Valhalla…’ whispered Hiccup.
Snotlout had taken many wrong turns and done
many bad things, for he was a boy who had been born
out of his time, caught in a world that was changing all
around him, and that is always hard.
But it is through our actions that we show who
we really are.
In the end Snotlout died nobly, trying to do the
right thing in difficult circumstances. And in some ways
he would never die, because his name would live on
forever.
Hiccup looked down for a moment at the Black
Star.
There was no time to think about it now.
His tears were blown away
instantly by the wind
hitting him full in
the face. He
struggled to
keep the ship on course.
‘I have to get to Tomorrow at all costs… I have to
get to Tomorrow… I’ll think about it tomorrow.’
A cold desperation settled on Hiccup as he
pointed the ship ever deeper into the storm.
Please don’t let the Alvinsmen remember the ship.
High among jubilant Bullguards and Alvinsmen,
the witch’s white head turned, like the tick of a clock.
‘The Things… the Lost Things…’ she hissed.
Far down in the Bay, unsteered by human hand
(or so the witch thought), the ship carrying the Lost
Things was sailing straight towards the Winter Wind.
‘The Things!’ screeched the witch. ‘The Things!
Fetch the boy’s body later! We need the Things!’
As one, the Bullguard army wheeled round and
made like daggers for the little ship, now
just a whisper away from
the Wind.
‘Stop that boat!’ screamed the witch. ‘Stop that
boat! If the Things go into the Winter Wind, we will
not find them again in time!’
‘Come ON!’ panted Hiccup, drenched to the
skin, a little drowned rat in Snotlout’s too-big clothes,
‘PLEASE let me get there… Don’t let Snotlout have
died for nothing… PLEASE Woden, great god of the
Wild Ride… let me get there… let me get there…’
Ah, you know you are in desperate circumstances
when your measure of success is casting your boat into
the full strength of the Winter Wind.
But as Doomsday Eve loomed, it was the only
hope now that Hiccup had of reaching the shores of
Tomorrow.
The swarm of Bullguards turned, and the
Alvinsmen shot fiery arrows towards the ship. Their
arrows lit the sails, which instantly burst
into flames.
Hiccup slammed the tiller to the left, swerving to
make himself more difficult to catch… the boat shifted
wildly underneath him, and hit a great wave that
slammed her up on her left-hand side.
One of the Alvinsmen generals was riding a
Gorebluffer. Gorebluffers swallow large stones, which
they can then use as projectiles.
The Gorebluffer swooped heavily
above the little
ship, just a whisper away from the Wind, and dropped
three large stones the size of cupboards, right on the
deck.
CRUUNNNNNNCH!
With a sickening sound of breaking wood, the
little ship split in two.
One half, the half containing the Lost Things,
sank instantly.
The other, with Hiccup still at the tiller, drifted
on towards the Wind.
DOWN the Lost Things fell, down to the ocean
floor.
‘We got them!’ shrieked the witch. ‘Dive for the
Lost Things, Bullguards!’
(Do not fear for Toothless, dear reader. Even
though he is inside a cage, Toothless is a dragon, so he
has gills and he can breathe underwater just as easily
as he can on land. And if the witch gets him – and she
may – she will not hurt him, because he is the last Lost
Thing. And he is the Best One.)
Hiccup had been hit by something, and the cut
was bleeding into his eyes so he could not see. He was
barely conscious, and mercifully unaware that he had
already lost the Things.
The half of the boat he was still steering had
almost completely sunk, but he hadn’t even realised.
He was still holding on to the tiller, the lower half of his
body submerged in the water.
He was muttering to himself: ‘Into the Wind…
into the Wind… I have to get into the Wind…
‘Don’t worry, Toothless…’ he said, in his
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delirium, ‘don’t worry… it’s fine… I’m going to get us
into the Wind… I’ll get us there…’
Way in the distance, Camicazi and Fishlegs,
seated on the back of the Deadly Shadow, had seen
the whole drama unfold, had seen what they thought
was Hiccup hit in the chest and fall to the sea, had seen
the boat with the Lost Things on it holed just before it
went into the Wind, and the witch’s Bullguards diving
in triumph.
‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’ screamed
Fishlegs.
One of the Bullguards had already flown up to
give Alvin the key-that-opens-all-locks. It was only a
matter of time before they found the other Things.
‘No…’ wept Fishlegs in horror. ‘It’s not
possible…’
Camicazi was white.
