There was a legend in the tales of King Arthur.
Beside Camelot, King Arthur's palace, lay an island in the middle of a lake. On it lived a woman named Charlotte, who had dwelled in a tower on the island since childhood. No one had ever seen her. Only farmers rising to work at dawn occasionally heard her singing from within the tower.
The woman was under a curse. She could not look directly out the window, or she would die. So every day, she sat before her loom, occasionally raising her head to view the world outside through a mirror, then weaving what she saw into a tapestry.
Then one day, she saw Sir Lancelot, and Charlotte's fate changed from that moment onward.
She had never expected anything before, but now she waited every day for Sir Lancelot to pass through her mirror.
Later, for some reason—perhaps the knight had business elsewhere, or had gone off to war—he did not appear for a long time. Charlotte wanted to leave the tower and find him.
It was not a passing whim. In any case, the thought grew firmer with time, and the threads on the loom seemed to sense that she was about to do something foolish. They wound themselves around her, preventing her from leaving the tower.
The threads danced through the air, binding Charlotte tightly. She struggled free of them with all her strength, finally escaped through the window, then boarded a small boat in search of her beloved.
The boat drifted toward Camelot. Yet when it reached the shore, Charlotte aboard it was already dead. Sir Lancelot happened to pass by then. He did not know Charlotte, much less that she had died because of him. He merely looked at her lovely face and said compassionately that