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

In which Hazel works her magic agianst the god.

Suddenly, with a thump from the side that tipped her off balance, Hazel was thrown onto her back. The grass received her gently, like a featherbed. Hazel struggled, wondering why she couldn’t get up, but her rising panic was distracted by the unpleasant sensation of something sticky raining down on her. Gobbets of yellow matter were dropping onto her face, her chest, all over her body, raining down in a shower of gold from above. It was as if a well-filled spider’s web had dropped its load of sticky bodies all over her, and she was revolted. She rolled over, grabbing at long grass that was within reach and scrubbed at her face and hands to get the stuff off.

The rain of golden wetness drizzled into nothing, and gusts of cleaner water resumed.

‘That was disgusting.’ Hazel grunted, getting back to her feet.

<Hazel. Now.> Ishabel said.

Hazel extended her arms and thought of the god as a flat sheet, a single dimension. He bellowed, but she was steady-footed, her capable hands grappling with his raging winds. Her magic kept the substance of his body hanging in the air, stretched out flat and unable to move.

‘Now,’ she thought, ‘We will not let you do this. You have been here long enough and now – you – will – stop.’

She began by gripping the edges of his angry movements, holding the cold substance taut to prevent it surging around her in thrashing rolls. She gripped and held on tightly.

‘You are air and water,’ she grunted.

With her arms spread wide and her feet anchored strongly, she forced her hands together, pulling the flat thing’s edges with them. Inexorably, she dragged the corners together.

‘A volume with no mass,’ she gasped aloud. ‘A dimension with no substance.’

Her hands felt as if the sheet was made of ice. She was sure her fingers were bleeding. She drew another breath and dragged both edges of the sheet together again. And again. It was getting thicker and heavier, and rain was soaking through it. Her lungs were straining with the effort of breathing through the folded god crushed to her chest and face.

But it was beginning to shrink.

‘Every, action, an equal, and opposite, reaction,’ she panted, pushing the words out as a challenge. ‘I will push your air out and make you small.’

She forced the sheet to halve again, pushing it down on itself, shrinking it by compression. And again.

Now she was on her knees, forcing down the last fold, holding it to the ground with her weight.

 Zeus was contained. He was roaring, muffled by the folded pressure of his own bulk, rolled up on himself like a furled sail. Hazel looked down at him. He was a taut grey bundle.

The angry wind had stopped. There was only a sea breeze.

Hazel could hear the tarpaulins wrapped around the excavation up on the Hill flapping.

‘Nature abhors a vacuum,’ she whispered. ‘You are nothing.’

<Bring him here.> Ishabel said.

With her arms around the furled bundle, Hazel got up, and walked, stiff-legged, towards the shield of the web. Ishabel was sitting against one of the excavated stone walls with Avril and Tornost beside her. Hazel knelt in front of her and put the bundle on the ground, keeping her hands firmly on top.

Atropos was waiting with the sphere.

<Now we send him back.>

Atropos crouched down on the wet ground, with the sphere in her arms, and opened the lid. The coloured lights inside had dimmed to a dark steady green. It glows like Medusa’s hair, Atropos thought. I would not put my hands in there.

She tilted the sphere to show the furled god to the green darkness inside. Thin green tendrils flickered out like the tongues of snakes, moving faster as they felt the edges of the furling. They grabbed at the soggy, shuddering mass, and began to pull it inside.

Atropos watched without emotion. She was so very tired of dealing with this god. Her body ached, and she had a pain in her head that throbbed with every pulse of her blood. She was wet to the skin, and she felt cold. Her feet felt like ice. She remembered the hot bath at Ishabel’s house with longing. She very much wanted to lie down and sleep.

But her Keres were chittering and whispering at her, and she calmed them. ‘Soon,’ she told them. ‘You will go home soon.’

The bundle struggled but it was pulled into the sphere. The green darkness engulfed it, pulsing gently. When it was all inside, Atropos slid the lid back over the top, and fastened the tiny grass latch with shaking fingers. She could barely feel the mechanism, but Maggie was watching closely as she worked, and nodded in reassurance.

‘That’s done it. Now what do we do?’

Hazel looked at her in disbelief. ‘You don’t know?’

‘This is way out of my league,’ Maggie said, her face taut and pale with fatigue.

‘What do you advise, Atropos?’ Ishabel asked. She was sitting up, huddled in Hazel’s coat, but she was shivering. Avril was looking uneasily at her.

There was a pause.

‘I will take him,’ Atropos said. ‘I will take this god back to where he came from.’

Silence sank into the muddy grass. The tarpaulins flapped. Hazel, now able to stand up, feeling her wet clothes sticking unpleasantly cold to her skin, thought she must have misheard.

‘You’ll take him? But, you’re not going too, are you?’

Maggie’s face, her emotions unmasked by fatigue, looked tragic. ‘You’re not leaving us?’

Atropos looked at Ishabel, who looked back sorrowfully at her, unable to speak. Avril was holding Ishabel’s hands in her own. She looked at Atropos and shook her head. ‘Don’t go. Stay with us.’

Atropos did not know what had opened the gates in her heart, but gladness was washing through her, warming her and filling her with an emotion that she had not felt since she had cried among the olive trees in the dark outside the grove. When she had known that she and her sisters had been sundered, forever. By this god. When her joy had ended.

But now she had found these sisters. Now she had a home again.

Episode 14.2 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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