‘No it isn’t possible, Fishlegs,’ muttered
Camicazi. ‘Hiccup is not dead. I would know it if he
were. I KNOW I would know it, if he were… I would
feel it in my soul…’
Hiccup was not dead, although neither his
friends nor his enemies could see him. He was blindly
struggling in the water, hanging on to the sad remnants
of the boat.
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And then Hiccup was swallowed up by the
Winter Wind of Woden. He and his pathetic broken
ship were whirled away on the force and rapidity of the
tempest, like a tiny piece of bark swept up by a tidal
wave.
Hiccup went into the Wind.
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21. DOOMSDAY EVE ON
TOMORROW
During the night, the Winter Wind of Woden wailed
like a banshee across Wrecker’s Bay and all the way
down towards the blasted, cursed island of Tomorrow.
Early the following morning, Doomsday Eve,
the witch and Alvin and all of their Alvinsmen were
gathered on the Singing Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift,
at the bottom of the Murderous Islands.
A light snow was falling.
The witch had also brought along Gobber and
those Dragonmarkers re-captured at the end of the
Battle Under the Waterfall the previous night.*
The witch wanted them to witness Alvin’s
triumph before they were executed, so they were
standing – sad, chained prisoners-of-war – at the back
of the crowd.
The Alvinsmen were excited but extremely
nervous.
Many men and women over the past hundred
years had come to the Singing Sands of the Ferryman’s
Gift carrying false Things, hoping, like poor foolish
>
UG the Uglithug, that they might trick the Guardian
Protectors into crowning them King of the Wilderwest.
*It was twenty-six Dragonmarkers versus thousands of Alvinsmen, so the
outcome of the battle was not a surprise. Only Camicazi and Fishlegs had
got away, on the back of the invisible Deadly Shadow
All those would-be Kings, along with all of their foolish
followers, had died here on this spot, on this very
beach.
A place where so many unhappy things have
happened in the past seems to retain a memory of that
misery. The Singing Sands may have sung once, long
before the days of Grimbeard the Ghastly.
But now they sang no more.
Instead a Curse seemed to slouch about those
shores, as if it were a live thing looking for prey. An
overpowering sense of evil hung there like some dense
and heavy mist, and even the witch, an evil thing
herself, found the shivering terrors ripple through the
sparse hairs on her half-bald head as they waited where
so many would-be Kings had risked their lives and lost.
‘I can see the Ferryman! Check the Things…’
hissed Alvin, his eyes flicking nervously. ‘We have
got all ten of them, haven’t we?’
The witch checked the Things
once again with a shaking
chicken-bone finger.
Yes, there were still ten of them, just as there had
been when she had looked two minutes earlier.
‘Stop fidgeting, Alvin,’ scolded the witch. ‘And
let’s get your Crown straight.’
She adjusted the Crown so that it sat more
handsomely on Alvin’s head.
They had settled the Throne in the middle of the
empty beach and Alvin was sitting on it, adorned with
all of the other Lost Things, so he looked splendid – or
slightly ridiculous, depending on your point of view.
The witch bit her lip until it bled, for she knew
how crucial it was that they had got this right.
One single mistake meant death for
them all.
She
counted the Things
one more time,
ve-e-e-ery slowly, just to
make absolutely sure.
‘Hmmmff,’ said the sad little
voice of Toothless from his cage, which was
covered with a black cloth to drown out the noise
of his singing. ‘You have t-t-trouble counting to ten.
T-t-toothless can count to one hundred m-m-million.
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One hundred m-m-million bottles h-h-hanging on a
wall…’ Poor Toothless was just trying to cheer himself
up by being cheeky, for he was frightened, and tired.
‘Shurrup, you horrible little dragon!’ hissed the
witch, balling her clawed hands into fists. She was
absolutely dying to do something dreadful to him, but
of course she needed to keep the little toothless dragon
safe until Alvin was the King.
The Ferryman was approaching. The waiting
Alvinsmen could see a little speck of a boat setting
out from the distant shore of Tomorrow, moving
through the mist, climbing up and dropping down each
white-topped wave towards them, nearer… nearer…
NEARER…
But the Ferryman’s boat was not the only boat in
Hero’s Gap that day.
As the first rays of morning sun began to rise,
they dispersed the mists to reveal the ships of Stoick
and the other Dragonmarkers, sailing out from their
underground hideout in Coral Beach like enchanted
ghosts, and they too were heading towards the Singing
Sands.
The witch looked out to sea, and licked her
wicked gums in glee.
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‘You’re too late!’ she gloated. ‘Too late, Stoick,
you galumphing idiot. My Alvin will be the King
now…’
Slowly the Ferryman’s boat approached.
‘Faster!’ screamed the witch, casting a nervous
eye towards the approaching Dragonmarker ships.
