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

In which Fintan is stymied and Atropos is distraught.

Hazel went down to the parking area and began to mark out spaces for cars with stones from the beach, preparing for their next wave of visitors. When she had finished, she walked back up to the dig.

Theresa was so intent on her work that she jumped when Hazel stopped in front of her.

‘Oh! It’s you. Hi. Look, I’m bringing the site recordings up to date and cross-checking the record numbers for all the different files. I’ve uploaded and logged all the photos from our phones, but I need yours now. I’ve put the best ones in the new press pack folder.’

Hazel handed over her phone. Theresa looked very distracted.

‘Have you lost any files?’ Hazel asked.

‘No, no,’ Theresa said, ‘They’re all here. I’m just stressed about getting them ready for the BBC. They might want to use our images, so I need to be super-efficient and have everything ready so they’ll think, this is an amazing archaeologist, we must give her a job as our new archaeology correspondent.’

She looked sideways at Hazel to be sure she had got the joke.

‘Of course,’ Hazel said, ‘Fintan might be offered the job before you.’

Theresa’s eyes widened, dismissively.

Fintan’s phone rang. He answered it eagerly, but then he looked disappointed.

‘Oh, I see. No, no, it’s fine. Yes, I completely understand. No, of course not. No, no, that’s fine. I’ll let you know. OK, thanks. Bye.’

Hazel turned to get the chocolate biscuits from the box and handed them round. ‘So, the BBC aren’t coming either?’

Fintan shook his head. He looked as sad as if his party had been cancelled. ‘They had a call to turn back and cover a different story, somewhere near the airport.’

‘Oh.’ Theresa said. ‘What kind of story?’

Fintan was clearly annoyed. ‘An escaped snake in an old people’s home. Ridiculous, really. What a waste of licence-payers’ money.’

‘Mmm,’ Hazel said. ‘And I made nice parking spaces for them too. Anyway, Theresa’s created an outstanding site report for this month. Shall we plan a route for the crane, for tomorrow?’

Hazel drove back to Ishabel’s at ten that night. She was beginning to get tired of this route, driving five miles over the hill and back each time she needed to go work, or to bed, or to see the witches. She’d seen hardly anything of the rest of Unst but she definitely knew its top north-east corner now.

Atropos was moving restlessly about in the kitchen looking fierce. ‘When do we take them?’

Ishabel tried to explain. ‘We don’t want to be seen, so we need to wait until it’s dark.’

‘We can go now,’ Hazel said firmly. ‘It’s dark enough.’

‘There’ll be a moon,’ Maggie remarked.

Atropos stood waiting by the front door. ‘Something else was here, in your garden,’ she said, as if she had only thought just now to mention it. ‘But it has gone.’

‘What?’ Ishabel asked, looking up from putting her boots on. ‘I haven’t felt anything. Not Zeus?’

‘No,’ Atropos waved a hand vaguely towards the north. ‘Something different. It was here. And there.’

‘Will it come back?’

Atropos sniffed. ‘I will know.’ She opened the front door and stalked outside into the night.

Maggie looked up from zipping up her coat. ‘She’s a bit snappy tonight. Been like that all evening. Didn’t want to try a board game. I tried hypnotising her with the telly but she couldn’t seem to see it.’

Waiting alone outside, Atropos looked up at the stars. She recognised some of their patterns, but not all. There did not seem to be as many stars as she had known before, but she had not made a study of the skies. Lakhesis had done that.

With the thought of Lakhesis Atropos suddenly felt choked. She stood amazed in the dark, gasping under a weight of emotion. Tears began to run down her face, and she gulped and sniffed, unable to see. When the door opened light washed over her, and then she was again in the midst of these warm, chattering unknowable sorceresses. They were strange, as this place was strange, but they had been kind. She had eaten their food, though it wasn’t the food she knew. She was warm, she was clothed.

She was so far from home.

Atropos stood gasping and gulping back tears, not knowing what to do with her face or her feelings. She turned away from the sorceresses with her hands to her face, and mourned for Lakhesis, and for Klotho, for their voices and their faces, for sounds and smells and textures she knew, for familiar things. They had all gone into the dark, long ago, without her. She wept in the quiet night.

But she wasn’t alone. The old brown one, Ishabel, stayed with her, waiting with a clean white cloth in her hands. The others had gone ahead. Only the old sorceress stayed to comfort her.

Ishabel gave Atropos a hug which barely reached to her shoulder and tried to explain.

<The others care about you but want to give you time to understand your feelings, to feel yourself again.>.

Atropos wiped her face with the white cloth, then blew her nose heartily into the damp bundle. She still couldn’t breathe steadily and was sniffling. Tears ran down her face.

’I was struck by the goddess of grief,’ she said at last, with a choked voice. ‘Because she is another child of Zeus. She showed me the stars, and then I remembered my sister Lakhesis who loved them, and I grieved, because I had forgotten my sisters.’

Ishabel patted Atropos on the arm. ‘Come. Let’s walk. Tell me about your sisters.’

Episode 8.3 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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