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

In which Tornost is bribed with cake.

Atropos was standing straight-backed, holding the shears, her hands curved protectively around them. The trow looked up and down at her and at the shears with truculent suspicion.

‘They’re mine,’ he croaked.

Hazel noticed that he did not make a move to take them.

‘Tell me why you think they are yours,’ Atropos invited. Her voice was icy.

Maggie intervened.

‘Not right now. We need to get indoors. You might not be the only one out here in the dark. We’ll discuss it shortly.’

The trow started to clamour.

Ishabel snapped at him. ‘Be silent.’

He went quiet and scowled at her.

With a jerk Hazel remembered Zeus. Would he have known when the shears came to light?

‘Trow Tornost,’ Ishabel said in a formal voice, ‘I offer you hospitality in my home until midnight, to be dealt with as you will deal with us.’

She smiled at him. ‘So let’s get a move on. You know where I live.’

Ishabel had put the trow’s coat firmly outside on the front step, folded tidily.

‘It won’t take any harm there, but it smells too strong for the size of my hoose,’ she said. ‘Now, shall we start from the beginning?’

They were all in the kitchen. The trow amended his claim. ‘You’ve taken the silver from my hill. I want it back.’

Maggie put a mug of steaming tea in front of him. ‘Don’t give me that. Your hill, is it? You’ve not lived there for a long time. I mind when you moved out; a right song and dance you made of it.’

He scowled.

Hazel thought that, without the scowl and the grumpiness, the trow might have been a friendly-looking creature. His ears were endearingly soft and floppy, and she remembered his big clear eyes, the golden-brown colour of peaty pools. But he was clearly suspicious.

He began to declaim in a truculent tone. ‘Skaw is my hill. I was here at the beginning. When Thor passed through here, I was clinging like a burr on the edge of his cloak. He stopped to play a game with the crows in his stone circle, and I dropped on the ground when he came over the coast. I stayed when he moved on, and I claimed my hill. I named it. Why was the old croft further west called Trowick, if not for my presence?’

Ishabel brought the fruit cake to the table and sat down.

‘Yes, Tornost, but Trowick was abandoned a century ago, and you had already left the Hill of Skaw to the birds. I bought the land. Have some cake.’

When Hazel was handing round plates, a little awkwardly, the trow looked sideways at her.

‘Pardon me for hurting you,’ he said in a sing-song voice.

She looked down at his brown balding head dotted with the mottling of age.

‘Apology accepted,’ she said, and sat down next to Maggie.

Maggie took some cake. ‘So, it was your hill, but it isn’t yours now. Why do you claim these shears?’

Tornost took a slice of fruit cake awkwardly in an oddly twisted hand that slid back under the ragged cuff of his sweater. He looked at Maggie with a superior smirk.

‘I saw them brought here. When the sailor came and made the offering in the sea cave, I took it.’

‘Took the sailor?’

‘Took the offering. They were my folk!’

The trow took a large bite of cake, and swallowed it rapidly, licking its lips. Then he began a recital.

‘I saw the sailor come. Long, long ago. Far too long to count. He stood on the black rocks in the hot sun. It was too warm for me. I was sleeping in the shade. He woke me when he slipped on the rocks and swore. He had been sent. Something was driving him. Whoever it was did a poor job of keeping him in good condition. He wasn’t worth eating. Skin and bone. The offering weighed more than he did.’

‘You didn’t eat him?’ Maggie asked, in a disgusted tone.

The trow ignored her.

‘I wanted to see what was in the offering. It was big, and looked foreign, so I followed him into the cave.’

‘Which cave? Is it a sea cave?’ Hazel interrupted.

The trow jabbed a finger north. ‘Under my cliff,’ he said in a cross voice. ‘Stop asking questions. I will show you what I saw.’

He nodded twice, and gobbled another mouthful of cake. Then he made a turning gesture with his finger in the air that Hazel half-recognised. She couldn’t remember whether she had been shown it, or already knew it. The trow tutted, and made the gesture again.

She was transported into a searing hot summer day. She was lying in shade at the foot of the grassy cliff. Yellow-headed white gannets soared far above her head, flying to and from their stinking roosts. Shags spread their wings to dry, turning their dirty-white breasts to the sun on the rocks above the surf. There was very little wood in the mass of drift at the high-water mark, just dried weed, and bones, and an infinite number of tiny curled shells, clinging to the flat sea ribbons and dried pods. Crab shells and bird bones crunched under the feet of a man staggering from the edge of the surf. He was carrying a wrapped bundle, and he plunged awkwardly when his feet left the rock to trudge through coarse sand.

The sounds of his labouring footsteps changed as he walked on pebbles, and then flat stones. Hazel could see sandflies rising in a swarm around his sweating face as he crossed the shrivelled band of kelp at the high-water mark. He was still dripping from the sea. She could see a boat moored beyond the waves washing over the rock shelf.

The bundle was steaming in the heat.

The man paused a few feet away from her to rest, but then he staggered, as if he’d been pushed in the back. He moved forward again. His face was taut with pain, and he held the bundle stiffly as if it was burning him.

He looked about him as if he did not know where he was going, and was shoved again by an invisible hand, towards the cave.

Episode 9.2 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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