A superstitious part of her still feared that the
Dragonmarkers might, in some last-minute battle, take
the Things.
The witch gave a shriek of joy as the blindfolded
Ferryman carefully placed his oars inside the boat,
drifted into shore and came to a stop on the sand.
His sixth sense told this Druid Guardian that
he had company on the beach. He climbed out of the
boat and strode towards the Alvinsmen waiting on the
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Singing Sands.
He stopped directly in front of Alvin cowering on
the Throne, so close that that Alvin had to tip his head
up to stare into the Druid Guardian’s blindfolded face,
which was alarming because of the Guardian’s pitiless
lack of expression.
The witch was desperate to tell the Druid
Guardian to hurry up, for she was worried about those
approaching ships of the Dragonmark. But something
about the Guardian stopped her from interrupting.
It was quite rare for the witch to meet something or
somebody who was more frightening than herself. So
she bit her bloodied lip and kept quiet, though it nearly
killed her to do so.
The Guardian stretched his arms up to the
heavens and cried:
‘He-or-She-Who-Would-Be-King, approach
Tomorrow if you dare!
‘Only the One with the King’s Lost Things can be
crowned the King and live…’
The Guardian slowly tipped his head downward
to Alvin.
‘Are you He-Who-Would-Be-King?’ he asked.
Alvin swallowed convulsively. He was regretting
having come here at all.
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‘I am,’ replied Alvin in a kingly squeak.
‘Are you the chosen representative of all the
Tribes of the Archipelago?’ asked the Druid Guardian.
‘HE IS!’ yelled the Alvinsmen, drowning out the
Dragonmarker prisoners-of-war, who of course were
shouting: ‘NO!’
‘We have a few little dissenters with us…’
explained the witch nervously.
The Druid Guardian inclined his head. ‘As long
as the candidate is elected by the majority, that is
sufficient.
‘Have you brought a Gift for the Ferryman?’
asked the Druid Guardian.
‘I have,’ gulped Alvin.
‘Then show me the Things,’ said the Guardian.
There was no change in the Guardian’s tone, but
something told Alvin that he had perhaps been a little
presumptuous to arrive wearing the Things, and sitting
on the Throne, when he hadn’t yet been accepted as
the future King.
So with cringing humility and whispered
apologies, Alvin took all the Things off. He laid them
on the beach in front of the Guardian, and backed
away from the Throne, babbling: ‘My mother assures
me that they are the correct Things, Your Worship, and
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I am taking her word for it, so I hope that if anything
by any chance happens to be wrong, or unacceptable
in any way, Your Honour will have mercy o
n me on
account of its being an honest mistake, and know that
the blame lies firmly at the feet of my mother who—’
The Guardian turned his blindfolded head
towards Alvin just a tiny bit.
‘If the gifts are unacceptable,’ said the Druid
Guardian, ‘the Guardian Protectors of Tomorrow will
rise and kill you all.’
‘Oh…’ said Alvin.
Alvin shut up.
One by one, the Druid Guardian ran his fingers
over the Things.
He passed his hand reverently over the seat of the
Throne with its bloodstain, Hiccup the Second’s blood,
dark brown now with age but still spreading there like a
flower.
He took up the smashed ticking-thing. He held
it to his ear. It was still ticking: a broken, tiny, valiant
tick.
He took the cover off the cage that contained
Toothless.
He took a struggling, weeping Toothless out of
his cage, and he examined him carefully, even gently
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putting his finger for a moment into Toothless’s mouth
to feel his gums. He did not jump or pull away when
Toothless bit him hard enough to cause a wound that
bled profusely.
‘T-T-Toothless not belong to Alvin,’ wept
Toothless. ‘Toothless is H-H-Hiccup’s dragon…’
‘It does not matter who you belong to,’ said
the Guardian, and the witch started, for the Druid
Guardian was speaking to the little dragon in
Dragonese. ‘All that matters is who has brought you
here.
‘Sleep now, little dragon,’ said the Druid
Guardian. Poor Toothless had been so upset and
hysterical about being kidnapped that he had not slept
at all that night, but when the Guardian spoke in that
calm, hypnotic tone, he yawned and fell instantly to
sleep, as suggestible as the Hogfly.
The Guardian draped the cloth back over the
cage.
The Druid Guardian took a very long time
examining the rest of the Things.
The witch was so consumed with anxiety that she
accidentally bit one of her own fingernails, which was a
mistake as they were poisoned, and so they gave her a
How To Train Your Dragon: How to Betray a Dragon's Hero Page 18
