13.3 The Shetland Witch, or, Atropos Wants Her Shears Back
‘Jumpy, aren’t you?’ the trow cackled.
‘What’d you do that for?’ she hissed at him. ‘This is important. Leave me alone.’
‘Where’s Ishabel?’ Tornost stood up and grinned at her. She saw the flash of his teeth. He had evidently been crawling in the wet grass in the dark, and his coat and face were streaked in mud.
‘She’s busy.’
Now the trow was standing in front of her at his full height and his large eyes were staring up at her, looking cold.
‘What are you doing out here? What have you done with Ishabel?’
She didn’t like the change in his voice and had an uncomfortable memory of his lunging strength. She clutched the grass sphere more tightly against her chest, and glanced up at the sky. The mass of storm still loomed above her, but now there was more light. Far away to the south she could see the storm edge, and what looked like birds. Tiny scatterings of flying things were moving at its edge. They caught the rising sun coming up from behind her, and looked like minute silver leaves, or shafts of light.
She nodded. ‘Look up there, away to the south. That’s Maggie, and Ishabel’s over in the west. We’re freeing the storm.’
The trow turned its face to the west and stared.
‘You’re doing what?’ His tone was incredulous.
‘It’s been here over a week; haven’t you noticed?’
‘Naething wrong with water,’ the trow said, dismissively.
Hazel lost patience. ‘But have you not seen?’ she yelled. ‘Folk are stuck here, they can’t travel or go to school or get anything done. Food will run out because the boats can’t dock.’
The trow looked unimpressed. ‘If you can’t manage weather you should have planned better. You humans are soft.’
‘Not when a god turns up and starts flinging his weight about,’ Hazel said tartly.
‘He’s doing what Thor does. Thor winna like it,’ Tornost warned.
‘We’re trying to get rid of him.’
Tornost looked sharply at the grass sphere, and grinned, toothily. ‘That’s what it’s for, is it? He won’t like that.’
Hazel looked at the globe in confusion. ‘Atropos made it.’
‘Havna seen one of those in over a hundred years. And you don’t know what it is?’
Hazel felt embarrassed. ‘The thing is,’ she confided, ‘I don’t like to keep asking stupid questions.’
‘Nae question is stupid,’ the trow said in a sententious voice. ‘You will never learn if you don’t ask. How long have you been a witch?’
‘Well, not that long.’ Hazel admitted but felt her nervousness return.
‘Not very long?’ The trow grinned at her with a reassuring leer. ‘So. Not very good, maybe? Not very strong!’
He leapt up at her, teeth bared, grabbing at the sphere. Hazel toppled backwards in terror.
As Hazel hit the wet ground on her back, her arms flew up and the sphere was released into the air. It flew up, and hovered, and she realised that it was waiting for her raised hand to bring it back. Pink and blue tendrils of light flickered out from the gaps in the weave. Tornost was crouching still on the ground, but he didn’t move to attack Hazel again. She raised herself off the ground. He was staring up at the lights.
Experimentally, Hazel moved her hand towards the trow, and the sphere followed. Tornost took a step backwards, and then another. Hazel gestured with her other hand, and the trow froze, unable to move any further. Hazel held the sphere in place by making a gentle circle and a push with her hand, and Tornost stayed still, his eyes wide with fright.
Hazel scrambled to her feet, feeling wetter and colder than before. The sphere waited for her, and its lights flickered red.
Maggie’s voice broke into her head.
<We’ve got him. Pull us down!>
Tornost had to come with Hazel because the sphere pulled him along. He wailed piteously in her wake as she ran over the footbridge to the field, pulling the tiny descending figures behind her. The sphere sailed in the air above Hazel, pulsating brief flashes of light.
When she pushed the last gate back into place, Tornost was face down in the mud of the track behind her, whimpering.
‘Let me go! I don’t want it anymore!’
Hazel lost patience. ‘Fine, get lost.’
She raised a hand to the sphere and it sailed down to meet her. With a stroke of her hand over its circumference its lights went dark.
She had been remembering the last time she had held things in the air with magic. She must have been about ten. She had enjoyed controlling the pegs on the clothes line, folding the clothes in the air and then dropping them into the basket, all without touching them. Then she turned around and saw the horrible white lady staring at her from over the wall. The big girls who used to pinch Hazel on the school bus were standing on their old climbing frame in the garden next door and were gaping at her. And then Hazel’s parents had told her that she had to go to a new school.
The trow was still whimpering on the ground. ‘I hurt!’
She was not in the mood to cosset him. ‘You shouldn’t have jumped at me.’
‘I want Ishabel,’ he whined.
‘She’s coming. Come too if you must. But behave!’ Hazel snapped over her shoulder as she started to run along the track to the dig. She released the sphere from her arms into the air again but kept it dark. It floated over her head like a shadowed balloon. Tornost scampered after her.
‘Where is she?’ He was looking about wildly in all directions.
Hazel looked back to the south. A dark shape was descending to the earth passing over the beach. ‘I think, maybe, this is her.’
She was winding in the tethering threads, leading her sisters back to earth. They were carrying something heavy.
Episode 13.4 will follow.
The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.
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