The Shetland Witch, or Atropos Wants Her Shears Back 1.1
Episode 1.1. In which Hazel finds one big stone too many on an excavation site.
Chapter 1
Hazel Warsi hoped very much that she would not catch the stones moving around the field. Not again. She lay stretched out over a bank of peat, scraping gently in the lee of a hill on the edge of a broad glen in Weisdale in April, in the west of mainland Shetland. From the top of the hill above the dig the views of the jagged skerries in the sea to the south and west were astounding.
The wind blew so sharply across her face that it filled her eyes with tears. She leaned on her elbow to tug her knitted hat out from her fleece pocket, and pulled it on.
The wall she was uncovering was a pale grey, beautiful, ancient drystone walls. She thought that when they could see all the stonework, the walls would curve around to trace the circular living space of a Neolithic house. There might be bones, maybe some shell jewellery. More likely there would be pieces of pottery. She was hoping for stone tools. She was trying not to think about the larger stones, on the periphery of her vision, of what they might be doing.
She turned her face towards Martin. ‘How long till it rains again?’
‘Maybe an hour? The weather radar was vague.’
Martin was a very new archaeologist, lanky and pale, his red head cropped to show off the piercings in his ears. This was his first job, but he was the local man. His accent was close to Hazel’s own, but it was substantially different as well.
‘Shetland vowels are turned just a peerie bit further north,’ he’d said, that first evening in the pub, after Fintan had lectured them about lithic scatters.
‘Move over a minute.’
Hazel rolled sideways so Martin could take photos of the latest exposed section of stonework. She rolled back and squinted again at the grey stone wall.
She returned to excavating with steady movements, a few scrapes at a time with the small pointed trowel. She wielded it like a razor up and down, cutting away the fragments of soil from the cheeks of the stones. The wind was dropping now, and the spring sun was beginning to warm her back through her muddy fleece. Early bog cotton flowers were dancing above the brown surfaces around her, and bees hovered, searching for flowers in the thick green grass around the peat stacks. There was a standing stone at head height on the seaward side of the site, and sheep grazed at the base of another stone on the other side of the fence.
Hazel was thirty years old, moving from one precarious short-term excavation contract to another. Her sea-green hat covered her short black hair completely. Her eyes were a deeper brown than her face, and she wore neat silver earrings, one embossed with a trowel, the other with a bucket. There were things at the back of her mind that she ought to be attending to, like looking for a new job, or turning her PhD thesis into a book that nobody would read.
Instead, she was thinking about magic.
A stone had caught her attention two nights ago. It was a big one, the size of a fridge, sitting at the edge of the excavation site. It was round and grey, with one side smeared with dried reddish soil as if it had been rolled recently. It was squat. There was nothing at all the matter with it.
Except that it shouldn’t have been there.
Hazel had been checking the site before locking the gate behind her. She was securing tarpaulins and latching boxes, but idling a little, having nothing to do and nowhere to go. She’d taken her binoculars up the hill to look at the voe and the archipelago beyond. A fishing boat was chugging out towards Foula in search of mackerel. Terns squabbled above her head, and flew back to the seashore below, and she could see the faint beginnings of another stunning sunset. It was the sort of evening where a beer and an extra fleece would have made a perfect end to the day.
Hazel had stopped short at the stone. What was this doing here?
She had thumbed her phone to open the plan of the site and check her position. On the plan there was no stone here. Every object and natural feature had been logged meticulously before they began the dig. There were also photos, and the stone was not in those either.
How could they have missed it? It was big enough to sit on.
Not knowing what else to do, Hazel had continued her slow walk around the site. Then a sense she had almost forgotten had spoken to her. She glanced back.
The stone had gone. A figure now stood in its place, his hands behind his back, scowling at the covered excavation trench at his feet. He was about a metre high, maybe less, wearing an overlong brownish coat and something red underneath, perhaps a long waistcoat. He had no hat, and his yellowish hair was long and wispy, tied into a straggling pigtail with a dark ribbon.
Suddenly, he dropped to the ground, and began crawling on his hands and knees toward the edge of the tarp, sniffing. He had moved as fast as a disturbed spider, as if he were hunting. Back and forth his head swept over the ground, his body nimbly following, always sniffing with his nose close to the soil. Hazel was not scared of spiders but the movements made her feel squeamish. She had been frozen to the spot, not knowing if the creature had seen her or not. He looked filthy and was probably smelly.
Before she could think what to do, the creature had turned in her direction, and saw her standing, watching. Five, maybe six metres separated them, across the expanse of a bright blue tarpaulin.
Episode 1.2 will be along next week.
All text in The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2023.
Please get in touch if you want to reproduce any part of this or any other published episode.
I believe that Urk is a town in Holland.... However, on this occasion it was a vulgar exclamation intending to suggest that "The wall .. was a ... walls." was perhaps not what you had intended to write.
"The wall she was uncovering was a pale grey, beautiful, ancient drystone walls." Urk?