15.1 The Shetland Witch, or, Atropis Wants Her Shears Back

In which Atropos hears music and smells blood.

EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER

Atropos was at the quay in Lerwick, enjoying the sun on her face. She was waiting for Avril and watching the entrance to the close across the harbour esplanade.

A little while ago Atropos had been looking through the window of the smart shop at the foot of the close, gazing at bright cardboard boxes and shiny sugared fruits through the window. But then she had felt that she should move away. She had needed to get out of sight; she had been too close to something, but she was not sure what.

Now she was watching the two white children who were sitting on the slate steps. They shone with health and care, and wore clean, bright colours. The smaller boy on the upper step had glossy brown hair dropping around his face in loose curls. Atropos recognised the way that he lounged. He already knew that his face was his fortune.

The larger boy on the lower step was poking idly through the debris on the ground with a stick. He was fairer and stockier than his brother. They both looked confident. The smaller boy was on the alert like a sharp-eyed bird. The larger boy looked ready to encourage trouble.

Atropos shook her head, experimentally. Her head felt lighter than she had ever known it. She could feel cool air blowing on the skin of her head. The absence of the weighty coils of hair she had always worn made her feel as if she might float into the air. Instead she sat steadily on the bollard, getting used to the lightness after her first haircut.

Her gaze drifted back to where the children were, then Atropos looked away. They were a puzzle. She would not think about them, just in case. She would look at the life going on all around her. It was a beautiful October day, sunny and not yet cold. The big boats in the harbour were shining in the low sunlight, and she could read their names quite easily now. Compass Rose. Linga. Annabel Lee. White Lady. Bonny Grizel.

She smiled to think of the Grizel that she knew. If she were a boat she would have broad-bellied black sails and sit low in the water, with a hold full of secret cargo. The skipper would be surly. The crew would have to go to church twice a day on Sunday.

A bird in flight caught her eye, and she turned her head, surprised, to follow its path across the street. It flew ahead of her into the close and angled sharply downwards to land. It did not fly out again.

Atropos looked again. She dampened the sounds around her, just for a moment, to listen to what might be happening in the close.

‘Kill the crow.’

The whisper was soft. It was accompanied by the scraping of a stone.

Atropos looked away. The smartly-dressed children bothered her. Their words brought back a memory. It was a sharp memory, and she had forgotten most of it. The edges of it scraped in her mind.

She looked up at the sky, at a heavy grey cloud above the soaring gulls. Traffic passed her slowly. Music approached, the kind of dancing sound she had become accustomed to hearing in Maggie’s house, or in her car. It was repetitive, heavy, a deep pulse of sound anchoring the lighter notes. Something trance-like and circling, like dancers. As the car moved away, so did the sound. But it seemed to stay in her head.

Atropos moved her head gently in time to the throb from the music. It was a trance song, and now she had the memory back.

It had been a chanting rhythmic dance, smelling of sweat and crushed leaves. She had used to perform it with the women and maidens in their celebration for Themis, in the groves, in firelight, at high summer and in deep winter. When she was young.

It had been a dark night when the Dioskouroi had descended to raid the rite. Kastor, the Bright One, was the thinker. Polydeukes was the silent one, the more deadly. One of the sanctified priestesses had stuck a knife in him before he had dropped her on the dusty forest floor and driven his foot through her chest. The circle had been scattered, women and girls running in a panic, headlong through the trees, jumping wildly over rocks to hide among the tumbled stones of the old circle. Kastor had yelled in triumph each time he found cowering worshippers. He stabbed them viciously with his knife. They threw the bodies into the fire. The smell of their satisfaction had been like bad oil, rank and powerful.

That raid was the last one. It had ended the rite. Zeus had triumphed again by sending his sons to wreck the secret women’s worship. But it would never quite be quenched. Like a fire smouldering under peat, the rite of Themis continued underground. It broke free in small places, out of sight. When there was no-one left to make the next sacrifices, Themis stayed hidden throughout the rest of Zeus’s triumphant rule. But she had never gone away.

The music had gone past her. Atropos continued to gaze after the car as it waited at the lights, moved slowly around a corner and up the hill, away from the quayside. She turned her head idly, glancing up at the entrance to the close.

Two boys. Young, with thick hair. She remembered those eyes. She had felt their strength wrenching at her arms but she, unlike the others, had got away. Or was she imagining things?

She walked across the street to look into the shop window. She could see the children from the corner of her eye. She watched them without moving her head. She bent a little, as if to see through the glass more clearly.

The voice came again, as soft as snow, as cold as winter.

‘Go on. Kill the crow.’

There was frantic fluttering and a rolling creak of alarm. The hooded crow skittered down the slope past Atropos’s feet. Its tail was spread wide. It was trying to flap but one wing dragged on the ground.

A heavy stone thumped and hit Atropos’s boot. She was wearing her working boots, caked with dried mud in the crevices between laces and padding, and probably some tar from the beach debris she had been clearing up yesterday. She could smell its oiliness.  She could feel a tiny pebble embedded in her right boot sole: she would take it out, next time she took the boots off.

She turned her head to look at the children.

Episode 15.2 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).