‘Oh,’ snorted Arrogance, ‘you’re deluded! Always
looking on the bright side. He’s clearly dead.’
At that, Hiccup felt overwhelmed. He sank down,
crying, on the sand.
The Deadly Shadow cried too.
Even Camicazi and the Stormfly cried, and they
never cried.
Hiccup could feel the wet sand below him, the
red of the asthma potion that he had broken seeping
into the front of his dragonskin fire-suit.
He cried until he was a little empty cried-out rag
lying on the sand, the front of him now stained red.
A light rain was falling on him now. He could feel
the sand below him getting a little wetter, as if the tide
was going to rise.
GO BACK.
Something inside was speaking to him.
Go back and find the Jewel.
Become the King.
Do it for Fishlegs and everyone like him.
Defiantly, Hiccup dried his eyes with the edge of
his sleeve.
He put the broken remains of Fishlegs’ lobster-
pot on his back, and staggered blindly towards the
Deadly Shadow dragon.
Without a word, Camicazi was doing the same.
But then they stopped dead, for the Deadly
Shadow was having an argument with itself again.
‘If this Fissshlegssss is dead,’ hissed Arrogance,
‘then we no longer need keep our promise about the
lobster-necklace.’
‘But Fisshlegsss may not be dead!’ said
Innocence. (Neither Arrogance nor Patience looked
very convinced by this argument.) ‘And this boy is a
friend of this Fisshlegsssss,’ argued Innocence.
Patience was still undecided.
‘The boy seeks the Jewel,’ hissed Arrogance.
‘And the Jewel must never fall into human hands…
‘If we kill him, at least we keep our promise to
the Dragon Furious, and the Jewel will be safe. For
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look, the human race is not capable of using such
power wisely. In the end it can only destroy…’
Now Arrogance knew he had won the day.
The three heads narrowed their eyes and turned
towards Hiccup.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Hiccup.
The three heads were lowered, dangerous.
Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.
The Deadly Shadow crept forward.
And fell to the ground with a shriek.
20. OH DEAR
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
And that doesn’t really cover it.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh DEAR.
You would have thought that you had heard the
worst of it, wouldn’t you, that Hiccup had had all that
he could take. But, OH DEAR.
It’s the little details we should not forget, the little
things that catch us up, and trip us. The Warriors of
the Wilderwest always set the dragon-traps in twos. so
that if some other poor dragon landed beside to help
another, then it would get caught too.
SNAP! The second trap snapped shut, catching
the Deadly Shadow in its cruel jaws.
The Deadly Shadow put back its heads and
howled the truly dreadful howl that a dragon howls
when it is caught in a trap. It is an awful sound, for a
dragon is a wild creature of the air, and so its horror of
being trapped is such a ghastly wail of ultimate despair
it is almost unbearable.
These howls were multiplied three times, and
the dragon sent out great bolts of lightning all around
it – north, south, east and west – with such randomness
that Hiccup and Camicazi had to duck behind the
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sand-yacht. (Not that this would have been much good
to them if the Deadly Shadow had scored a direct
hit with a lightning bolt, but it’s a sort of automatic
reaction thing.)
The dragon howled and thrashed but it could not
work its foot free.
Hiccup put his head above the edge of the sand-
yacht and shouted, ‘I can free your foot from the
dragon-trap if you let me come near!’
And then ducked as a lightning bolt came singing
over the top of his head, and there was a smell of burnt
hair.
There was silence for a second, apart from the
sound of the dragon heads arguing among themselves.
At last Patience called out, ‘Come closse then…’
Hiccup stepped gingerly forward. The Deadly
Shadow was lying on its side. It was trembling. Hiccup
swallowed as he saw the trap.
It was immense and one of the most complicated
he had ever seen, a fiendish contraption of clockwork
complexity. It was far more complicated than it even
needed to be to do its dreadful work, almost as if its
maker had been showing off when he designed it.
Hiccup stroked the dragon’s shining
side soothingly.
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‘I can do this…’ he said. ‘I can do this…’
Thank Thor he had spent the last six
months learning how to undo dragon-
traps. Hiccup took off his waistcoat
and knelt by the trap.
Camicazi drew both
swords, and started pacing
around the Deadly
Shadow, just as he had
paced around Hiccup
and Camicazi, earlier
in the day.
21. A STORY FROM THE PAST
The Deadly Shadow was lying very still.
