The Thread of Dependence

Overview

The Thread of Dependence binds people who were lonely until they cannot be apart. Those sewn together feel each other's pain, hear each other's thoughts, and cannot act alone. When one of them dies, the others begin to wither.

Cause

It is the work of the Shadow Stitcher, a Cast-Out of Umbra that resolved no one should ever be alone. Its Shadow Stitch binds two or more beings in body and Pattern. Its Thread of Dependence is a field of parasitic connection: if one stops, all stop. Its threads, spun from traces, take shape as the Stitch-Wraiths, which come to lonely houses and sickbeds.

Who It Strikes

Those who have stepped apart, by choice or by grief: widows, the long sick, the old who live alone, shepherds, and the bereaved after a battle. Carers are bound to their patients more often than strangers to each other, because the wraiths come where one person is alone with another's suffering. A village sick with loneliness can be stitched whole. Those at ease alone cannot be stitched.

Signs and Course

• The company. The lonely person feels less alone, as if someone sat at the end of the bed. Fine black threads, hard to see, catch on the sleeve.
• The sharing. The bound begin to feel each other's pain.
• The clinging. The bound cannot step apart. They follow each other from room to room, move in step, and clutch hands. Whatever one stops doing, all stop.
• The withering. When one of the bound dies, the rest feel part of their own Pattern shear away.

Contagion

It does not pass in breath, water, or touch alone. Thread runs on from each bound person to whoever they draw near, and the wraiths spin more of it where people are alone. A village that has been bound stays bound after the Stitcher leaves.

Treatment and Its Limits

Boundaries are the cure. A door kept locked, a wall respected, and a thought kept private each weaken the thread, and the bound are taught to spend time alone on purpose, a little longer each day. The thread itself can be cut with a knife once it is seen. The bound must then step away from each other, painful as it is. A bound person who claims their own shadow back, in whatever words their people use, makes the threads part.

Spells that bind, link, or unite turn under the Stitcher's influence; spells of separation and boundary hold. The willing sharing of a Paired Vow, which spreads injury and strain between two allies by their choice, is a different thing. Healers must not use it on the bound, since it only adds a strand. The withering after a death can be eased with warm food, company kept at arm's length, and grief allowed.

Mortality

The binding seldom kills while all the bound live. A death among them often withers the rest, and the old and the long sick among the survivors die of it most. A thread cut late kills a few of those parted, mostly through shock and grief.

Lore and Belief

Many people take the wraiths for the ghosts of the drowned or of lost lovers, come to fetch the living, and leave lamps at the window for them, which brings them nearer. A bound couple is often admired as a perfect match. A charm says that cutting one's own shadow free at midnight keeps one from being bound; claiming one's shadow is close to what works.

In the Medieval Era

The Thread is rare, but it is met where the era's ordinary sorrows are: in widows' houses, at long sickbeds, and in villages emptied by war. Wise folk healers send carers home to sleep alone, and some keep a knife for thread among their tools. Families who know the tale bar their doors at dusk and leave their old people some hours alone each day.

Where It Appears

• The Shadow Stitcher (the Shadow Stitch, the Thread of Dependence, the Village of Tied Hands, Travel Notes for Mortals)
• Stitch-Wraiths
• the Writers' Guide chapter What Waits Outside