10.1 The Shetland Witch, or, Atropos Wants Her Shears Back

In which Atropos goes for a drive.

It was a bright, cold morning. Maggie said the day was called Friday. Atropos paid no attention because she was eyeing the chariot with reserve.

Atropos did not enjoy travelling in a chariot. The first one had been a dizzying ride, and this one made a fearsome noise as well, as if it were shrieking at the wind. Their speed was terrifying, and they were too close to the ground. She had not shown her fear of chariots yet to any of the sorceresses, and she would not do so now. She gripped the edge of the seat surreptitiously with one hand.

‘Is it too fast?’ asked Maggie, who was inquisitive.

Atropos shook her head.

‘This isn’t as fast as my car can get, you know, but it’s enough for these peerie roads.’

Atropos was puzzled about the roads: how were they so smooth? Even the roads with grass covering them felt as hard and sure as stone. Were they made of lava? Had the sorceresses told the volcano where to pour out its heart?

She was beginning to feel dizzy again, but she had another question.

‘What is a Norn?’

Maggie began to talk about a set of three sisters, a strange god with a missing eye and women riding to the battlefields. Atropos was interested in the flying horses, but tried a more important question.

‘Do they use shears?’

Maggie thought not.

Atropos closed her eyes, and the chariot roared on.

Soon the lava road brought them to a pier by the sea, with a large open boat waiting for them. Atropos was deafened by the clangour of the metal and the terrifying rumbles coming from underneath the deck, as if the boat were to be ripped apart. Big men with moustaches sailed the ferry to the next island in a gentle sea. Atropos watched the water carefully through the gaps in the side. No water came in, and the sun shone on the blue ripples like gold. The boat’s thudding noise fell away as their chariot left the water and they began to travel on another lava road. This island was flatter.

Maggie made a turn to the right. Now they were driving towards huge grey trees some distance away, growing at the top of a low hill. They carried vast petals moving round lazily in the wind.

‘What trees are those?’

Maggie laughed. ‘Not trees: they’re turbines. They collect the wind’s energy for us to use.’

Atropos considered this, then put it away. Now she had been reminded of trees she began to look for them. But like the witches’ island this land was red and bare, like a skinned animal.

The chariot’s smooth progress lulled her nerves. It quelled the fear, never far from the back of her mind, that Zeus would come upon them without warning. She told herself that she would always hear him coming now. And now that he was so weak, he would not be a trouble to her. But he was here, in this land, and so was she. And so were the shears. Her hands closed more tightly on them, muffled in cloth on her lap.

They passed serene slopes of yellow and brown, with cream-coloured sheep and short-legged horses grazing in open yellow grassland dotted with dabs of green.

‘We’ll be there soon,’ Maggie remarked cheerfully.

They passed a cluster of buildings, and Maggie slowed the chariot to let some sheep walk across the road.

‘Those sheep are bigger than the sheep that live near Ishabel,’ Atropos remarked, thankful that she recognised something.

The road was dipping and rising in a southward direction now, and then Maggie slowed down. In the shelter of a rise two tall grey stone pillars stood on either side of a grassy track that slanted downwards towards the western cliffs. They were square, flat-topped and crumbling, supporting huge balls of stone decorated with golden lichen. There were no walls, no buildings, just the gate posts like abandoned sentinels. Maggie turned the chariot between the pillars and drove along the track. It ran alongside stunted thorny bushes, growing grey and bristling near the road. Atropos could not see through them. The chariot drove down the track for some time, and the sound of the sea grew stronger. She sniffed the air with curiosity. It was full of salt.

The chariot stopped beside a broken stone building. Atropos looked at it. Was this the house where she was to sleep?

Maggie got out of the chariot briskly, slamming the door with a bang that made Atropos’s head hurt. She came round to show Atropos how to release the belt that strapped her in. Atropos unclenched her grip on the seat with relief.

Walking round to the front of the broken house she could see now that it was as long as a barn, with windows on each side of a single wide stone doorway. But there was no door, or roof. There was only a cracked step.

The walls reached as high as a space for an upper window, and then they had been broken off, leaving cracks and gaps of sky. The house had been burnt.

More thorny bushes grew inside the rooms, deep in white-headed nettles and purple vetch, and skinny weeds with pink flowers. Atropos looked at the house critically. The rooms were large, but a cave would be better: it would have a roof.

But Maggie was walking across to the seaward side of the house. Atropos followed, wearing the bag with her shears across her chest, walking across a broad grassy terrace in Maggie’s wake. Then they were in the open, walking on tufted wiry grass, and Maggie was heading straight for the sea.

Now she could hear the waves. Birds were calling to each other. The wind was blowing hard against cliffs. Atropos smiled.

Maggie had disappeared. Atropos hurried her pace and spotted a curving sheep track heading down the cliff. She followed, and saw Maggie standing ahead in an open clearing. A natural wall of rock rose up from the turf on the right and then flowed back in a solid curve to become one with the cliff. Sea birds perched on its topmost edge, and pink tufts of flowers grew at its feet. Atropos noticed another sheep track leading over the edge of the rock, and heard the relentless dragging sound of surf pulling at a shell beach. Gannets flew overhead.

Episode 10.2 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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