11.3 The Shetland Witch
In which Hazel worries about Zeus and physics.
On Wednesday, Hazel drove Ishabel to the Feather Haa. The weather seemed to calm down enough to allow the ferry to leave as soon as they were on board. Hazel looked sideways at Ishabel. ‘How did you do that?’
Ishabel chuckled. ‘I can tamp it down locally, for short periods. He doesna like it, of course, but it’s good to remind him that we are not powerless.’
At the Haa, Ishabel and Atropos began to look through the old scrapbooks of pressed flowers made by the Sinclair witches.
Hazel went into the tiny feathered hall to speak to Avril on her phone. She’d messaged to ask if Hazel could come and help with the injured birds.
‘They can’t all be being hit by cars or being blown into buildings,’ she said, sounding tired. ‘It’s as if there’s something out there with a grudge against birds and is battering them to death against cliff and walls. Horrible messes, some of them. The SSPCA volunteers are at their wits end with all the wounded ones, so we’re helping with what we can. So if you’ve got any spare time, since the dig is closed temporarily, I could really do with the help.’
‘But I can’t get to Scalloway. It’s too far in this weather for Ishabel to quieten the waters for the Ulsta ferry. I can’t shape-change either.’
‘Oh damn. OK, understood. You’re stuck, I know.’
Ishabel and Atropos were deep in conversation about the mechanics of cutting the threads of life. Atropos was trying to explain.
‘It looks like mist, or very thin wool, but it’s not from an animal. It comes from the air, but only Klotho can draw it out and spin it. There’s a drawing here, look.’
Atropos opened a square green book that lay on the table beside her chair. It had a slender brown feather as a marker, but she was looking in the earlier pages. ‘Here. That is like the spindle Klotho used, but hers is gold.’
Ishabel studied the drawing. ‘Can her spindle be used?’
Atropos shook her head. ‘No-one can use it. She broke it to make sure.’
‘But will Zeus know that?’
Atropos shook her head. ‘He wants the shears more than anything. I do not think he cares about the spindle. But we worried that he would make someone else use it. A goddess who obeyed him. Not a human.’
The rain whipped brutally against the window. Atropos put the book back on the table and went to the window to look outside.
Hazel took the book up curiously. It was a collection of hand-written recipes and instructions, many in scripts she couldn’t read, in different inks and handwritings. It was rather heavily bound for a cookbook or a herbal, she thought.
She turned the pages, looking for drawings when the words were unintelligible. On a page opposite a wobbly drawing of a weaving pattern she could see an inscription in very faded ink. Like most of the other pages it was unreadable, the words in a language unknown to her.
And then, abruptly, she came to the end. The book had been torn in two, and a replacement end board had been carefully glued to the inside of the original green cloth binding. The last page of the book was in an unintelligible script in pale brown ink. Threads and stiffened parchment stuck out in a coarse fringe, but the pages were intact.
When Atropos came back to the table, Hazel took her place at the window and peered at the names on the flyleaf of the green book.
Ishabel asked, ‘Atropos, who made Klotho’s spindle?’
Atropos frowned. After a pause for reflection, she nodded. ‘It was made for us, from the same gold as Apollo’s chariot.’
‘That makes so much sense,’ Hazel said, looking up, ‘if the spindle was the source of the radiation.’
‘Ah’, said Ishabel. ‘From the same elemental family?’
‘Probably,’ Hazel agreed, still peering at the book’s flyleaf. ‘But I’m not writing that theory up for peer review.’
‘Atropos, do you know where the spindle’s power comes from?’ Ishabel asked. ‘Do you think it caused the flames that Tornost saw?’
Atropos had more trouble with this. She searched for words in exasperation, trying to find a way to explain what she knew.
‘The spindle makes the thread of life. It is working all the time. It is not on and off. Not like when the wall heater gets warm, and then cold at night. The spindle is always warm. So if you have it, you must use it. Klotho and her Keres were always spinning.’
‘Her Keres?’
Atropos gestured a tall, thin shape in the air. ‘Our shadow selves. They do our work as we do. A Ker is shadow and movement only. The spindle was never hot. It did not burn. How could our thread be spun if it was in flames? Perhaps Klotho gave it power.’ She raised her shoulders. ‘Perhaps the power came out in the threads. I don’t know.’
‘A perpetual energy source is dangerous,’ Hazel said. ‘I should talk to someone who knows more about physics. But that could explain why the stone was hot: the energy from the spindle had built up and had to be released into something, and the stone was there, in the way, and so it became a vessel for the heat. And then Zeus used the heat to make the lightning, in an exothermic reaction of thermal energy exchange.’ She stopped. ‘Oh, no. Would he recognise the gold in its heat? Would he realise that the spindle was there, if he drew the heat from the stone?’
Atropos thought about this. ‘It is possible, but I would need to talk to a fire giant. Do you know any here?’
Ishabel looked startled. ‘No, no. I am sure we don’t have any.’
Atropos looked regretful.
Hazel was thinking about something else. ‘All Zeus can do here is make terrible weather. I wonder if he is simply unable to achieve corporeality, to not be able to physically hold anything?’
‘He takes anything that he desires. He is greedy,’ Atropos remarked.
Episode 11.4 will follow.
The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.
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