She cloisters herself in a house on a hill where many men died for a country that should not exist. The draperies in particular are thick with last breaths and regrets. She keeps them all shut tight except the one facing the hound who will not leave.\n\nIt will not move even to scratch itself. It watches the house without rest. The hound was not here when she moved in. She keeps meaning to ask the delivery man about it. She has named the hound Regina.
She shrinks away from them. You can disappear by collapsing or by moving a great distance: she does both. She lives on as a smidgen in a foreign land. \n\nA person doesn't have to speak out.
She joins the Murmurers Guild. All day she speaks in her hazy way to a tape recorder. Each night she ships her tapes. To some they bring peace, to others unease, depending on their need. She does not dream.
She runs out into a blank night, the sky the same gray-pink as ever.\n\nShe encounters a clone, or near-clone. The clone is in every way like her except he is a healthy, productive man. He wonders what could be the matter.\n\nShe's lost her voice? He is only too happy to help.\n\n<div class="weepseek">[[WEEP|SSW]] / [[SEEK|SSS]]</div>
She begs off. He surely has important work to do; she will manage on her own. The clone walks off as if he'd never spoken to her.\n\nShe is not so much overcome as encased in nausea. A taste like shaving cream cut with acetone cut with shame pervades her mouth her throat her guts.\n\nShe kneels and retches repeatedly but she can't disgorge the forbidden fruit. She finds a sink and washes her face.
She runs out into a soured cold, once called brisk and now cursed.\n\nShe comes across a crone atop an evershifting throne of vermin. The crone reads a lying rag by the streetlamp light. The crone coughs to prompt the supplicant to speak.\n\nShe's lost her voice? The crone muses with a thumb to her lips.\n\n<div class="weepseek">[[WEEP|SWW]] / [[SEEK|SWS]]</div>
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV\nVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV\nVVVVVVVVOVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV\nVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV\nVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV\nVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV\nVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV\nVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV/%The mountain tree plunders itself. The candle fat scorches itself. The cinnamon tree is edible, and thus it gets chopped down. The lacquer tree is useful, and thus it is cut down. Everyone knows how useful usefulness is, but no one seems to know how useful uselessness is.%/
The clone is certain he saw two odd figures heading toward the park. With any luck, someone will have spotted them.\n\nAs they walk, he tells her about all about himself. He's the PR director for a nonprofit. He has a wife at home and two or five children. He is in a choir of all things. He sings a verse for her in an impossibly rich baritone--\n\nShe was equal to the clone when they met, but no longer. She has shrunk as he has grown: if he is a skyscraper, she is a tent at best. He folds her up and slips her into his jacket pocket. She will be safe there.
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A fit is not unlike a fire: it dislodges you and leaves you leaden, breathless, coated in particulate matter. Most you find in headlines or whispers; some you die in. She does not die in this one.\n\nThis fit is a kindly fury. It churns her voice into an agreeable paste and daubs it onto the ten blots on her body where she is always already wrong. \n\nDispersed and indistinct, her voice can no longer harry her. She is free.\n\n<div class="weepseek">[[WEEP|WWW]] / [[SEEK|WWS]]</div>
They come in quiet half past eleven, just as she has given in to sleep. They pin her down and peel open her throat to claim their prize: a voice on the cusp.\n\nThe broken one locks up their find in a thin metal box. The sunken one plucks a new voice from a sack, sets it inside her and seals her up. They are not so unkind as to leave her stripped of speech.\n\nThen they go away.\n\n<div class="weepseek">[[WEEP|W]] / [[SEEK|S]]</div>
She dredges up a strident shriek.\n\nHer voice is wrong. It rattles like a bell held overlong by an idle frost giant. No-one comes because no-one can tell that it's her.\n\nShe must find her voice on her own. She dresses and rushes outside.\n\n<div class="weepseek">[[WEEP|SW]] / [[SEEK|SS]]</div>
A fit's like a fire in that you must move. It may be by crawling through hallways; it may be by dashing down uncertain stairs. Regardless, you won't end up where you started (unless the alarm never blares and you suffocate still in bed.)\n\nThis fit moves her to clamber up the disused clocktower. Her original voice is held there. \n\nI cannot imagine how she might reclaim it from them. She is in such a state.\n\n<div class="weepseek">[[WEEP|WSW]] / [[SEEK|WSS]]</div>
She drags herself back under. A bad dream only, a bad dream.\n\nShe wakes with a crablike clump in her throat. She feels she is awful and says so. Her voice is wrong, as wrong as taking pleasure in squishing a small creature.\n\nHer voice and the rest are swept up in a monstrous fit. One could give birth two or five times in the time it takes her to fall altogether apart.\n\n<div class="weepseek">[[WEEP|WW]] / [[SEEK|WS]]</div>
Voice Box
B Minus Seven
She should not chase the two who took her voice. They are swift and sly and vicious beyond measure. What's more, her old voice spoiled the second it touched the box. The crone warns her that such a search will only leave her wretched.\n\nShe will not be deterred. The crone nods, calls her forward and grants her a boon. It is a pox adorning her collar in blooms of boils. When she lances them, her fear will flow from her in great gobs. This will be of no small use in her pursuit.
There is no hope for her. That is good: that means she can move on. The crone smiles; her teeth are shards of fly-filled amber.\n\nTo cast off her husk of a past she must wallow in filth. The crone beckons her close. The throne recedes to show her a hole given over to absolute dark. She hops in.\n\nWhen everything you touch is noxious, time gives way. In its place are joyful sparks that flicker at irregular intervals. When she leaves she is wreathed in such sparks.