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

In which Atropos shows the witches her life.

Ishabel addressed herself to Atropos. ‘My name is Ishabel Inkster.’ She paused, considering. ‘When I was younger I taught the study of plants to the young folk.’

Atropos nodded. She was pushing bacon carefully onto her fork with her fingers.

‘I am Maggie Forbister. I make pictures, of birds and animals.’ Maggie gestured to the large portrait of a black bird that hung on the wall beside the door.

Atropos nodded and said a word in a language they didn’t know.

‘Raven,’ Maggie said, firmly.

There was a pause.

‘The handmaiden?’ Atropos began to chew her mouthful of bacon.

‘Not a handmaiden,’ Ishabel said, reprovingly. ‘She is one of us. Her name is Avril Simbister, and she looks after birds.’

Hazel had worked out how to translate her own job.

‘I am Hazel Warsi. I’m an archaeologist; I dig up things buried in the ground by time,’ she finished in a rush. Atropos nodded.

‘Trowel,’ she said experimentally. ‘I have your life, in my head.’

Hazel gaped. ‘All of it?’

‘No!’ Atropos grinned, and her white teeth flashed. ‘Some.’

‘Wow. Well. Perhaps that’s how you have learned our language so quickly. But how –?’

Atropos nodded. ‘I have seen it before.’ She took a mouthful of bread and chewed, looking at Hazel steadily. ‘And you have my life. But not all.’

‘I think your life was in my dreams last night,’ Hazel said cautiously

Atropos nodded, and looked back at her plate, investigating what she had not yet eaten.

‘How much of her life?’ Ishabel asked with interest.

‘Patches. Scenes. She has sisters. I only remember bits.’ Hazel said, frowning. ‘They come and go.’

She fished carefully in her memory for the shreds of her dream and sent them to Ishabel and Maggie.

‘Mmmph. Do you recognise anything?’ Maggie asked Ishabel, biting into toast.

‘Those succulents on the rocks look Mediterranean to me. I wonder.’ Ishabel looked sideways at Atropos, who was spooning more honey onto her plate, and spoke to her.

‘Would you look at Hazel’s dream for us?’

Atropos nodded, and after she had set the spoon down, Hazel sent Atropos her scraps of dream.

They waited. Atropos was frowning, and then nodded in recognition, smiling with a wry twist to her mouth. ‘You dream what I have lived.’

Hazel had a theory. ‘When did you arrive here?

Atropos had her mouth full of food. She jerked her head back, in a gesture that unmistakeably meant yesterday. She finished her mouthful.

‘You pass through me.’

Ishabel took over. <We have seen this before, but usually only when a bairn is born, or someone dies. Memory transfer. With two adults, both living, it’s unusual.>

Atropos nodded. ‘I will show. Attend!’

For a moment Hazel saw Ishabel’s eyes widen, and then Maggie lurched forward, gripping the table. And then she felt as if she were drowning in a flood of powerful, colourful, overwhelming images, drenching her mind with scenes and sounds, battering at her in waves of intensity.

There was a wild drinking party, a massive temple in the dawn, white dust and red blood flowing over the ground, the dark bark of a broad tree, the curving warm body of a flat-headed yellow snake, a green hillside with a huge eagle coming at her out of the sun, talons first, and a bare stone track on a high mountainside in baking heat. The onrushing torrent ended, after a lifetime or only a minute, Hazel could not tell.

Then she heard words that she did not understand. And then she did understand them. She was chilled to her bones by the coldest of voices.

‘I send you now to find the Things of Power, and I will follow, and find you.’

‘Well,’ Maggie said, getting up to put the kettle on. ‘My tea has gone cold. That’s the most realistic film trailer I’ve ever seen.’

‘Atropos, whose was that voice? Who is coming?’ Ishabel asked.

‘Zeus.’

The name dropped into a stunned silence.

‘He will come for the shears that cut the thread of life. My shears,’ Atropos said fiercely. ‘And Klotho’s -’ she fumbled for the word, and flashed them the image of an elongated spinning top, pointed at one end of its long golden shank.

‘Spindle,’ Maggie said with authority. ‘But a gold one? That size? Wow.’

‘The spindle that creates life. He must never have them,’ Atropos stated. ‘I will die to stop him. You must too.’  She said this matter of factly.

 ‘Oh, no,’ Hazel said. ‘I don’t think I can cope with the Olympian gods battling an elemental being on a radioactive excavation site.’ She felt an absurd need to shriek.

‘It is all impossible, yes, but here we are, and something has to be done,’ Maggie said. ‘What will Zeus do?’

Atropos laughed out loud.

‘If he wins, you will die, when he is ready to let you die, but you will beg for death long before that. I will show. Wait.’

She frowned, and then spread both her hands in front of her on the table, stiff-fingered. They seemed to dig into the wood. Hazel had time to hear Maggie’s in-drawn breath, and see Ishabel close her eyes, and then she was plunged into the darkness of a temple, as if she were crouching in the shadows, watching.

The god was seated on his throne, reclining against bronze and ivory. His robes flowed to his feet, white in the flickering of the golden torches on the columns. Darkness lay in stripes on the floor, and Zeus glowed like the sun. The stone floor smelt new. Even the dust in the corners was shiny.

He was smiling.

‘This is my temple, Atropos. You will kneel.’

She ignored his command, and his sigh. The weight of his hand forced her to her knees. Klotho and Lakhesis were beside her, watching Zeus closely. She could only glance quickly at them from the corner of her eyes, but their faces were expressionless. Klotho’s white gown was torn and crushed, and Lakhesis looked drenched. Had she been in the sea?

Zeus continued to speak, ignoring their silence.

‘It was a good marriage feast. The people liked my gift to them. Your new service in my name was a surprise to them, of course. But I knew they would be glad. Were you?’

His question was a thrust to the heart. Atropos could not answer, but Klotho was ready.

‘Of course, great Zeus, it was a surprise. You have not spoken to us about your wishes in this great matter. For it is a very great matter.’

Her deliberate voice cut like ice.

‘You have consulted with your brother Hades, and with the other great gods, I am sure. They share your rule –‘

‘No one shares my rule.’

‘- and they are responsible with you in maintaining the balance of life and death in the world. Did they applaud your plans?’

Episode 6.3 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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The Shetland Witch is a reader-supported publication. As well as taking out a free subscription for the novel, you can subscribe to the paid tier for In Achaea and Mrs Sinclair and the Haa, the two worldbuilding novellas that unpack and develop some aspects of the story and characters. In Achaea tells Atropos’s story: part of which is repeated here.