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

The witches are conferring.

‘That Alison,’ Ishabel said, ‘Don’t worry about her. She likes to have a dig at us. We get on fine.’

‘No, but, well, OK. It’s just that gossip about covens doesn’t usually lead anywhere good.’

Maggie snorted. ‘We’ll be fine. Eat your lunch here. I’m still thinking about what we did up there, earlier.’

‘You sent Zeus packing. Is that not enough?’

Hazel took a bite of sandwich and thought about the ordinariness of Ishabel’s kitchen and the attack from an Olympian god they had got through that morning, She laughed involuntarily.

‘Sorry. It’s all mad. And it’s real.’

‘Definitely real. And it’s odd,’ Ishabel said, looking out of the front window as if she were watching for the return of a vengeful black cloud. ‘I was expecting more of a fight.’

‘He might have expended his normal powers just by coming here,’ Maggie suggested.

‘Look at her,’ Ishabel nodded to the stalking blue figure in her garden, picking up stones and looking at them. ‘If she is functioning here at the same level as she was in her own place and time, then why should not he be the same? Why has he diminished? She only took a night to recover, and he’s had that too.’

‘She’s a different person from the shivering wreck that I nabbed last night,’ Maggie remarked. ‘Rejuvenated. I don’t understand why she’s not in more shock from all that time-travelling she done.’

‘A kind of jet lag?’ Hazel asked.

‘Well, she’s come forward, what? Ten thousand years? Fifteen thousand? Everything here will be alien to her. She’s already mastered the fork, and door handles, but she hasn’t seen much road traffic yet. Heaven knows what she’ll make of Lerwick.’

‘Mind what she looked like when Zeus arrived?’ Ishabel said. ‘I haven’t seen anything like that in years. Imagine her like that in a town.’

‘Like a horror film,’ Hazel said. ‘I was terrified when Zeus showed up. I felt totally inadequate.’

Ishabel regarded her with a measuring gaze. ‘I would say you’re stronger than you think. You withstood his probing winds earlier as if they weren’t there. He was trying to throw you over the cliff, but you barely noticed it. As immovable as the rock, you were.’

Hazel gaped. ‘Really? I just thought it was an annoying wind.’

‘The power you draw on seems to manifest as a kind of earthing,’ Ishabel told her. ‘I think it may be related to the mycelium you were telling us about. You could be tapping into its underground energy transport network in some way, since you can stabilise and fix yourself to the ground. Not many folk have that ability.’

‘Our skills are all different,’ Maggie said. Hazel felt bewildered and pleased. She began thinking about earthing and soil, how she felt an affinity with the ground. Digging for a living: she had a new way of looking at it now.

Ishabel was ruminating. ‘I wonder if Atropos is adapting well because she is on the way to becoming human. I can’t see Zeus taking that road. From what she’s told us, he would want to be the master all the time, always dominant. Atropos isn’t interested in dominance. And she’s not a goddess, of course.’

They watched Atropos in the garden. She was holding a handful of mixed leaves and was standing smiling in the sun with her eyes closed.

‘How is she going to live, here, in Shetland, if she decides to stay?’ Hazel asked. ‘How will she eat? Where will she stay? What will she do to cars and lorries when she meets them, walking down the road? She’ll be picked up for stealing – she won’t understand the concept of money, though she might cope with barter – and then she’ll turn into a bird outside Tesco or somewhere really public, so that’ll cause a huge fuss, even if it’s thought to be mass psychosis or something. Then she’ll come here bringing all the attention you’ve avoided for years. We have to make her into one of us.’ She paused. ‘We can’t get rid of her. I like her. When she’s not being scary.’

They could see Atropos walking towards the back door. She had nipped off some long twigs of rosemary from the bush beside the hedge.

‘I like her too,’ Maggie said, ‘I don’t know where we could send her.’

‘Then we make her into one of us,’ Ishabel decided. ‘She has to fit in. We don’t want her drawing attention to magical activity.’

‘Where will she stay?’ Maggie asked.

Ishabel eyed her. ‘Not here. I have many interested, friendly neighbours who keep an eye on me, which is very kind of them. Atropos needs to learn how to read and write and master the niceties of conversation before she can meet normal humans.’

Maggie opened her mouth to speak, and then paused. ‘How about the Feather Haa, to help her acclimatise?’

Ishabel nodded. ‘That is a very good plan. But I’ve not been over there for months. What kind of state is it in?’

‘Nae idea,’ Maggie admitted. ‘But I can take her there, and see what she thinks. If she doesna like it she can come to the croft and learn how to do picture framing.’

Ishabel looked at Maggie and smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now, I’m going to have a rest, I think.’

‘I should get back to the dig. Fintan’s away looking for a journalist.’ Hazel said, ‘And Zeus might come back.’

Atropos had come into the kitchen. She closed the back door behind her, fumbling awkwardly with the handle.

‘I know this plant,’ she said, dropping the rosemary on the table. ‘They serve it with lamb at Klotho’s house.’

She looked levelly at the three witches. ‘Zeus will come back. He will try to take the tools from the stone again.’

‘We’ll take them out tonight,’ Ishabel said.

Fintan returned to the dig half an hour after Hazel. He stumped up the track looking glum, eating a cheese roll.

‘No Connal Matheson?’ Hazel was relieved, but she put on a concerned expression.

‘There was no morning flight from Edinburgh today. Poor weather conditions.’ Fintan looked exasperated.

‘You didn’t drive all the way to the airport?’

‘No, no, he rang me before I’d got to the Yell ferry. He’ll try again tomorrow.’ Then Fintan pulled himself together. ‘Right. What are we doing? The BBC will be here soon.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t I tell you?’

Hazel sighed, ‘You did. I remember now. How was our radiation?’

‘I downloaded the report from the app from the last six days, and there are no anomalies, so we’re not affected and we can have visitors. I should have bought two of these rolls, I’m still hungry.’

He turned to look at a dark blue fishing-boat chugging past the headland out to sea, and then turned back to Hazel as if he’d remembered something.

‘Did I tell you about the crane?’

Hazel looked at him. ‘No. You didn’t.’

Fintan waved the last morsel of bread in the direction of the mound. ‘That stone,’ he said, indistinctly. ‘Safest way to move it. Booked the crane this morning.’

‘How is it going to get into the field across that tiny footbridge? The track is going to need reinforcement, if a lorry is to get up that slope.’ Hazel felt indignant, and amused. He was always doing this kind of thing, and he always pulled it off.

‘All organised,’ he said smugly. ‘Army connections. Rang the depot on the way back from Lerwick. It’ll be here tomorrow afternoon, three-ish, depending on how busy the ferries are.’

Hazel was resigned. ‘And when do the BBC get here?’

‘They’re driving up now.’ he said cheerfully.

Episode 8.2 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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