking the order entirely from some old ledger in his own mind.

Following changelings, he lectured on the mirror bride.

She lived within the glass of old-fashioned full-length mirrors, preying specifically on young women about to be married.

Before her wedding day, a bride inevitably spent time repeatedly fixing her hair and makeup in front of a mirror.

The entity would use that time to slowly chew the girl's thoughts of "getting married" into her own mouth.

When the big day arrived, the girl inside the mirror would step out.

The real bride, meanwhile, was left trapped inside the glass.

"Is there a way to tell them apart?" a student asked.

"An old method," Croft replied. "Set a shallow dish of water on the bride's vanity, and rest a piece of wrought iron on the edge of the dish."

"Why wrought iron?"

"She cannot touch iron."

Croft also talked about the Djinn, recounting a tired old tale from the Empire's southern coastal garrison.

Two hundred years ago, a squad dispatched to a desert waystation near the Mediterranean vanished from the sands overnight, men and camels alike.

Half a month later, the squad marched back in perfect formation, not a single hair missing from anyone's head.

But after that, for over a decade, each of those seven soldiers was followed by an invisible companion.

"These are called companion spirits. Take care to distinguish them." Croft wrote the term on the chalkboard.

"They don't harm people."

"They just follow. For an entire lifetime."

"What's so bad about that?" a student scoffed.

"Those seven soldiers all died later."

Croft set down his piece of chalk.

"They died very slowly. When a companion spirit clings to a living person for over a decade, the 'tune' of that living person is gradually swapped out for a tune that no longer belongs to the human side."

"Once the change is complete, the mortal flesh can no longer anchor it."

Richard sat in the audience, listening, arranging these different types of entities side by side in his mind.

The mirror bride, companion spirits, changelings... Their methods differed, but the core was identical.

The right of definition.

"My child," "my bride," "my companion"...

They did not recognize faces. They only recognized the title.

Croft continued lecturing for several more sessions. Every subject was just an old wives' tale in the eyes of ordinary people—ghost stories told for hundreds of years.

The "evil eye" of Mediterranean fishing villages preyed specifically on lucky individuals walking along the piers.

Those who had recently struck it rich, those who had just had their firstborn, those who had just closed a massive deal...

All of them had to pin a piece of holed red coral to their collars, or else those unseen eyes would suck their good fortune dry.

The noble rot corpse spirit of the Spice Islands hid beneath sacks of nutmeg and cinnamon to cross the ocean on ships.

The moment a ship docked, it would slip into the city's spice shops, targeting the female cooks who were most particular about their spices.

Once the cook stewed a pot of strange-smelling thick soup and the whole family ate it, the spirit would begin swapping out their bones.

The "long fingers" of the New World's eastern coast staked out small-town taverns, picking off drunken men walking home alone in the dark.

The flying head childbirth ghost of the South Sea islands preyed on women who had not properly recovered from postpartum blood loss.

Anyone marked by her would never know peace for the rest of their life.

At this point, Croft wrapped up the day's topic and pulled a stack of neatly copied papers from beneath the lectern.

"Today's assignment," he said, shaking the stack of papers.

The papers were passed down, one copy per person.

Richard took his and saw that it was a nursery rhyme.

The handwriting was neatly transcribed in fountain pen, with the location of collection noted just beneath the title.

A small town in the northern part of the Isle of Albion. The year of collection was decades ago.

The lyrics were not long. Sixteen lines in total.

The wind blows gently outside the window, Mother's hands are nice and warm.

Little baby, close your eyes, I am singing by your bed.

The lamp is out, the door is shut, go and have your pleasant dreams.

Little baby, be a dear, someone is calling in the night.

Do not answer, do not answer, Mother is still brewing tea.

Little baby, remember well, it is not me, but it is me.

The wind blows gently outside the window, Mother's hands are freezing cold.

Little baby, dream again, I will wake you at the dawn.

After reading it, Richard felt it shared a striking resemblance to the Underground Taboo Songs he had read before.

Croft waited until everyone had finished reading before he spoke.

"The literal surface of this song can be read by anyone who is literate."

"'Something in the night is impersonating your mother and calling your name, so don't answer.'"

"A three-year-old in the countryside would be scared after hearing that surface layer."

He lowered his voice slightly.

"What I want to see is not this layer."

"What I want to see... is how much you can read out of these eight lines that isn't explicitly written down."

"Decide on your own methods. I only care about the conclusion."

