The lullaby wouldn't go away.
It started as a faint memory, like a taste that lingers when you close your mouth and the noise of the world fades. Then it became part of her walk to work, a simple tune that mixed with the city sounds like a soft background beat. At her bench, she listened to a patient's heartbeat, the rhythm of their breathing that she had helped smooth out, and, there it was again, the same little melody: sleepy tide, keep it light. She found herself humming it without even realizing it, a secret rhythm that blurred the line between her job and her personal life.
Mara tried her usual tricks to block it out: making lists, organizing data, repeating her mental checklist, document, justify, advise. But none of it made the tune go away. Instead, the lullaby started to feel less like a tool and more like a question. Whose song is this? Where did it come from? The instruments at the conservatory kept perfect time; her heart did not.
That night, she did something unexpected. She took down an old cassette tape from the attic, one labeled in her mother's messy handwriting: SONGS FOR SLEEP. It was a worn-out tape she kept out of nostalgia, like how some people hold onto old keys. Her mother used to sing in the kitchen when the city was different, before the skyline took shape, when the ocean was just a distant whisper. Mara put the tape in the player and let the static of the old machine be the first real sound she had heard in days.
A woman's voice came through, grainy and simple. There were verses Mara hadn't thought about in years, flowing lines about weather and waiting, repeatedly telling someone to tuck in blankets and make tea. She blinked when she recognized a line at the end of one verse: sleepy tide, keep it light. The words weren't exactly the same as her mother's, but the rhythm, the little pause at the end of the second line, the way the vowel softened, those were exactly the same.
Mara pressed her thumb to her phone, and a memory tugged at her arm. The lullaby could be something common in the neighborhood, she thought. Caregivers often shared phrases across neighborhoods, and older women might comfort kids with the same tunes. But she had never heard her mother use that exact rhythm in any other song. She knew from her work that memories are made up of echoes, but still, the connection felt personal.
She opened the archive on her computer. The conservatory kept recordings from the community: volunteers teaching handwashing, a soup kitchen's thank-you, a nurse humming to soothe a scared child. Most of the files were ordinary: announcements, coughs, and the sound of cups clattering. She began searching the audio archive for lullaby snippets, a rough search that depended on keywords and the luck of those who took the time to write down the songs they hummed.
At first, her search returned small bits: a volunteer humming in the background of a relief-run inventory recording, and a clip of an older woman singing while folding blankets at a community center. On a whim, she slowed one of the clips and analyzed the sound wave. The same little melody popped up again, with that same gentle lift at the end of the line.
Her hands went cold. If the melody was common, it should have slight variations, different vowel sounds, a thousand little local differences. But this fragment, this exact little tune, had the same hesitant rise and soft landing as her mother's tape. It was too precise to be a coincidence and too widespread to be simple inheritance.
Mara replayed the recordings until the lullaby felt more like a clue than a song. She isolated the lullaby's sound wave, comparing it side by side with her mother's tape and the community clip. The three sound waves matched in a way that didn't make sense on paper. Their shapes lined up perfectly: the same timing on the third syllable, the same pause before the last note.
She sat still, letting the possibility sink in. There were only a few explanations, and none were comfortable. Either the lullaby was something shared in the neighborhood, passed from one person to another until it reached her, or many people had been humming the same line because it was useful, a shared comfort. Or, even worse, a restorer might unknowingly have spread that melody into different recordings because it had been there before.
This last thought felt like a betrayal, wrapped in the neat language of her work. Restorers could blend sounds together, as long as it was documented. But blending a personal melody across clients without a clear origin would be a violation that blurred the lines between donor and conservator until neither could be clearly understood. It would make personal connection just a part of the craft.
She needed to know if the melody existed before her life. She searched through her attic again and found an old program from a neighborhood performance where her mother sang folk songs. The program listed the songs but not the lyrics. Still, there was a note written in blue ink: "Local lullaby, variant used to calm evacuees." The handwriting was her mother's. Her heart tightened as she read it.
