Run to the bucket for its reflection...

You run.

Not toward the gate. Toward the collar, around the well, to the bucket. Hoping to see a face that is not the one sitting on your neck. The dress scraps your new thighs. The chest slaps with it. You hit the bucket with both hands hard enough that water slops over your wrists and down the front of the bodice.

You lean in. The surface shakes and then settles, and the face that looks back is not yours.

It is her face. Weather in it. Dark-blonde hair falling in the way, wet at the ends where you splashed it. No beard. No moustache. A mouth that is hers. You turn your head and the woman in the water turns her head. You pull the hair back from the cheek and it is still her. You look down the front of the dress at the same time as she does, and the chest that fills the cloth is heavy and real and moves when you breathe, two of them, and there is nothing of you under that dress.

"No, no....nooooo" you say, and it is her voice saying it.

She the owner of the body is right there. Her head and chest out this same face of the wall, a stride from the collar, dark-blonde knot, one breast against the rim, and for a breath she only looks irritated, the way she looked when you first came around with her wash in your fists.

"What are you doing in my bucket," she says. "If you fell over, get off the—"

She stops.

You already have a sleeve off... The dress sticks at the hips and you have to wriggle it up over the chest, and the chest comes with it, bare in the air on the well-walk, and you still look like her. You throw the dress in the dirt by the bucket. The shift next, yellow at the arms, dragged over the breasts and off. The weight stays. They sit on you in the open, sizeable, the nipples drawn up from the water and the fear, and you hold them as if you can push them back in.

The drawers next. You shove them down your legs and step out and you look between your own thighs because that is the part you need to see come back.

It does not come back. There is a cleft there, hair like hers, damp, and when you spread yourself with two fingers you feel inside of a woman and not the tuck you made at the pegs. You make a sound that is hers and you hate it. You are naked in the dirt in her body with her wash in a pile — dress, shift, drawers — and the stockings and the band still hanging on the line where a man left them.

You wait.

Nothing reverses.

"Please," you say at the water. The woman in the bucket says please back.

Her face has caught up. She is looking at your face, and then at your chest, and then at the pile, and her mouth is open in a way that is not tired any more.

"That is my—" she says, and has to start again. "That is my face. Help. There is two of me. She stole my wash."

She shouts it at the cottage and the path, not at you. The cottage latch lifts. It does not have to. Two men are already on the path from the other side of the fence, walking the way men walk when they came for the hole and found extra. One has a cap. One is older, sleeves rolled.

They see the woman in the wall first from the yard, the one they expected, legs planted, shift hiked, ass in the hole, hands in the rings. Then they come around the collar because of the shouting and they see you standing naked by the well with the same face and the same chest and her clothes around your feet.

You cover yourself with your hands. It does not cover much.

The older one stops. He looks from her head to yours and back.

"Which one is yours," the cap says, not like a puzzle, like a job.

"That one is me," she says, jerking her chin at her own tied arms. "That one put my dress on and then she was me. Don't you untie me. I still have a shift on the line."

You try to talk.

"I'm not — my name is Charlie. I was — I took them off. It didn't—"

Her voice. Their eyes go to your mouth and then to your chest and then between your fingers.

The older one is already moving. He takes your wrist. You pull and you are her size now, not a tall man's awkward reach, and he walks you the three steps to the empty opening and feeds you through it the way the wall is built to be fed. Hips first, out into the yard. The iron is warm. He puts your hand through the empty ring on that face and the cap knots the rope like the first hole is knotted, then the other wrist. Not cutting. Not loose.

Your hips are in the hole. You feel the stone at your belly and the air of the yard on your ass and on the new wet of you, open to the path, and the empty slot is not empty anymore. Your head and chest stay on the well-walk, next to hers, the bucket still sloshing behind you.

"Wait—"

"You can wait after," the cap says.

He does not ask the older one who goes first. He steps back to the yard because you are the one not wearing a shift, and you feel his hand on your hip the way you put your hand on hers an hour ago. His fingers find you from that side and grunt at the damp.

"She's ready enough."

You turn your head as far as the rings let you. The original woman is watching from a foot away, same face, mouth tight. She does not tell him to stop. The older man stays on the yard with the cap, which is what he came for, and you hear her breath when he sets himself against her hole beside yours.

The cap pushes into you.

It is a cock. Thick enough that the first inch burns, and you are wet from panic and from the body you stole, and he uses that and shoves the rest. You make a noise that is not a word. He fills you to the stone. Your breasts hang on the well-walk and swing when he starts to fuck you from the other face, and you can see them if you look down, hers, moving because a man is using the hole you are standing in.

You try to pull your wrists out. The rope holds. He fucks you in short hard hits like he has a chore and a dinner, and the wall knocks your hipbones, and every time he bottoms out you feel it in the new place that used to be nothing you had. Next to you the older one is in her. You can hear the wet of it. You can hear her swear at him the way she swore at you.

"Don't look at me," she says, and you do not know if she means him or you.

The cap comes around the collar after a dozen hits, still inside the geometry of the job, and his hand finds your breast on this side, clumsy, and pinches, and you jerk in the rings. He laughs once, not kind, not cruel.

"Same tits and all."

You come close to saying you are a man. The words sit in her throat and come out as a sound when he hits a spot that makes your knees dip. He feels that from the yard and goes after it, sloppy and sure, and you drip down your own thigh onto the dirt on that side. Your fingers open and close in the iron. The pile of her clothes is still by the bucket. The water is still. Your face is still her face if anyone walked up and looked.

He finishes in you with a grunt and a last shove that pins you to the stone, and you feel him spill, warm, too much, leaking when he pulls out and slaps your ass as if you were the wall. He steps aside to fix his trousers. The older one is still going next to you. The cap glances at the cream stripe on the post from the yard, then at your tied wrists, then at the path.

"You staying till the light goes," he says. "Same as her."

He does not wait for you to agree. Your hole is used and open and dripping him into the dust, and the rings do not care what your name was this morning.