12.4 The Shetland Witch

In which the witches go through the roof.

Hazel moved a glass out of the water and placed it in the drying rack, carefully. She was not at all happy about the plan but couldn’t think of a better one.

She tried to explain. ‘Well, Zeus is a shark. If you’ve got a shark stuck in your fishing net, you have to let it out. But if you rip the net to release it, it’s ruined. And we don’t want to lose the shark, we want to trap him. Those are the bits I’m not happy about. Which is pretty much all the plan.’

Maggie was looking annoyingly cheerful. ‘OK, I can see that that is not a workable plan. But it’s not the whole plan. How about this: the storm is the shark, under the control of Zeus, who in this metaphor is a jellyfish with powers. We have to let the shark escape and do its natural thing. Yes, the net will get ripped but we can fix that. We’ve been doing it for centuries. But it’s the jellyfish we need to trap.’

‘But how do you catch a jellyfish? A really huge, angry gigantic jellyfish in the sky that can control the wind and rain?’

‘Zeus is not a jellyfish,’ Atropos said. ‘He would never turn into a beast of the sea.’

‘No, but, I mean, it’s just a way of thinking about him,’ Maggie tried to explain.

‘He likes to turn into an eagle. Or showers of gold, when he wishes to rape,’ Atropos said.

Hazel looked down, startled, at the glass in her hands in the hot soapy water. It was trembling. She took her hands away quickly. The glass floated in the water, moving round in circles under its own volition, pushing the bubbles out of its way.

‘Look!’

Atropos came to look, and then turned her head, listening. The wine glasses in the cabinet had begun to jiggle gently on their shelf.

‘Something is coming,’ Atropos said. ‘Something large. From –’ she paused, and then she spun around in a circle, pointing. ‘From there. From the north.’

The wooden cupboard doors were clattering quietly on their hinges, and the glass doors were shivering. The stacks of plates and dishes that Hazel could see in the cupboard to her right were juddering as if a heavy lorry had driven past the house. Hazel could feel alarm rising in her like a kettle about to boil. Maggie was already moving towards the hall, buttoning her cardigan as she hurried to the coats.

Then Ishabel called from the bathroom.

‘The window’s trying to open itself!’

Hazel saw that the kitchen windows too were straining at their locks, as if pulled outward by an enormous vacuum. The noise of the wind outside was like a screaming animal. The sound of the rain had turned to a crashing of blades onto the roof.

In one smooth, swift movement Atropos had moved to the shelf holding the grass sphere. She lifted it down lightly in her hands and rested it on her hip. Then she selected the bone knife and dropped it into her hanging pocket with the shears.

Hazel sensed furious movement beginning inside the sphere. Nothing could be seen, but if she squinted to narrow her eyes, she saw the coloured tendrils flickering past the gaps in the weaving, and tiny flashes of dark green sparkling through the interstices of grass and air.

Standing as if she were at the still calm centre of a hurricane, Atropos smiled. Maggie had come back from the hall, coated and booted. She was bouncing gently on the balls of her feet and flexing her wrists and fingers.

‘Ready?’ Maggie asked, impatiently. ‘Hazel, get your boots on. We have to go outside.’ She threw Hazel her jacket.

‘I am ready,’ Atropos said.

Ishabel had come through from the hall, pulling on her coat.

‘We’re no going through the back door. The storm will pull it off its hinges if we open it. I canna afford a new one.’ Ishabel fastened her coat and looked at Atropos. ‘You need your coat; you winna be warm enough.’

‘I am warm now.’

‘You’ll lose the shears, swinging around in a peerie bag like that. Put your coat on and tuck the shears inside. Dinna be ridiculous.’

Atropos sighed and looked around for her coat.

‘Mak the circle,’ Ishabel said.

Hazel had just got her arms into her jacket when she felt herself pulled into the circle of concentration. She carefully made herself relax. As the substance of the house changed all around her she relinquished her volition to allow Maggie to pull her outdoors – first up through the ceiling, then out of the loft space, and then out through the tiles into the cold, wet, violently gusting night. The textures of concrete, stone, wood and scratchy insulation wool barely touched her skin.

They landed in Ishabel’s back garden. Now Hazel felt only a mild breeze instead of the belting wind that was flattening the bushes and shrubs all around. She zipped up her jacket to the neck, expecting to be cold, but was surprised that the wind merely ruffled her hair. Atropos stood serenely beside her, holding the sphere.

In the glow shed by the kitchen lights through the window, still rattling ominously, Hazel could see that Ishabel was speaking, but no sound came through the howling of the wind. Then her voice came through the easier way.

<He’s here. Dig in, Hazel. We need you to anchor us.>

The lawn was soggy underfoot, so Hazel moved to stand on the gravel path running alongside the flower beds, planting her feet firmly. She braced her boots against a stone edging that gave her something to lean into. She felt the tension from invisible connecting strands that were running between the witches, and focused on staying grounded, rooted in the earth and the soil. Maggie and Ishabel were stretching out their arms to feel as far and as wide as they could in the dark.

<It’s right down to Sumburgh. My word.>

<Here he comes. Anchor us, Hazel!>

<Let’s get to the web.>

And they were both gone.

Episode 12.5 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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