presents...
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Unbound
A Portal. I never thought of that. I just thought she was stronger, or better... but no one could be that strong, to pull the weight of so many years. The Portal, it's a... a shortcut. Somehow.
I will need a Portier. Morella can get me one. The messenger... there she is. Just a small tug to summon -
There was a short, sharp sound at the door. Surprised, she dropped the strands. What was that?
The sound repeated quickly. It sounded like someone knocking, but there wasn't anyone there. She reached for a strand that would pull on the Caligari house guards to her...
Wait. The Unbound. He must have returned. Why?
Why? was not a question Beatrice Caligari normally had to ask of men or women. They brought their reasons with them, laid out in a glowing tapestry before her eyes. The Unbound she could not read. She could not touch. What possible purpose could there be to this visit? None of the answers that sprang to mind were particularly encouraging.
He knew Donati. She had never met Angela Donati, but had studied her strands when Father wanted to marry one of his grandchildren to her. Exquisite workmanship, Caligari had thought at the time, better than her own. She herself had focused on what might be done with Sorte, rather than what could be done; Donati had been perfecting the art of the possible. She had manipulated all the strands around her masterfully.
And people loved her. Her mother, her brothers, some of the suitors whose strands had clustered around... all those people. Loved her.
Why?
She opened the door.
"Good afternoon. I hope I have not disturbed you?" She half-heard his greeting as she refocused her eyes on the physical world. That was the same question Father asked when he visited. Of course, she knew when he was about to visit and could arrange to be idle when he arrived.
"Not much," she answered, a little hesitantly. Tugging the messenger was trivial. If he'd come an hour earlier, the break in concentration might have been disastrous.
Maybe that was disturbing.
"Oh? I'm sorry, did I interrupt something?"
"Yes," she said. It answered the question.
"May I... may I ask what?" the priest asked. "And may I come in?"
"Oh." She hadn't realized that she was reluctant to allow him to pass through the door. She still didn't know the why of his visit, and knew enough of the Game to understand the risk there. She unfocused her eyes again, searching for any strand at all... but there were none. "I... yes." She stepped back so he could enter. "I was looking into Agitazione," she added, to answer his first question. She would have thought that was obvious - she had said that she would, after all. Perhaps he was dim?
"Oh, good! And how's that going?"
"Well," she answered, more confident now. He was here to check on the status of the Agitazione problem. That made sense; the strega had been afraid to come, so the Unbound came instead. Because...
One of her black strands was reaching for him, curiously, before she was consciously aware of it. She made the effort to check it as he said something about a gift and held a rock out. Today, it was not hard, and the strand obediently whipped back. She looked down at the rock and reached to take it - it was a gift, after all - but froze. Its dark surface had been polished to a bright shine, reflecting her veiled face and the deadly strands that snaked around her. She looked away, closing her eyes to the sight. "I do not keep mirrors," she said, softly but tightly.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know." He did sound sorry, but sound was uncertain. "I hope I haven't angered you."
Upset, yes. But angered... it would only be sensible to be angry if he acted in malice. Had he? She didn't know. He could be upset that she hadn't undone Donati's Knot. He hadn't acted upset, but people often didn't act the way they felt. Why the visit, why that gift?
But she did not want to assume malice where none existed, either. For now, she would accept his words as the truth. Words and deeds... they would have to suffice. "You did not know," she finally said. "It would be foolish to be angry."
"Many people would be angry anyway."
She nodded, the pearls of her veil clicking softly together. "That is true."
There was a pause. Her strands, which had grown agitated when she sighted them in the mirror, were calming themselves. She had questions of her own. Easier to phrase were the ones about him. Did he have no loves, no hates? How was he a member of the Church hierarchy, yet owed loyalty to no one? How did he live among the strands while so apart from them? Shouldn't the fabric warp and twist wherever he went - a hole that caused unnatural tensions in the threads? She was unused to needing to ask questions of people, though, and so was still trying to formulate her query when he asked about her loom.
The change in subject was unexpected. She didn't think much about weaving. It was something to do, to occupy her hands when she wasn't tending the strands. She wove in black because it was simple; there was no need to count threads in the warp nor passes of the shuttle to make any pattern. Just back and forth and back and forth. "Is it your hobby?" he asked.
She blinked behind her veil. It was such an absolutely trivial inquiry - more trivial, even, than 'great matters' like love and vengeance that drove some people to her door. After years, even those things seemed trivial to her now - the same patterns woven into life, over and over. He wanted to know about her hobby? Stranger... he wanted to know about her hobby? "I... suppose so," she answered slowly.
"Do you ever sew the fabric into clothes for yourself?" he asked again, pleasantly enough.
"No," she answered, perplexed. Was there a point to these que-
"Have you ever been tempted to?"
The questions were just growing too strange. Exasperated, she asked him, "Why is this important?"
He shrugged slightly. "It's not. I just enjoy talking with you."
She stared at him, unconsciously hissing slightly in frustration as strands still failed to appear. That could not be true. No one, aside from Morella, had ever enjoyed being in the same room with her. They did not enjoy hearing her answer their questions, when the answers were not the ones they wanted to hear. They did not enjoy their knowledge of her power, her ability, her curse.
"I'm sorry. If I've unsettled you, I can go."
"Perhaps you should," she said, more sharply than she had intended. It was all too strange and too uncertain, too many whys. She had seen far, far too much to think that unknown motives must be benign. She reached for the guards' strands, to summon them if he did not leave.
But he did, with another apology and a bow. He took the rock with him.
She closed the door, frowning. She had not had a chance to ask any questions. She paced the room, calming herself down. Too many questions; too confusing. Possibly dangerous.
Asked about her weaving. Showed no fear. Too stupid? She stared into the web of drifting, coiling strands around her. Maybe not. Maybe he would be immune, even to the black strands.
She wondered if she could find him in the holes of Angela Donati's weaving. She had never noticed an absence before, but now that she knew what to look for... or had an idea of what to look for... and could look at the strands over time...
She took hold of her own thread and pulled, hauling up prior days and old memories. The load grew heavier as the months piled on, but not so badly that it cut into her palms. It was, after all, her own life, and she remembered its days. Other lives were much heavier. Finally, she found the strand she wanted: a Swords, a bitter thread of jealousy that reached out to a strega who was powerful but loved. It connected with Donati's thread at a point, one moment in the past.
And from that point, a tapestry grew. The first thread of the warp was Donati, from her birth to her death and then to her undeath; the weft grew from her strands to her family and others. Each of those men and women contributed another thread of the warp, stretching the length of their lives. Their relationships reached out, weaving a fabric of their lives over time.
Caligari was dripping with sweat by the time she was finished. The fabric was heavy with memories, with lives and deaths and years and years of time. She paused, resting as best she was able while still holding it intact. When she had caught her breath, she looked upon what she had wrought, to see if within the tangled strands she could see the holes that might be an Unbound.
Back to Game 15a log.
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