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

Atropos knows that new enemies have arrived.

‘That was strong magic,’ Atropos said.

‘I dashed across to see what you were up to, and then I saw the bird on the ground,’ Avril nodded at the bundle on Atropos’s lap. ‘We’ll take it to the animal rescue centre and then we’ll head north to Unst. That woman will know that I deflected her magic,’ Avril said, starting the engine. ‘Glad I got Donnie out of it. We need to find out who she is, see if she’s going to be a problem. She shouldn’t even be here, she must have got through the web.’ She cocked an eye at Atropos. ‘Nice haircut! Magnus did a really good job.’

Atropos grinned. ‘I gave him so much of my hair! He was really happy. It will make -,’ she gestured with her hands. ‘I have forgotten the word. Helmets of hair. Wigs! To make women without hair feel brave again.’

Avril gave a crack of laughter.

‘I think the magic was from the children,’ Atropos said.

‘Really? Peerie boys like that?’ Avril looked surprised.

‘Yes.’

Avril was slowing down to negotiate a roundabout. Then without warning a large car drove past them on the inside, passing Atropos’s window in a flash of shining white. It speeded up, almost clipping the wing mirror, and moved in front of the fish lorry lumbering around from the right. With calm obliviousness it turned down towards the museum. There was hooting.

’Oh for goodness –’ Avril said in exasperation, and slowed down again to let the lorry get in front of her. ‘What awful driving.’

‘The boy was in the front seat. The one who gave the commands.’

The road out of Lerwick was emptier now.

‘We need to tell Ishabel.’

‘Is she well now?’

‘Mmm. She may have discharged herself from hospital.’

‘You know she is not yet well,’ Atropos said calmly. ‘She will not recover unless she obeys the doctors.’

‘We know that,’ Avril said. They were passing a huge white ferry sitting snugly by its pier in the deep-water moorings. ‘But we’re not her.’

Avril was glancing at the road behind them in her mirror as she drove. ‘Their big show-off white car is coming this way after all,’ she remarked. ‘Can you see it? Look at the size of it.’

Atropos turned her head to peer through the mirror outside her window.

‘There can’t be another car that big in the islands. Are they following us? They must have come in on the Aberdeen ferry. We need to take a look at the web along the ferry routes. I think it might have new holes in it.’ Avril was watching the car through the rear mirror. ‘Oh, I see. They’re turning down to the Textile Museum instead.’ Avril thought for a few moments. ‘Odd, though. She didn’t look like a wool person, and peerie boys don’t usually want to see historic spindles and spinning wheels.’

‘Spindles?’ Atropos said.

‘Peerie wooden ones.’

Now Atropos felt certainty like cold water in her face. ‘They want to take Klotho’s spindle.’

Avril came out of a large low house on the road out of Lerwick, looking relieved. The blue and white cross on a signboard outside was swinging in the wind.

‘All OK,’ she said as she got back into the car. ‘I kent it was a clean break. They’ll keep the crow till it’s healed and release it. Now for our ferry.’ She started the car and began driving north. ‘Did you tell Maggie about those boys?’

‘She is not pleased,’ Atropos said gravely. ‘She used oath words.’

Avril laughed, hollowly. ‘I’m with her on that. If this means we have to be the magic police again ... I’ve been enjoying a quiet life after the mayhem of last year.’

Atropos smiled but said nothing. She too had enjoyed a year of living quietly, learning her place in this new world. She did not want to battle gods again, and now here they were, following her. Why did they keep following her?

She knew.

‘It is the spindle,’ she said again, after some minutes of companionable silence.

Avril sighed. ‘It’s the only one left, isn’t? The shears are gone, aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ Atropos agreed. Buried safely in a place that no-one knows and that I have forgotten, she reminded herself, silently.

‘Hazel said the spindle is in the Museum for one more week, I think. Then it goes to Edinburgh.’

‘It has been here too long.’

‘I don’t like it being here either. The delay is at the Edinburgh end, I think. Polishing its glass cabinet or something. Hazel said the research work will carry on once it’s moved. Her colleague, the Italian archaeologist, what was her name?’

‘Theresa.’

‘Yes, Theresa. She needs access to special spectrometers at Oxford, she said, so she’ll be able to do that more easily from Edinburgh than from here.’

‘We should have destroyed it when it was uncovered.’

‘It’s out of our hands now.’

Atropos felt unsettled. But it was true: she could do nothing more about Klotho’s spindle. The humans had it now. She turned her attention to the other reason she felt disquiet. ‘What holes are in the web?’

‘It’s just an idea. If the ferry brought those horrible peerie boys, and they’re doing magic, then the web should have stopped them getting in. But it didn’t. They were able to stay on the ferry, not be thrown off it. Folk with magic in them can cope with being ejected from the ferry, or any other boat that comes in. Though,’ Avril became thoughtful, ‘I’m not sure what happens when they’re thrown off planes. Maggie will know. Anyway, they’re here, and they shouldn’t be, and so I think the web may have holes in it.’

‘Maggie will know,’ Atropos said, with complete confidence.

They were driving north up a broad treeless valley, and the south wind was pushing them onwards. The road to the Toft ferry was empty. The land was wrinkled and green, the tops of the higher hills on either side of the valley covered in thick mist. Atropos watched the small lochs come into sight and go past in a hurry as Avril’s little car ran over the shining black surface of the road. Sometimes a bird came to fly beside the car, and then it sheered off to look for food elsewhere. A white cat sat on the road outside a white house and watched them drive past. Goats stared at them from a tiny fenced hill beside a barn. The rain came and went, and the clouds were heavy. A blue car emerged from a hidden turning and came towards them. Avril and the driver raised their hands to greet each other, and then it was gone.

Episode 15.4 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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