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

In which Ishabel is able to receive visitors.

Ishabel was in bed, looking frail, tucked in under white sheets and blue blankets. She put down her magazine and gestured to Maggie and Hazel, waving them in. Tornost was bustling away to the kitchen wearing an important expression, carrying a single mug on a round pink tray. The floor was covered in clothes and dumped papers, and Ishabel’s expression was resigned.

Maggie looked back at Tornost’s vanishing figure.

‘That is a really impressive wig,’ she said, grinning.

A haughty voice came from the kitchen. ‘It was a present. I look very fashionable.’

‘We believe you, Tornost. Is it your time to be a girl again?’

‘Yis.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Wow. But does she not tidy your room for you?’ Hazel asked. Maggie had already begun to put the clothes away.

‘Well, no. She brings my lunch and my drinks, and when she’s busy in the kitchen – she’s turning into a fair cook, and a great washer-upper – I get out of bed discreetly to tidy up in here and she doesna seem to notice. But she does tend to just drop things on the floor.’

‘What are all these papers?’ Hazel was looking at them with concern. ‘You need a desk beside your bed to put them on.’

‘I’ll ask Atropos to bring a peerie table through. She’s doing my garden now. I don’t want to know what plants she’s pulling up. Leave the papers where they are and sit down. I haven’t seen you since I came out of hospital.’

Maggie brought in a second chair and sat down as well.

‘So, here are we three met again,’ she said.

Ishabel smiled. ‘And how’s Avril?’

Hazel beamed. ‘She has an assistant!’

‘Finally,’ Maggie said. ‘We should be making thank-offerings to the gods of public amenity funding.’

‘She will be free of the office most of the time, and can disappear as needed, and no-one will ask questions.’

‘Well, that’s just perfect.’ Ishabel said. ‘As long as she gets the work done, of course. Did you ask her about the green book? How Grizel got hold of it?’

Maggie sighed. ‘That’s awkward, I admit. Apparently Avril found the book ripped in two when she was a girl, in their hoose. Turns out Mrs Simbister had stolen it from the Haa ages ago, and must have ripped the book apart later in a fit of religious rage. But what the two parts of the book were still doing in her hoose, after, what? Fifty years? That’s not something I want to ask. Or how she knew to tear the book at just that page. Avril said that after her mother had refused to give the parts of the book back – they must have had quite a row – she herself had glued up the back boards of the main part so that the damage wouldn’t be obvious, and slipped it back into the Haa. She’s clever with her fingers. But she couldn’t get her mother to return the last piece. She doesna answer for her mother. None of us do.’

‘Can Mrs Simbister get into the Haa now?’ Hazel asked, thinking of what Atropos might do to her.

‘No,’ Ishabel said, ‘I made sure of that. Not after she decided that her religion told her that witches were bad.’

There was a pause. Hazel could hear a tune in the garden through the opened window.

‘Is that Atropos singing?’

Maggie laughed. ‘She has a voice! Amazing volume, and the sound is like a spear going through you. When she sings things like ‘Haughs o’ Cromdale’ it’s like a war trumpet, terrifying and stirring. She’s into folk music now. I’ve shown her how to use an old phone as a music player, loaded with all the music I can get hold of from the library as well as what I can borrow from friends, and now there is no stopping her. She’s memorising all the songs she likes.’

‘Is that working OK?’ Hazel asked, ‘How is she blending in with island life?’

‘Folk like talking to her, as she does more listening than talking. I think we’ll just have to hope that nobody notices she’s a bit different from the rest of the locals,’ Maggie said. ‘It’s a Rubicon. She’s got to fit in in her own way, and if folk start looking askance at her, or us, and muttering about witchcraft, well, we’ll have to deal with it. But we do have allies.’

‘Like Alison?’

‘And Martin,’ Maggie said. ‘And that professor. Our secret lives are being exposed. But in a good way. I hope.’

‘Martin knows about me?’ Hazel felt startled.

‘In a dim sort of way. He’s a bright lad intellectually, but he doesna analyse folk very closely. He takes them as he finds them. He thinks you’re the bee’s knees as an archaeologist and that’s enough. The fact that you can talk to the earth is quite OK by him. I haven’t shown him my grass transformation party trick though. He has not a glimmer of the skill in himself.’

‘And Craigmyle does?’

‘Not at all. But I suspect there’s a witch in his family, or from his past, when he was much younger. He said something to make Ishabel suspect that too.’

‘I thought he was very pleasant,’ Ishabel said. ‘And we have research colleagues in common, of course. He came to see me in hospital to ask whether his foundation could erect a Centre at Skaw, and continue the excavations. I’m the landowner, you see, and there is still the spindle to get out.’

‘Oh!’ Hazel felt foolish. ‘I knew about the Centre.’

‘So you do, Madam Director,’ Ishabel said, smiling.

Hazel felt her cheeks flushing. ‘So you’ll be our landlord?’

‘I have explained it to Atropos, and she understands that I never want to own the spindle. It’s just a land thing. She understood enough to let me handle the negotiations. She doesna actually want the spindle herself: she just wants it to be safe from Zeus, or anyone else who might come looking. But it was very useful to have that legal right when dealing with the civil authorities here. And even more useful to realise that Sir Atholl knows about witches and isn’t distracted by us. I didna explain Atropos at all: I didna feel up to getting into that.’

‘I still think he managed to avoid my spell,’ Hazel said. ‘There’s more to him than we know about.’

‘He was very interested in the web, and how we were able to mend it. Which reminds me –‘

Magie interrupted her. ‘It’s begun. It’s going to take a year or more to repair the damage Zeus did to it, but we’ve begun. We have a schedule and a plan and everything.’

Episode 14.4 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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