14.4 The Shetland Witch, or Atropos Wants Her Shears Back

In which we come to an ending, but it's not the end.

Atropos looked through the open bedroom doorway.

‘Hazel, will you come with me, up to the Hill of Skaw?’ she asked.

‘Oh. Yes, of course,’ Hazel said, stumbling from her chair. She was surprised but pleased. Atropos had not asked for her company before.

‘Oh, slow down a minute,’ Hazel begged, ‘I’m out of breath.’

‘I will wait for you at the top,’ Atropos said. ‘We have time.’

‘Time for what?’ But Atropos was already striding ahead.

When Hazel reached the top of the hill she flopped down to sit on the grass. Atropos was lying on her front looking out to sea. Hazel looked along the coast for the nearest standing stone and found it where she expected it to be, a finger of weathered limestone part-buried in long grass, a mark for sailors coming into harbour.

‘I like this part of Unst best.’ Atropos said.

‘Because it faces north?’

‘It is the top of the world.’

‘Well, no, it isn’t really, because there’s Iceland and Greenland, and the Arctic –’

Atropos wasn’t listening. ‘We are at the ends of the earth,’ she said. ‘I wanted to bring the Tools of Power with me to the ends of the earth, but I did not know how. But I am here now. I must make an offering to Themis. I have reached the end of my journey.’

‘OK. Er, how will she know?’

‘She will know.’ Atropos said simply. ‘I want to you to watch. You must learn how to do it.’

‘What? Why?’

Atropos rolled over and sat up. ‘Look.’ She extended her left forearm to Hazel. It was scratched and had been bleeding.

‘Oh, was that from the garden? That’s OK, it’s already clotting, look.’

‘I don’t bleed.’ Atropos said.

‘Never?’ Hazel was surprised. ‘But how –’

‘Humans bleed. We – Klotho and Lakhesis and I – did not bleed, because we were not humans. Now I can bleed, I will die.’

The emptiness in her voice gave Hazel a lump in her throat. ‘But, well, we will all die,’ she managed to say, ‘Though I suppose it must be a shock to think about it for the first time, as something that will happen to you.’

Atropos nodded, tearing idly at the blades of grass beneath her knee.

‘Becoming human is strange. And dangerous,’ she looked up with a bleak smile. ‘Zeus will kill me, if he finds me again.’

‘But we got rid of him! He’s not going to come back?’

‘I do not think he can. But he might send someone to kill me, and take the spindle. I am sure he desires both.’

Hazel looked down the hill to the new excavation site, due to begin in the next few days. Martin had been there this morning, showing her the plans. ‘It won’t take long to take the spindle out. If it is the spindle in there.’

‘It is,’ Atropos said calmly. She rolled over and pulled out a small garden trowel from her coat pocket. Kneeling up, she cut three small squares of turf in the grass. She unpeeled them from the earth below and laid them one on top of the other in the opened space.

‘Watch. This is how to make the offering to Themis when I die. And if you die before me I will show Maggie how to do it.’

Atropos felt in her other pocket and placed four objects on the upper turf. A white feather, a tiny plait of grass, a dead bee, and a ragged scrap of what looked like veined white paper.

Haze leaned forward. ‘Is that snakeskin? I’ve never seen one up here.’

‘I found it, near the Haa.’ Atropos looked at it, smoothing out the patterns on the transparent membrane with her finger. ‘It was not very big.’

‘I didn’t even know there were snakes in Shetland.’

‘Maggie told me about a Shetland man who found a giant snakeskin.’

‘In Unst?’

Atropos frowned. ‘Near Lerwick.’

‘Perhaps it was imported, and then escaped.’

Atropos grinned. ‘Like me.’ She arranged the objects on her altar.

‘The objects do not have to be the same. But there must be four, and they must have meaning. A connection to the offering. Do you have matches?’

‘Oh. Hang on.’ Hazel felt in her pockets and was surprised to find a matchfold there from the Saxa Vord bar. ‘I do. Here.’

Atropos carefully lit a match and held it to the snakeskin. It caught quickly, and the flame flared up, dipping wildly in the breeze.

Hazel asked the winds nearby to stay quiet, just for a bit. The air became still.

‘Thank you,’ Atropos said, busying herself with the fire, pushing the feather into the flame, and then the bee’s body. The grass was catching now.

They sat and watched the small tongues of flame among the damp smoke. Then Atropos said something in words that Hazel did not know, addressing the fire and the burning gifts. The fire flared up strongly for a moment, and went out, dropping rapidly into grey ash.

Hazel started feeling in her inner pocket for a notebook. ‘Do I need to repeat what you just said? Because I don’t think I caught the words. I should write them down.’

Atropos smiled.

‘Just tell Themis where I am. She will help you. That’s all you need.’

‘Oh. OK, if that’s all. I’ll remember.’

‘Good.’

Atropos turned her head and looked back down the hill. ‘We need to go back to Ishabel now. You’re not tired?’

‘I am, a wee bit, yes.’ Hazel was surprised that she just wanted to stay sitting on the grass. But it had been a very busy day.

Atropos was looking at her with a new interest.

‘What sort of tired? Are you feeling sick? I should have paid more attention to what Klotho used to say,’ she muttered, as if to herself.

Hazel shook her head. ‘No, I was just out of breath. I need to get fit again. Let’s go down to the house.’

Atropos scattered the turves and the burnt offerings, and threw them over the cliff. They turned and walked down the hill.

Episode 15.1 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

Please get in touch if you want to reproduce any part of this or any other published episode.

New! You can now order The Shetland Witch in print and as an ebook, and Stories from The Shetland Witch: In Achaea & Mrs Sinclair and the Haa in print and as an ebook here. If you’d prefer not to order from Amazon, please email peachfieldpress@gmail.com to arrange a private order (hideous paperwork demands and customs dues make private orders to the EU too difficult to arrange: I am really sorry about this).