The rules of waking

The five rules of waking, as the children of Kessel Street chant them for skipping, collected and glossed by Martha Pimm, schoolmistress of the Bend school, in 1206. Every child on the street knows the rhymes before they can spell. The rhymes are older than the Charter. The glosses are mine, and where the rhyme and the law part company, I say so.

The first rule: where a fold wakes

Over the cobbles and under the bells,
fold it with meaning and up it wakes.
Carry it out where no bell tells,
and paper is all that the paper makes.

A fold wakes only on Kessel Street itself, or within sound of its bells: the six bells in the guildhall tower called the Signatures. Fold the same crane on the far side of the river with the same care and the same wish, and you will have a paper crane and nothing more.

What the rhyme leaves out. "Within sound" is not as simple as it sounds. On a still evening the Signatures carry as far as the Bridge, and the bench ruled in 1191 that a crane folded on the Bridge on such an evening, which woke, was lawfully awake. On a windy day they barely reach Cheap Row. Children who want to test the edge stand on the corner of Cheap Row at noon with a sheet of paper, and are told off.

What happens to a fold carried away from the bells after it has woken is argued. It does not die. Most say it grows quiet, the way people do a long way from home. Nearly all of them come back.

The second rule: what a fold is

A crane for a wish and a boat for a crossing,
a map for the finding, a letter to send.
Fold it for something, it's god of that something,
and that's what it's god of right up to the end.

The god is what the fold was for. Not what it looks like, and not what it was folded from, but what the folder meant by it.

What the rhyme leaves out. "What it was for" includes what the folder did not mean to put in. A crane folded idly from a tram ticket while waiting for a tram is not a god of luck. It is a god of a dull afternoon, and it will tell you about it. Fold without meaning at all and nothing wakes. The rhyme also leaves out animal folds, which take their domain from the paper, but there is no rhyming with "index card".

The third rule: changing shape

Ask it to change and it might say yes;
make it to change and the bench will know.
A fold takes a new shape once it has chosen,
and never one crease till it tells you so.

A fold can be refolded into a different shape only by its own choice. A fold that chooses to refold keeps everything it remembers, but takes on a new purpose with the new shape. Forcing a fold into a new shape is a crime under the Charter, and was a crime under custom long before that.

What the rhyme leaves out. How rarely it happens. A fold chooses a new shape only for a reason as large as the one it was made for. When it does happen, the only sign may be a single new crease on whatever it left behind.

The fourth rule: the crease

Open it flat and the crease goes free,
the little why that it was made to be.
Catch it and keep it and fold it in,
and you've done the oldest wrong there's been.

Unfold a fold completely and it goes back to being paper. The street treats this as killing, and so does the Charter. What it releases as it goes is its crease: a faint charge of the intent that made it.

A skilled folder can catch that charge and fold it into new paper. This is called harvesting, and it is the oldest crime on Kessel Street. It was a crime before the guild existed, before the Charter and before the Great Unfolding.

What the rhyme leaves out. Why anyone would do it. A fold's strength is the strength of one intention. Gather many creases into one sheet and you can fold something stronger than any single intention could make: a god larger than its folder meant, or larger than its folder should be trusted with. That is why it is tempting, and that is why it is forbidden. I do not teach this verse's gloss to the youngest class.

The fifth rule: truth

A fold can't fib, a fold can't fib,
ask it straight and it answers true.
But a fold can keep its edges tight,
and that's no lie, and no help to you.

A god cannot lie. But it can stay folded shut, and refuse to answer at all.

What the rhyme leaves out. That a fold staying shut is itself a kind of answer, and that the people of this street have become very good at reading it. A fold that stays shut about a question is usually protecting something, and is usually frightened, and should be left alone for an hour and then asked again, more kindly.

The sixth verse, which is wrong

Older children add a sixth verse, which goes:

Fold it twice and it loves you twice,
fold it thrice and it's yours for keeps.

This is not a rule. A fold folded twice over is a crumpled god, and a cross one. Nobody owns a fold, which is the whole point of the Charter. I mark this verse wrong whenever I hear it, and I hear it every day.