"Due this Friday."

..................

Back in his dormitory, Richard spread the paper flat on his desk.

Imperial Capital University provided single rooms for its recommended students.

He first placed the Sphinx Lamp on the deepest shelf of his wardrobe, keeping it far from the desk.

Supernatural items prior to Signature were sensitive to every last trace of ether flow around them. For what he was about to do, he needed to keep the lamp at a distance.

After doing so, he sat down at his desk.

He ran the literal layer through his head once more.

A voice calls your name in the night, do not answer, the one calling is a foul thing impersonating your mother.

More than half the class would probably submit exactly this layer.

Richard did not dwell on it.

He spread out [Erudition].

This was not the first time he had run into a "midnight name-calling" taboo.

Whether down in the mine shafts or up in this northern town, separated by hundreds of miles, the taboo was exactly the same.

But that was still just the literal surface.

Richard turned on the side lantern of [Speculation], hunting for the load-bearing pillars within those eight lines.

The second line: "I am singing by your bed." The "I" who sang was by the bed.

The fifth line: "Do not answer, do not answer, Mother is still brewing tea."

In this line, "Mother" was at the stove brewing tea.

Richard's pen paused.

The "I" who was singing was by the bed; the "Mother" who was brewing tea was at the stove.

It was a lullaby sung from beginning to end in a mother's tone.

But why would the singer call herself "Mother," while simultaneously claiming that "Mother" was at the stove?

A person was either by the bed or at the stove.

They could not be singing by the bed and brewing tea at the stove at the exact same time.

Unless the "I" by the bed and the "Mother" at the stove were not the same person at all.

Richard's breathing slowed.

He looked down at the sixth line.

"Little baby, remember well, it is not me, but it is me."

The majority of the class reading this line would interpret it as, "The imposter looks exactly like me."

An ordinary phrase meant to frighten children.

That was not what Richard read into it.

He thought of the right of definition.

"It is not me, but it is me"...

"It is not me" spoke to its origin; it was not originally your mother.

"But it is me" spoke to the title; the moment you called it your mother, it became your mother.

Richard wrote down his interpretation, framing it entirely within the Academy Style of folklore.

Up to this point, he had already met the grading standards for the folklore class.

Going any deeper would require either invoking specialized mystic-side models or delving into concepts that simply could not be put down on an assignment paper.

Richard set down his pen and leaned back in his chair.

Outside the window, the night wind rustled through the sycamore leaves.

..................

On Friday morning, the assignments were handed in.

Croft stacked the papers dead center on the lectern and started reading from the top.

He spent about half a minute on each. Once finished, he placed it to his right and drew the next one, without saying a single word from start to finish.

Halfway through the stack, he looked up.

He patted the pile on his right. "I will talk about this stack first."

That pile accounted for nearly two-thirds of the class.

"What the lot of you handed in is largely identical."

"'This is a cautionary rhyme. A luring voice calls in the night, impersonating the mother; one must not answer.'"

"You are right, as far as it goes."

A few students in the classroom visibly relaxed.

"I told you at the very beginning," Croft said, his tone shifting abruptly.

"A three-year-old could understand the literal surface of this song."

"What this stack handed in is exactly what a three-year-old would say after hearing it."

"Not a single word wrong." He shoved the pile to the side. "And not a single word more."

"You blindly believed exactly what the song wrote.

It said to wait until dawn to answer, and you believed that it was safe to answer at dawn."

"You did not read it. You obeyed it."

The students who had just relaxed immediately tensed back up.

Richard sat in the audience, listening.

A Scholar's job was never just to read the literal words.

Croft riffled through the large stack, pulling out one paper with a deep frown.

"Phillips."

Phillips stood up slowly.

"You took even less effort than the rest of them."

Croft turned the paper around for the entire class to see. There were only a handful of lines written on it in total.

"You wrote: 'This is a lullaby meant to persuade children to sleep early and ignore noises outside the window, so as to avoid catching a cold.'"

"At least the others recognized there was a foul thing involved. You, on the other hand, conveniently omitted the foul thing entirely."

He slapped the paper onto the lectern.

"You are full of Ovid, and your eyes shine bright whenever you read the Metamorphoses.

But when it comes to proper work, you couldn't even be bothered to take a second look at the words, 'someone is calling in the night.'"

"Mr. Phillips, you are here to study, not to enjoy your retirement!"

"...Yes," Phillips said as he sat back down. "At least what I wrote is true. My mom always tells me not to catch a cold, too."

