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

In which the witches return to the black stone.

Up at the excavation and away from the lights of Skaw’s houses, the stars were blanked out by billowing clouds moving slowly east.

‘It’s a great access track, isn’t it?’ Hazel said. ‘As if the army knew, nearly a hundred years ago, that we’d need it for moving all the excavation stuff up here in wheelbarrows, so they built a nice metalled road for us in advance.’

‘All kinds of folk have used it,’ Ishabel said. ‘And the army just furbished up an existing pathway.’

Hazel walked around the covered mound, moving the stones that were weighting the tarpaulin down. She carefully twitched it off the black stone. The heat beat softly at her, and she only held the tarpaulin for as long as she needed to. She shone her torch at its shiny surface.

‘We’ve hardly uncovered any of it, as you see, but we can estimate how big it’s likely to be.’

She pointed out the features like a tour guide, feeling confident on her own ground again.

‘What bothers me particularly, though we haven’t had time to research it, is that it seems to have been put on top of these walls to block the entranceway. You can see that there’s a gap out here, in the bit we finished uncovering yesterday, where the end curves inside and then stops, very neatly. Like a doorway.’

Maggie was warming her hands at the stone’s heat. ‘This is really weird heat. No, I won’t touch it.’

‘Umm,’ Ishabel was also testing the heat with her hands. ‘Do you think the folk who lived in this hoose put it there?’

‘We don’t know. It seems a very final statement. It was dropped on top to stop the house being used. And this was the last settlement built here.’

‘Like a burial mound.’

‘Maybe,’ Hazel said. ‘Nobody would get out from under that.’

‘How did it get there in the first place?’ Maggie marvelled.

‘It might have been levered into position. But that’s not really the important thing. It’s the rock itself. It is seriously weird. It seems to have endured extreme heat, far hotter than what it’s giving out now, which it should absolutely not do, by the way. That’s why it’s shiny. Something in that condition only occurs in volcanoes, but this would be a really big specimen to emerge from volcanic action, so undamaged. We find vitrified stone in sites of destruction, like when a broch or a house is burned, which isn’t the case here. So where did the vitrifying heat come from?’

‘Isn’t the tarpaulin melted?’ Maggie asked.

‘No. The stone is hot to the touch, just as if it had absorbed radiation from the sun, but the tarp isn’t even warm. I cannae understand it.’

‘Let me have a closer look,’ Ishabel suggested, and got down on her knees alongside the trench. She sniffed, and laid her hand carefully on the trench floor. The two others waited. There was a movement in the dried grass stems on the slope behind them, where the wind was blowing, but it subsided.

‘Not a thing,’ Ishabel said, getting to her feet. ‘Too much recent disturbance. We need to look under the stone now. Without touching it. Gather and centre, and link to me, please.’

Maggie arranged and held their minds together with calm strength while Ishabel pushed their attention into position.

‘We will – lift through, and down, and into – and through,’ Ishabel intoned their focus.

Feeling as if she were dreaming, Hazel let her strength be directed into a vortex of power. The stone seemed to separate its structure into thinner and thinner layers, so the three witches could gaze through and below it. With a sudden melting of the last shreds of darkness from the vitrified layers they were exposed, shockingly fast, to the blinding light of a sun. It was so bright that the backs of Hazel’s eyes felt seared with a flash. She drew in a hurried breath but held her position.

‘By god that’s bright,’ said Ishabel, and then they could all see, as if the light had been shielded by a carefully placed hand. When Hazel squinted she could only see a silhouetted shape of, what? Knives? Blades? A shining weight, and a gleaming shape like a bird’s skull, long and sharp. Dark folds and weaving. They smelt dill and heard the high sweet note of a bell chiming in the wind. It felt ancient.

‘Back now, my women, we go back, we step away, and out, and we go back to where we are.’ Ishabel intoned their return quietly and firmly.

The stone was solid and dark. It was still night.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Maggie.

‘What ARE they?’ Ishabel asked.

Hazel thought she knew and was appalled.

She felt a prickle on her back. Hazel was certain that she was being looked at from behind.

‘She’s here’, she said brightly, and pointed away to the north at random. ‘I don’t think she understands us speaking out loud yet. She’s behind me.’

‘Of course, she shapeshifts,’ Maggie laughed, and clapped Hazel’s shoulder. ‘I’ll go get her.’

Hazel began babbling. ‘You know what, Ishabel?’

Ishabel looked up attentively at her.

‘We have got to keep that newcomer here; I’m not going to use her name in case she tunes in. She can’t go wandering off to the mainland, or anywhere else.’

Hazel waved her hands around, gesturing around the dig. Maggie had vanished.

‘Can we really handle her? Have we got the powers to tackle really scary stuff like her?’

‘Of course,’ Ishabel said, ‘She’s one of us. Or she will be, soon. I’ve seen this before. Not someone in her category, of course; she really is tremendously powerful, but I’ve seen what happens when something elemental settles down alongside humans. They become human too. It might take some time, but their magic changes. Moves across the divide. It’s very interesting.’

‘Got her,’ Maggie grunted. She appeared beside them with a firm grip on Atropos’s arm. Atropos seemed exhausted. She was shivering and her hair was damp.

Ishabel was shocked at her state. ‘My god, woman, let’s get you back indoors and into a hot bath. You two, come back to the hoose when you’ve finished here.’

Ishabel was bustling Atropos back along the army track before Hazel knew what was happening. Atropos stumbled tall beside her, like an overgrown weed in a high wind, towering over Ishabel, but also allowing herself to be ushered and taken in hand. Or maybe, Hazel wondered, Ishabel has put some sort of control on her, to keep her from running away again. The figures disappeared into the field and down the slope, towards the window lights of the croft.

Hazel twitched the tarpaulin back over the stone. It was still beating warmth at her but was cooler. Perhaps it had been chilled a little by the night air.

‘Maggie,’ Hazel said, ‘We’re going to need her help. Or else we’ll have to get Avril back.’

Maggie looked at the muffled stone, and nodded. ‘Aye. Weak as she is now, I think she’s the only one who can handle those things underneath. I mean, Ishabel was able to dim them just now, but not for long. We need them neutralised, or hidden. Or taken away.’

They finished weighting the tarpaulin with the discarded stones and walked down the track to the road.

Episode 6.1 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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