The three wolves turned and stared at her.
"Who are you?" they asked.
She opened her mouth to answer, but her voice faltered and turned into a painful bark and then a sharp staccato cough, and then an overwhelming feeling of nausea. She bent over suddenly and threw up onto the soft grey sand.
Her vomit contained a profusion of various objects and materials. It was as if her stomach contained all the flotsam and jetsam of the sea. There were shells and knots of seaweed, tiny glittering rocks and shards of glass, thin white tree branches, coral, hairy broken rope, fragments of porcelain. But there was one thing that shone out from the rest of the gleaming spill. It was a tiny iron key, polished and smooth.
"What does it open?"
As she slept that night, she dreamt her usual dream. But this time she didn't throw up. The wolves grew in size and stood up on their hind legs. When the most beautiful wolf approached her and asked her name, she gave her usual reply. The wolf shook her silver head and asked her to open her mouth. Vox did so cautiously. The wolf-woman reached inside and pulled out the little shining key. As she slipped the key into her pocket she said:
"You are not who you think. You are the vocal chords. You are the voice."
With that she caught the moonlight and twisted it into a tight, strong chord. Then she snipped the chord with her teeth into varying smaller chords. Vox suddenly felt her throat grow sore and sting. She caught up the moonlight in her fingers and spun it into a little chord as the wolf had done. The she cut it as the wolf had done and pressed each chord carefully into her throat.