Someone in the classroom could not hold back and let out a laugh.

Croft pushed that massive stack on his right, along with Phillips's paper, to the far edge of the lectern.

Fewer than ten papers remained.

"These remaining ones, at the very least, dug a shovel's depth beneath the words."

After a final sorting, only three papers were left in the center of the lectern.

Croft picked up the top one.

"Montagu."

The blond young man stood up, looking perfectly composed.

"Your paper," Croft said, unfolding the sheet. "I can't find a single flaw in it."

"You correctly identified the 'stove-wife transformation,' and you clearly articulated which lines led you to that conclusion."

"A half-asleep child wouldn't notice the contrast between 'hands are warm' and 'hands are freezing cold,' but you did.

The mother tucking in the blankets had warm hands at the start, but freezing cold hands at the end.

The one with warm hands was the real mother. The one with cold hands was the changeling."

"You followed this logic down and deduced the entire pattern... Don't answer in the night; survive until dawn, survive until those warm hands return, and only then is it your true mother."

"Entry wound, mechanism, prevention method." Croft set the paper down. "You didn't miss a single thing. This is a model answer."

Montagu gave a slight nod and sat down.

Croft picked up the second paper.

"Williams."

Richard stood up.

Several pairs of eyes in the classroom turned his way.

They all wanted to see what the guy singled out and nitpicked by the associate professor every day had managed to write this time.

"Your paper." Croft unfolded the sheet.

"Everything Montagu achieved, you achieved as well. You also picked up on the 'warm' and the 'cold.'"

"But compared to him, you wrote one extra paragraph."

"The one who wakes you at dawn also has cold hands."

Richard knew this perfectly well.

The one calling in the night was an imposter.

But the one calling at dawn was almost certainly an imposter as well.

You could not answer in the night, and you could not necessarily answer at dawn either.

Time was unreliable. The voice was unreliable. Warm hands, cold hands—in the end, not a single thing could be trusted.

Croft's gaze landed on Richard.

"The core of this song is: 'Without verification, grant no name.'"

"It is about the right of definition. That is the core reason I am teaching you these folklore classes."

He waved a hand, signaling Richard to sit down.

Croft picked up the final paper.

"Carter."

The plainly dressed girl in the back row stood up.

Richard's gaze swept toward the back of the room.

"Your paper." Croft unfolded it.

"You and Williams were on the exact same page regarding the layer of 'guarding the name.'"

"But you peeled back one layer more than he did."

Richard blanked for a second.

His own paper had already pushed the limits of what could be discussed within the Academy Style of folklore.

Edith had peeled back yet another layer?

"You wrote that this kind of stove-wife transformation doesn't actually mimic the 'mother.'"

"It mimics 'the person in the house who wakes up earliest to boil water.'"

Someone in the classroom looked confused, so Croft explained it.

"When sleeping at night in the countryside, the first person in the whole house to wake up and get the water boiling is usually the woman in charge of the household."

"The stove-wife transformation usurps that position. It isn't necessarily always the mother.

It could be the grandmother, the sister-in-law, or the eldest sister. It recognizes the position, not the specific face."

"Carter mentioned that there is an old custom in her hometown.

On the first night of spring every year, they change the person who wakes up earliest to boil the water."

"It can be anyone, so long as they act as head of the household."

"This custom cannot be found in any folklore compendium. It's passed down entirely through word of mouth among the local elders."

"The purpose of this swap is to make the entity usurping that position recognize the wrong person.

From then on, it will never be able to accurately call out the name of a single child in that house."

Richard understood.

What he had read was "guarding the name"—keeping the right to name firmly in one's own hands. Without verification, no name was given.

The layer Edith had read was not written in any book.

The stove-wife transformation guarded a specific position;

The way the country folk dealt with it was to have someone else occupy that position.

Richard could have scoured countless archives until the pages fell apart, and he still would not have gleaned this layer.

Because Edith did not read it out of a book.

She had grown up to the age of sixteen inside one of those very houses, where someone boiled water in the middle of the night and swapped roles at the start of spring.

Croft folded the paper closed and rested it back in the center of the lectern.

He stared at the girl in the back row for a long time, saying nothing.

The bell rang.

The students gradually filed out of the classroom.

Stepping into the doorway, Richard glanced back over his shoulder.

Croft was still standing behind the lectern, holding Edith's paper in his hands, slowly turning the page.