10.3 The Shetland Witch, or, Atropos Wants Her Shears Back
In which Atropos starts to learn to read, and Martin is readying the geckobot.
‘Oh, OK, good,’ Maggie said hastily, ‘Well, you can cook in here over the fire and throw what you don’t eat in the sea. The knives and plates are in the kitchen. Now, I want you to look at something. They’ll keep you occupied, and you’ll learn a lot from them.’
Maggie rose and went to one of the small white doors in the wall, built into the stone at head height. It had a rosy pink shell mounted on its edge, which Maggie tapped. The door opened.
Inside were small coloured slabs, stacked one on top of the other, with flat edges. Maggie moved them around as if she were looking for something, and then brought one out. She laid it on the table in front of Atropos.
‘This is a book. You’ve seen them in Ishabel’s hoose, remember?’
Atropos repeated the word aloud, and she suddenly understood what she was looking at, and everything that a book meant. The rush of information flooding her mind made her grip the table, and she stared at Maggie, amazed.
‘Oh good. You’re accessing the fragments of Hazel’s memories in your head, I think?’ Maggie said kindly. ‘Well, take your time. There’s a lot to learn. And it’s important. First there’s reading … well, no, actually,’ and she took the book from Atropos’s fingers, ‘first there’s how to open a book. See? You hold it like this, then you open it like this. Some covers you’ll need to hold down to keep the book open, others will be heavy enough to rest open on their own. You can have the book on your lap, or on a table, wherever you like. But be careful of the paper: it tears. And it burns: don’t put them near the fire. Or in water.’
She watched as Atropos turned the pages, feeling the paper’s texture, and lifting the book to her face to smell its dry scent.
‘See the marks on the page? Look at them, and at the same time think about them through Hazel’s memories. That ought to jump-start reading for you.’ She watched Atropos. ‘Is it working?’
Atropos’ mouth was open and she was staring at the page in front of her. She read the words aloud.
‘“K-nitting was a life-line for Shetland households.”’ She stopped and looked at the words, then tried again.
‘“Domestic industry” – what do these words mean?’
‘That’s maybe not an ideal book for a beginner. We’ll try a cookbook.’ Maggie jumped up and found a brightly coloured larger book in the cupboard, with roast meats and scones on the cover.
She made some tea and drank a cup while Atropos worked her way through a recipe, reading aloud, but looking confused. Atropos put the book back on the table.
‘I know some of the foods, but not the other words.’
Maggie put the cookbook back and took out a much smaller book from the cupboard and put it into Atropos’s hands. ‘Try this one.’
The shiny cover showed a black and white bird with a beak like a flower, and Atropos laughed out loud. ‘Shetland Summer Birds!’
She read the short descriptions aloud while Maggie put the rest of the food into the pantry cupboard, where the plates and pans and the firewood were kept.
‘Gannet. Dunlin. Shearwater. Wren. Crested grebe.’ Atropos stumbled over some of the names but felt much happier. Maggie looked relieved.
‘You’ll be fine. There’s another book in the cupboard that I’d like you to have a look at.’
The four archaeologists were crouching over Fintan’s notebook. It was coming on to rain again, and the wind was gusting in all directions at once. The sea was covered in small choppy waves and there was an ominous bank of cloud moving in from the west like a vast iron-grey battleship. Hazel’s hood flipped back and forth, and a snapping toggle stung her cheek. With a grimace she pulled her hood up over her head.
‘It’ll work like this,’ Fintan explained, tracing his pencil drawing with his finger. ‘Lean over this way, Martin; the page is getting wet. Look, the stone is balanced on the two sides of the turf walls that we uncovered yesterday. We’re not touching those, but we need to find a way to draw a cable underneath the stone, to pull it off the walls. We’re pretty sure now that it’s resting over a void, so the cable can go through that and out the other side. Once we’ve got that in place, with suitable padding at the edges, we can lift the stone with the skip lorry hoist.’
Theresa interrupted. ‘What about two cables? Much better stability, and better weight distribution.’
‘Two cables would be much better,’ Fintan agreed, ‘but the points of entry into the void are limited. We’ve got ingress at four points but no way of knowing if the void is unobstructed all the way across. There could be all sorts of solid matter in there.’
‘But once the stone has begun to be lifted, couldn’t we then loop a second cable round it?’
Fintan scratched his head. ‘Health and safety?’
Hazel agreed. ‘Everything will have to be ready in place. And we’ll need to line the skip lorry bed with tarp, to protect the stone once it’s landed in there.’
‘The geckobot will need really good purchase on the underside of the stone, to draw the cable along. We’ll need to keep its feet clean of grease or oils, otherwise they won’t stick.’ Martin said. ‘Awkward peerie buggers. Brilliantly useful but fussy.’
‘Yes, well, I’m sure that will all be possible,’ Fintan said. ‘Martin; you can take care of bot prep. Hazel: can you double-check on the ingress points, maybe use a torch to see if there’s a way through for each route?’
‘I still don’t see how the lorry is going to get here in the first place,’ Hazel muttered.
Fintan twinkled at her. ‘I’m not in the Army Reserve for nothing, you know. I had a chat with the guys at Fort Charlotte yesterday, remember?’
Hazel busied herself checking for gaps between the stone and the turf ridge it rested on, poking holes with a probe through the matted vegetation. She was remembering the trow’s story of the placing of the stone. But she also remembered its warning.
‘I set the stone there, and only I will remove it.’
Episode 10.4 will follow.
The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.
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