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

In which the army arrive with a spare road.

By midday the cables and chains were laid out ready. The bot’s polymerised feet had been tenderly cleaned and it was safe inside its protective plastic box, ready to be sent in under the stone. Hazel and Theresa were folding back the tarpaulin from the trenches. Hazel touched the stone cautiously with her gloved hand, but there was no heat, no fizz of contact, or anything unexpected. The surface was still as black as glass, but it seemed to be dulling.

‘It’s probably covered in dust now, and salt from the air,’ Theresa suggested. ‘I liked it shiny.’

Fintan was walking up to the hill clutching a tied bundle of pink and white foam padding sheets. With his free hand he was dragging a bin liner full of bubblewrap behind him.

‘Unst has sent us its spare plastic packaging,’ he said happily. ‘I got the shop to put a notice out on social media yesterday and the locals have been donating non-stop. The Landrover is full of it. We’re very popular. And I expect we’ll have an audience for the lifting. Is the bot ready?’

Hazel started shaping the bubblewrap and foam sheeting with tape into enormous padded clamshells. She weighted them down, ready to be clamped onto the edges of the stone to protect it from the cables.

Martin and Theresa were crouched on opposite sides of the stone directing the geckobot. Theresa shrieked: ‘It’s through!’

Fintan went back down to wait for the skip lorry. But the army arrived first. Men and women in uniform swarmed out of a small lorry, and Fintan stood chatting to an officer in khaki while the soldiers brought out the pieces of temporary road surface and began putting them together. Hazel watched with fascination as a new road took shape, running from the car park to the beach and up a slope to the field, bypassing the footbridge and crossing the burn.

‘I can’t look,’ Theresa murmured. ‘Fintan will destroy the van driving it up that thing, and we will be trapped here forever.’

But the van managed the new road with ease, both up and down the slope, and the army stood down, looking satisfied. Ishabel came out of her croft with a tray of cake slices and was received with noisy enthusiasm.

Two hours later, the skip lorry arrived. The driver got out of the cab to inspect the temporary road surface across the beach, and Hazel noted that he and the soldiers were on very good terms. Fintan was waving his arms to indicate the old army track, and the driver got back into the cab.

‘Here come the crowds,’ Hazel said. A steady line of cars was now appearing over the hill.

‘The car park will be too full to move in.’

‘The army will do parking management.’

There was a shout from the gate at the edge of the field.

The skip lorry had managed the temporary road and was creeping up the old military track. It moved slowly along the route laid out for it towards the excavation trenches. Theresa walked backwards ahead of it, waving her arms like an air traffic controller.

Hazel ran to get more safety tape. By the time the spectators had walked up to the site, she had rapidly set up lines of tape between two of the old gun emplacements to make a corral with a good line of sight to the stone. She spotted Ishabel at the back of the crowd in a red waterproof jacket. When Ishabel saw Hazel looking at her she waved and pulled her hood up. The drizzle was light but well set in. The wind was steady, but the waves were riotous, throwing themselves at the cliffs with fury.

Fintan waited uneasily at the top of the hill, staring at the skip lorry manoeuvring around the site gradients.

‘God, those are tight turns,’ he muttered.

‘We didn’t plan for lorry traffic as heavy as this,’ Hazel said unhappily. ‘I want that thing off the site as soon as possible.’

Yells from Theresa and Martin halted the lorry, and the driver leaned out of the window.

‘Will dat dae? Aye? OK den,’ he shouted, and switched the engine off. ‘Muckle steen dee hae dere,’ he remarked, climbing down from his cab.

‘Are you sure you can you move it?’ Fintan asked.

‘Aye, dunna fash dysel. Stand away till I clap da links.’

Hazel had a feeling that the high-pitched roar of the hydraulic engine was drowning out something else. There was something she should be listening to, but she couldn’t get the screeching whine out of her head, standing so close to the lorry. She jogged back to the line of spectators standing packed along the edge of the safety tape.

Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw a whisking movement, and a scurrying out of sight behind the far edge of the stone.

<Tornost is up here.> She signalled to Ishabel, feeling irritated.

<I have my eye on him. Don’t worry, he’s much more limited in daylight.> Ishabel’s tone was serene, and Hazel forced herself to concentrate on the stone.

Now the great steel cradle was lowering its dangling chains to hang on either side of the stone. With this wind picking up those swinging lengths of metal were likely to hit someone. Had they all got their hard hats on over there?

‘Will dat dö?’ bellowed the driver, and Fintan waved his hand in agreement.

The engine shut off. Theresa and Martin moved forward to slide the padded plastic clamshells between the cables and the sides of the stone, ready to be pushed down into position as the cables took the weight. Fintan and Martin attached hooks to the looped cables, and the driver linked them to the chains, tugging at them and sniffing his approval. Hazel glared at the interested crowd, willing them to stay where they were.

Hazel suddenly remembered that she hadn’t put the tarpaulin on the bed of the lorry. She ran over to the pile of miscellaneous equipment on the ground. She hauled the tarp over to the lorry and climbed into the back, dragging it with her. The lorry bed already had a thick layer of sand, and she pulled the tarp across to cover it.

‘Clair?’ the driver asked.

‘Aye, ready.’ she said, breathlessly. She jumped to the ground.

‘Ready,’ Fintan called back.

Episode 10.5 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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