World x
aA bayou cradle-song, sung in the fen villages south of Witherbloom for as long as anyone can remember. Nobody knows who wrote it. Grandmothers swear it keeps away bad dreams; children swear it is the saddest song in the world and cannot say why.
Mind the bees and mind the bayou,
All the lanterns going low,
Ruth and Tamsin, Hollis, Brannoc,
Rowan, Ede and little Jo.
Off they go across the water,
Where the reeds remember so.
Hush now, nobody is missing,
Count them softly, row by row:
Petra Quince and Aldous Feather,
Up the stair and down below,
Nine to the bridge and nine to the river,
None of them the ones we know.
Sing it once and sing it after,
Sing it when the candles blow,
Someone held the sky together,
Someone that we used to know.
Sleep now, sleep, the book is closing,
Keep the names and let them go.
Read the first letters of the first verse downwards.
No fen family has a Ruth, a Hollis or a Brannoc in its records from that era, yet every grandmother knows the names.
The Marsh family of the southern fens sings a fourth verse no one else knows. Tibby Marsh hums it while mixing poultices and has never once sung it aloud.
Dean Lisette hums the tune in the infirmary. Dean Valentin leaves the room when she does.