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

In which the wind is getting up.

It was already ten in the morning, and Hazel was starving again for another breakfast. She felt as if she’d been up here for a whole working day. Now she was on guard duty, and Martin and Theresa were sitting at a safe distance from the stone, catching up on recording work. Fintan had finished checking the now empty parking area for litter. They should be free from visitors for a bit.

<We’re here now, between you and the radar station.> Maggie said in her head.

Hazel went to collect her jacket and picked up her camera.

‘I’m off to take some reference shots of this cliff’s rock fall that you showed me, if the tide gets low enough.’

Martin nodded. ‘Don’t fall over the edge.’

She glared at him and stalked over to the cliff path.

When she left the Hill by the cliff path, staying carefully away from the edge, the air cooled. She could hear birdsong again and was startled. She hadn’t realised that the birds were staying away from the dig site, or were they staying away from the stone? 

She walked quickly downhill westwards. Maggie and Ishabel, and a tall figure in jeans and a short navy blue jacket with a yellow jumper underneath, were waiting for her in the hollow by the end of the other track. Atropos looked completely at home in her new clothes, and had added a stout pair of working boots, and a yellow woolly hat over her coils of black hair. She looked alert.

‘He is coming!’ she announced with urgency, her voice ringing like a bell across the turf. ‘I feel him around us. Zeus is near.’

Hazel’s stomach gave a flip, then she calmed herself. The others did not seem concerned.

Ishabel was untangling a folding chair, the third in a row set up in a sheltered space on a flat stretch of rock away from the path, facing out to sea. Maggie was looking inside a carrier bag, fishing out a flask and a tin of biscuits. Her binoculars were on the grass beside her chair.

‘We don’t know what he’s going to look like, do we?’ Hazel asked.

‘No,’ Ishabel said, ‘And she won’t tell us either.’ She nodded at Atropos, who was stalking along the edge of the cliff. ‘She expects us to feel him in the air. I’m not sure I’m at that level yet.’

‘So we’re just going to sit here and do some whale-watching, maybe see some orca or dolphins. It’s going to be a beautiful morning.’ Maggie was now settled comfortably in her chair with a small sketchbook on her lap, squinting up at Hazel who was standing between her and the sun. ‘If there’s any trouble we’ll be with you fast. Just give us a shout.’

Now Atropos was standing on the edge of the cliff, gazing down towards the sea, and Hazel began to feel sick.

‘Oh, please don’t …’ she began.

Atropos jumped over the edge in a diving leap that took her from sight more quickly than Hazel could have imagined.

Hazel screamed, but managed to muffle the noise in her hands.

‘Oh, for god’s sake! We did tell her. Has she ony discretion?’ Maggie said impatiently, getting up from her chair, and walking towards the edge to look over to the sea far below.

Ishabel had not moved and seemed only mildly concerned. ‘Was anyone looking?’ she asked Hazel, who was still clutching her mouth with both hands.

‘Just us,’ Hazel’s voice was strangled. She told herself furiously that Atropos must have changed into a bird and was not a crumpled heap of limbs on the rocks.

‘She’s coming back now,’ Maggie announced, and returned to her chair.

‘This is why I chose this dip in the coastline,’ Ishabel explained to Hazel. ‘Completely hidden, from all sides. Not even the fishing boats will spot us. There she is.’

A speckled brown and white falcon, the size of a small buzzard, was hanging in the air above them, and then Atropos was with them again, looking happy.

‘I like this place,’ she announced. Maggie handed her a piece of shortbread.

Hazel was still feeling sick. ‘I’ll just go a bit further and take some photos of the site from over there, and then I’ll come back.’

‘Don’t take too long,’ Ishabel said. ‘You’re guarding the stone, mind.’

‘But would Zeus even come here in daylight?’ Hazel asked, feeling worried.

Atropos was looking at her intently. ‘Of course. You will know him.’

Hazel was not reassured. She walked quickly along the track to the smaller path that took her to the end of a short promontory. She could see the Hill across the bay. She got onto her knees, then wriggled on her front to lie near the cliff edge, staying on the rock surfaces to avoid the damp grass. Across the choppy black and blue water the flapping black and yellow strips of perimeter tape seemed reassuringly far from the cliff edge. It was sunny, a beautiful day, with a stiff breeze blowing that made her ignore the sickness in her stomach. She really hated heights.

Hazel focused her camera, and took careful shots, quartering the cliff from its tufting grassy edge down to a nose-like bulge about halfway down, and then down to where Martin had said there was a collapsed roof of a sea cave. The tide was too high to see it: she could only see the white surf caused by the waves breaking up on ragged rocks.

The wind was blowing more strongly now. The safety tape on the opposite cliff edge was flapping wildly. Seabirds tumbled and soared screaming above her head, and Hazel was suddenly distracted by realising that she was only a few feet above a bird. It was crammed into a crevice in the cliff face, down to the left from where she was lying, facing inward as if by hiding its eyes it would prevent a passing skua from seeing it. Hazel could see that the wind was ruffling its white feathers, and it shuffled slightly, not making a sound. She thought she could see the bulge of an egg underneath the smooth feathers.

The wind gusted again from behind her, blowing her jacket hood up and over the back of her head, and for an extraordinary moment Hazel imagined that she was being shoved over the edge of the cliff. She wriggled backwards carefully and sat down on the path to take some last shots of the fallen limestone debris that littered the raw cliff face opposite, pale and gravelly against its iron-grey vertical faces. She did not think she would be able to identify anything archaeological, but while it was still there, above water, she wanted to record it.

Episode 7.3 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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