Mara thought of the sealed folder she kept for a teenage donor, something she had never fully explained. At seventeen, she had given a small memory, and some nights she couldn't decide whether it was generous or reckless. But now, an image came to her mind uninvited: a younger version of herself handing a sandwich to a volunteer at a storm shelter, humming words she had learned from her mother. She quickly pushed the image away, like a splinter under her skin.
Just then, someone knocked on her door, an abrupt knock that startled her. It was Naveen, looking breathless, holding a small USB drive and a paper envelope. "I found something in Box Seventeen," he said without preamble. "There was a disc hidden behind some flyers in the community archive. I thought, maybe" He handed her the drive like it was hot.
Mara took it with steadier hands than she felt. "You weren't supposed to take things without asking," she said, more to cover her nerves than to scold him.
"I know," he replied. "But I heard that lullaby you hummed during training and, well, maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's proof we're being foolish. Maybe it's a pattern." He blushed, embarrassed by his excitement. "I thought you'd want to see it."
She slid the disc into the computer and let the playback software catalog the files. They were small, everyday recordings, a mix of relief-run interviews and a shaky home video. Near the end, barely more than a whisper, came a voice: a woman in a scarf laughing, then singing the two-line phrase in that exact rhythm Mara recognized. The clip was labeled as an anonymous relief-run fragment, with no date or name.
Mara pressed pause, feeling the room close in around her. The presence of the lullaby in that clip tied the photograph, the records, and her mother's tape together in a strange knot. The song had traveled. So had the act of kindness. But how had the same little vocal style been preserved across recordings and, disturbingly, turned up in a memory she had stitched together herself?
Naveen looked at her expectantly, hoping for guidance. "So? Is it the same?"
Mara didn't answer right away. She played back the three clips, her mother's tape, the relief-run fragment, and the restored stream, looping them, slowing them down, and watching the sound waves overlap until the differences became clear. The connection was undeniable and felt like a green light to ask tougher questions.
She wrote three notes in her PERSONAL NOTES with a slightly shaking hand: 1) Lullaby melody, exact match across mother's tape, community clip, restored stream. 2) Source search, Box 17 audio chain, Hargreeves records. 3) Talk to Jonah? No. Ana? Yes. Keep it private.
Then the conservatory's phone rang. It was a number she didn't recognize. She could have let it go to voicemail, filed it away with the other calls. Instead, she answered.
"Are you Mara Mendel?" a voice asked, brisk but not unkind. "This is Rosa Hargreeves from Community Aid. I got your email. I found a box of recordings. One of them has a woman singing that lullaby. You might want to come by."
Her throat tightened at the word "want." "When?" she asked.
"Now, if you can. We're in Storage, near the Docks. I'll hold the box for you." The line clicked like a small hinge closing on a new possibility.
Mara absentmindedly rubbed the bruise on her forearm, feeling the little crescent shape as if it were a map. The soft song, her mother's voice, the sounds of the city, the woman in the picture, had shifted from just a feeling to something real. The logical part of her knew she should grab a recorder, talk to the director, and follow the proper procedures. But the other part of her, the part that had quietly sung the tune in the dark of the conservatory, just wanted to run out, find the person who had shared that song with everyone, and ask them why.
She tucked the USB drive into her pocket and put the photograph into her notebook. The city buzzed outside, as indifferent as ever. Mara stood up, grabbed her coat, and told Naveen, "Lock up the bench. Don't touch the demo files. Tell Ana I'll be back in an hour." She didn't wait for him to reply.
Outside, the sound of the tram moved the city along. Mara walked with the lullaby stuck in her head and a sense of urgency she hadn't expected. The rules of the conservatory were there to manage tasks and keep things warm; they hadn't taught her how to follow a song into other people's pasts. She had always made things safe by habit and skill. Now, she was ready to seek out someone who could explain how a simple tune had turned into a shared magic.