9.4 The Shetland Witch, or, Atropos Wants Her Shears Back
In which Atropos stares Tornost down.
‘I waited until the next night. Then I did a great magic, greater than any I have done before or since.’ The trow’s voice hissed.
‘I brought a great stone, dragged from the sea, up the cliff, over the fields, over the stone walls. I raised it with my last strength and threw it on the walls of the burnt hut, to bury the burning gold and silver. I set the stone there, and it too burned. I felt the pain of its fire in my hands, and I have paid. I want the gold and the silver. They are mine.’
The witches looked at the trow. Hazel had her head in her hands.
Atropos was interested, but implacable. ‘I thank you for protecting the things of power,’ she said courteously. ‘I will give you a gift in return.’
‘A gift? They are mine!’ the trow yelled.
‘They are mine.’ Atropos said with certainty. ‘You will tell me what gift you want, for your service.’
The clock in the hall struck eleven-thirty, and the trow shivered.
Hazel raised her head. ‘I’m struggling to mind my physics. I’ll need to look it up, but I think the gold must have been the cause of the radiation. As it’s inert now, it could have been a radioactive isotope that ran out of half-lives between now and two or three thousand years ago. Tornost,’ she looked at the hunched figure sitting across the table. ‘You were exposed to what sounds like lethal radiation. How were you not hurt?’
The trow seemed embarrassed and pulled his sleeves down to his fingers again. The ends of the cuffs were ragged and stained, and there was something odd, Hazel realised, about the way he moved his hands that no longer looked like claws.
‘Tornost,’ Ishabel said. ‘Don’t be shy. We’ve never seen your hands. You can put off the glamour.’
He muttered something and laid his palms upwards on the table. His fingers seemed to melt, and then reform. The shiny scarring of deep burns extended upwards to the tips of the fingers from under the sleeves of its matted green sweater. On his right hand two fingers had been burnt and melted into one clumsy claw, and the regrown skin was tight and awkwardly twisted. His left hand had had a hole punched through the palm, making a hollow which had overgrown with new skin.
Maggie gave a yelp of pain, ‘My god, Tornost, have your hands have been like that for four thousand years?’
Tornost looked a little gratified at her sympathy.
‘Do they hurt?’
He looked down at his twisted fingers and nodded.
‘Oh Tornost, you should have said!’ Ishabel was distressed. ‘I never saw your hands properly before; you were always in the dark. Let me see again?’
Reluctantly, the trow stretched his hands out on the table again, and Ishabel looked closely at the scarring. ‘Will you let me try to heal them?’
The trow nodded, with a hesitant expression. Ishabel put her finger on the scar tissue that formed the claw and began to stroke the surface of the skin in criss-cross strokes. Hazel glanced down at the palm of her own hand and realised that Ishabel was recreating the creases running between the fingers.
Tornost suddenly yelped and pulled his hand back. He flexed the fingers cautiously, then more strongly, and grinned.
He thrust the other hand forward. ‘This one too?’
Ishabel began again. Maggie raised her eyebrows at him.
‘Thank you,’ he said belatedly, a little gruffly.
When his other finger was released, Tornost could not seem to stop opening and closing his hands. He was grinning widely, and when he got down from his chair, jumping to the ground, he bobbed his head to Ishabel and to Atropos.
‘Thank you for your gift,’ he said formally.
‘You’re welcome. The damage had stabilised so I could restore most of what you’d lost. I wish you had shown us before. Come and find me next time,’ Ishabel said. ‘There’s na need to suffer.’
‘My gift is not yet given,’ Atropos said firmly. ‘You will ask me, when you know what it is, and what I can give.’
Maggie had been rummaging in the kitchen cupboards while Ishabel was working. ‘I’ve made you a packet of fruit cake and bannock, Tornost,’ she said, returning to the table. ‘Thank you for your stories; they were instructive, and most helpful. We’ll see you again.’ She gave him the packet.
The trow looked sideways at her and sighed. His large ears drooped, and his expression grew mournful. ‘Na whisky?’
‘No,’ Maggie said with firmness. ‘Off you go.’
Ishabel had brought his voluminous coat back in, holding it well away from her face. Tornost sighed as he pulled it on, then he turned and waggled a newly flexible finger at Atropos.
‘I’ll see you again, Nornie,’ he warned. ‘I’ll be watching for you.’
When the trow had gone, Ishabel bolted the front door behind it. Maggie was opening the kitchen windows.
‘That coat smelt like fresh nappies in a brewery on a hot day,’ she muttered.
Ishabel sat down limply. ‘His hands were a mess. I had to move a lot of things around to get the fingers free without breaking the skin. I hope what I did doesn’t affect their musculature.’
‘You were brilliant,’ Hazel said earnestly.
‘I have never,’ Maggie said, ‘been in a trow’s company for that long before. It was amazing. How did you meet him before, Hazel? I didn’t want to ask when he was here. He didn’t hurt you, did he?’
‘No, he came to see what we were digging in the job I had before this, down near Scalloway where I first met you. And then he did the thing with the glamour. I looked like I was in a dress from Queen Anne’s day. I had to curtsey to him, and he said something in French!’
Maggie roared with laughter. ‘Tornost has a thing for eighteenth-century manners. I wonder why? He’s been around for long enough to have a favourite period for human social interaction, obviously.’
‘I’ve had enough wonders for one day,’ Hazel said, embarrassed. ‘I have to get to my bed. I’ve got a massive stone to lift tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ Maggie said. ‘Ishabel, you might want to be around for that, in case Tornost forgets himself. I’ll be taking Atropos and the shears to the Feather Haa, so they won’t be here to distract him.’
‘The shears! Atropos, are you able to show us the shears, now the trow has gone? Just for a wee look?’ Hazel asked.
Atropos brought out the shears from their safe place on her lap, and placed them on the table. Her hands lay possessively over their handles. Under the glare of the kitchen light the blades were a stony grey, rather than the deep oily black they had seemed in the strange golden glow they had emitted under the stone. The silver and ivory handles were delicate, worn smooth and shining in some places, blackened with tarnish in others. But all the pieces were twisted and out of shape, as if they’d been melted in fire. Only the blades retained a single true line.
The three witches gazed at them.
‘They look like grape scissors designed by someone who thought that grapes had to be cut from wire. Or garden shears for metal grass. They do weird things to my eyes. As if I were wearing your glasses, Ishabel. They keep moving into and then out of focus,’ Maggie said.
They seemed too sharp, too deadly. Hazel found herself thinking of surgical instruments. She shivered. How many life threads had they cut?
Atropos heard her thought, and smiled at her, faintly. She moved the shears back onto her lap, and the room felt less chilled.
Ishabel got up. ‘Maggie, help me get your sofabed ready. Atropos will sleep in the spare room. Hazel, away home with you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Episode 10.1 will follow.
The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.
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