The woman began speaking in other people's voices. Men's voices, old people's voices, voices with accents from three counties over, saying things about debts and fields and a child's name that she had no way of knowing.
The old people in the village called it a borrowed mouth, and told her husband what to do about it. Stand behind her. Hold a bowl of water. Ask it who it is, and keep asking, because it will run out of answers before a person would.
So he stood behind her in the lamplight with the bowl held level in both hands and asked.
Who are you.
And something answered, in a voice not hers.
Who are you.
And something else answered.
The wick burned down and the room got smaller around the light, and he kept asking in the same flat rhythm, and the answers got shorter, and his hands went white at the knuckles from holding the bowl.
The seventieth time he asked, nothing answered at all. The water in the bowl was perfectly still.
Her shoulders moved. She turned her head and said, in her own ordinary voice: why do you keep asking me that?
He let his hands down and set the bowl on the table, and the base of it knocked against the wood.
In the water, two people were reflected. His wife, turned in her chair, looking up. And behind her, still standing, still holding a bowl.