The first head looked up, though, and spoke to
Hiccup, who was working on that dragon-trap quicker
than he had ever worked before.
‘While we are waiting,’ said Innocence, ‘let me
tell you the story of the necklace you wear around
your neck. And then perhaps you can tell it to
Fisshlegs if you find him again.’
‘He cannot find him again,’ said Arrogance flatly.
‘The Fishlegs boy is dead.’
‘Let him tell the story,’ said Patience longingly.
‘Tell it… Tell it, Innocence. Tell it one last time… I
want to remember.’
So Innocence began to speak.
Never had a story been told in stranger
circumstances, the beautiful three-headed dragon
caught in the trap, the red sands and the sense of
danger all around. Hiccup working, working, to free
the dragon.
But in fact the story had a kind of calming
influence on Hiccup. It steadied his shivering hands –
his hands that needed to be steady to unlock this trap.
The comforting, reverberating echo of
Innocence’s voice had a relaxing effect, like that
of some sort of soothing drug. It was almost as if
Innocence was telling the story somewhere safe,
by some Viking fireside, and not in a moment of
desperate peril, out on the red sands, deep in the
territory of the Monster of the Amber Slavelands.
‘Not so long ago we had a human that belonged to
us,’ began Innocence.
‘A human of our very own. Our mistress
was a happy young girl,’ continued Innocence. ‘Half-
Murderous, half–Berserk.’
‘But you never would have guessed the Berserk<
br />
bit,’ Arrogance interrupted, getting suddenly into the
mood of the story. ‘She was so kind and gentle.’
‘Her name was Termagant,’ said Innocence.
‘But it didn’t suit her. She wasn’t what you might
call a natural Murderous, and she found the life of
a Chieftain’s daughter and her fiercely ambitious
father, Chief Moody the Murderous, a bit difficult
to handle, so she often used to escape from her
father’s village on my back, and we would come out
here to explore the islands.
‘This was our secret place.
‘We were already a fully-grown riding-dragon
when we met her, but with her we felt young again.
Even Arrogance. She wasn’t like all the other
Murderous who beat their riding-dragons and kept
them prisoner. Termagant was different. It seemed
like she and us were the very same being, as if our
wings were her wings, as if her heart were our heart.
‘All was happy when she was growing up –
but at that time we did not yet know of the human
failing of falling in LOVE.
‘Termagant fell in love with a poor wandering
fisherman, very handsome, but not the Chieftain’s
Heir her father would have had her marry. Moody
wanted sons of Chiefs with golden axes, not a poor
fisherman, however handsome and loveable he was.
Worse still, she married her fisherman, despite her
father’s anger. And worser still than all of that, the
sea had its way, and one day her husband’s fishing-
boat went out in the middle of a storm and sank to
the bottom of the ocean.’
‘What is it with you humans and love?’ growled
Arrogance. ‘It’s a serious design flaw.’
‘My mistress was so very very unhappy. Better
to have never loved at all, than to shed the tears she
shed. The only thing that kept her going was that
she was carrying her husband’s baby. She would lie,
curled up on the windowsill of her father’s house,
with her head upon my flank, telling me what this
dream baby would be like…
‘He would be tall and handsome like her
husband. He would be a poet like herself. He would
be a Hero (of course), but not a boor like her father
– he would be brave and fearless and yet kind to
animals. Oh such dreams she had for that baby!
‘But dreams and reality can be different, and
most unfortunately when the baby was born, it
turned out to be what the humans call a “runt”.
‘There’s a saying that you humans have, what
is it?’
‘Only the strong can belong?’ said Hiccup
through white lips, fiddling with the locks on the
dragon-trap. ‘Throw out the freak or the Tribe will
be weak? It kind of varies from Tribe to Tribe…’
‘That’s it,’ said Innocence. ‘I never will
understand you humans.
‘Well, Moody the Murderous was most hopping
mad. He said it was a sign that Fate disapproved of
her marriage.
‘He told her he would have to put the baby
in a lobster pot and set it out to sea, according to
tradition, and the gods would see whether it lived or
died.Mostly it died of course. It was very, very rare
for a runt to survive to adulthood.
‘Now, if Termagant had been stronger, she
would have fought her father outright. But grief and
the birth of the baby had made her weak. She made
as if to obey him. But secretly she asked me to follow
the lobster pot, once it had sailed out of sight of the
beach and her father’s stern eyes, and pick up the
baby, and take it here to Hero’s End.
‘ “I will come out and find you when I am strong
enough. Will you make me a promise, Shadow?” said
my mistress. “Promise that you will keep my baby safe
until I can come and join him?”
‘We could not make the human words.
‘But we bowed our heads and bent down low in
front of her to make the promise.
‘ “By our bright-green blood and shining
claws, we will keep your baby safe,” we whispered
in Dragonese, as solemn a promise as a dragon can
make.
‘Termagant was weak, but she smiled, and
stroked our heads. “I trust you absolutely,” she said.
‘Later that afternoon, she stood on the shore of
the beach, poor Termagant, supported by her stern
father, because she was so weak she could barely
stand upright. All around her were the silent and
solemn members of the Murderous Tribe.
‘From around her own neck she took a necklace
made out of a simple lobster claw.
‘Around the baby’s neck she placed the lobster-
claw necklace, just like the one you have around
your own neck. It was the very same lobster claw
that the baby’s father had given her as a love-gift
on their marriage, for he could not afford gold or
amber.
‘The baby looked up at his mother with adoring
eyes and smiled a shy smile.
‘He tried to put his little hand up to his mouth
with fragile, jerky movements, but he had to make a
few attempts before he got it in the right place, and
when he did he sucked thoughtfully on his knuckle.
‘She stroked his cheek and kissed him again,
drinking him in with her eyes as if she might be
seeing him for the very last time.
‘ “Remember,” she whispered.
‘We listened hard, for what mothers say to
their babies when they are about to be parted – well,
that is worth listening to.
‘ “Hold on to this necklace and remember how
much I love you, and that we will meet again one
day, though destiny made us part. This is only a little
absence, a temporary parting. I will come and find you,
on the sweet island of Hero’s End, and then we will be
together for ever.”
‘She closed the baby’s other little fist around
the lobster necklace.
‘And then with shaking hands, she wrapped the
baby tight, and laid him in the lobster pot, tucking
the blanket around him carefully so he wouldn’t be
cold, and she pushed the lobster pot out to sea.
‘The Murderous lit their flares to honour the
moment because it was sort of a funeral, although
the baby was still living. And as was traditional,
they fired burning arrows that landed harmlessly
on either side of the baby’s little craft as it drifted
gently out to sea, and the baby took his knuckle out
of his mouth and made a gurgle of delight, reaching
out his arms as if he thought he could touch the
beautiful flaming arrows as they rained down all
around him.
‘He did not know this was supposed to be his
funeral, but looked about him expectantly – at the
beautiful blue sky above, at the bright and
interesting world that awaited him, the slow arcs of
seagulls flying way, way up high overhead, until the
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sp; very, very gentle rocking of the pillows of the waves
below him, made his eyes… slowly… close, and lulled
him into sleep.
‘The Murderous Tribe were proud, sad and
solemn on the beach. Termagant was crying hard,
and as the little lobster pot crept further and further
out to sea on the back of each gentle wave, she
staggered up the beach back to the Murderous
village, supported by the arm of her proud unbending
father. The Murderous Tribe followed.
‘We had been sitting there all this time, a great
camouflaged statue, noticed by none, lying at the
back of the beach.
‘Now was our moment. We leapt into the air,
over the heads of the departing crowd, invisible to
their eyes, although a few may have looked up as the
breeze from our wings caught the hairs on the back
of their necks.
‘Termagant looked up. We saw her look up,
and she smiled through her tears, and she stood
straight up – though it was hard for her, she was so
weak – and made the Viking salute, and cried out,
“Remember! We’ll meet again!”
‘Moody looked up too, surprised, but all HE
saw was the clouds and the winds and the screaming
seagulls. Over their heads we flew, off towards the
little speck of the baby, far out to sea now and only
a tiny speck on the horizon.
‘We can still see the sea, now,’ said Innocence.
‘I can see it,’ said Patience, looking back into
the past. ‘I remember it like it was yesterday.’
‘Me too,’ said Arrogance.
‘Flat as glass it was,’ said Innocence, ‘and
the baby was quietly sleeping in his little lobster-
boat, drifting eastwards. Nearer, nearer we got
with our quiet, ghost wings, flying high over the
bay. Our dragon eyes are as acute as our dragon
ears. Nobody’s senses are more acute than a Deadly
Shadow’s. We were still far away but we could see,
way down below us, that there was not even a lap of
water coming over the edge to wet the blanket that
wrapped him. He was sleeping so peacefully, with his
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Page 14
