Enormous hairy Stoick the Vast burst into tears.
‘Oh for Thor’s sake, Stoick,’ cried Old Wrinkly,
bossily pushing Stoick out of the way. ‘Will you just
SHUT UP and listen to me? I’m really not that bad a
soothsayer. This has nothing to do with the Doomfang.’
He took Hiccup’s pulse, and looked under his eyelids,
and tapped his chest, which had turned as wooden as a
tree trunk. ‘This is VORPENTITIS.’
Stoick reeled back. ‘And what does that mean?’
he whispered through white lips.
‘It means,’ said Old Wrinkly, ‘that one little
weirdo looks very like another when you’re soothsaying
in a fire, and it was HICCUP who was bitten by the
Vorpent, and not Fishlegs. So HICCUP has Vorpentitis.
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And that means that since it is now…’
(At this point Old Wrinkly reached into Hiccup’s
breast pocket, hoping to draw out the potato, and in fact
drew out the ticking metal thingummy. He looked at the
numbers on it and nodded his head.)
‘… oooh exactly five to ten in the morning on
Freya’sday Friday!’ continued Old Wrinkly, laying the
metal thingummy carefully on the bed beside Hiccup,
‘your son, Hiccup, who has Vorpentitis, has five minutes
to live.’
Old Wrinkly chuckled. This didn’t seem to be
worrying him much.
‘Which wouldn’t give a great deal of time for us
to find an antidote. But luckily,’ said Old Wrinkly, in
the spirit of a conjuror, ‘luckily, on your son’s so-called
stupid useless quest for NOTHING, he has brought
back the antidote with him ALREADY. Camicazi,
where is the potato? It doesn’t seem to be here in
Hiccup’s pocket… Have you got it?’
Camicazi was as white as One Eye’s back. She
shook her head numbly. ‘No… potato,’ she gasped.
Old Wrinkly’s mouth fell open, appalled.
‘NO POTATO?’ shrieked Old Wrinkly. ‘WHAT
DO YOU MEAN, NO POTATO? YOU MUST
HAVE THE POTATO!!!’
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Camicazi shook her head again. ‘No potato,’ she
whispered.
‘But I was so sure,’ whispered Old Wrinkly. ‘I
was so sure you would bring back the potato… This is
the last time I believe a single word those beastly fires
say… they told me DEFINITELY that you would
get it…’
‘Oh, we got it all right,’ mumbled Camicazi
miserably. ‘It was just that the Doomfang ATE it.’
‘Oh, my goodness,’ gulped Old Wrinkly.
NO POTATO.
Suddenly Old Wrinkly looked every second of his
ninety-three years. His whole body crumpled up like an
old brown leaf.
Little did Hiccup know, when he was crying on
the boat for his friend Fishlegs, that he should have been
crying for himself.
For it was indeed HICCUP who had been stung
all those many months ago, escaping from the Fortress
of Sinister.
And it was Hiccup who was now moments away
from the death he feared for his friend Fishlegs.
‘WHAT CAN I DO?’ roared Stoick the Vast.
‘There must be other cures? Other medicines?’
Old Wrinkly shook his head. ‘The potato is the
only cure for Vorpentitis.’
‘I’LL BRING BACK THE POTATO!’ cried
Stoick the Vast, drawing his sword, a Man of Action to
the last. ‘JUST TELL ME WHERE TO GO AND
HOW LONG I’VE GOT!’
‘Well,’ said Old Wrinkly sadly, ‘the nearest potato
is now roughly three-and-a-half-thousand miles away
on the distant shores of the country known as America
to those who may believe in it. And you have…’ Old
Wrinkly checked the clock sitting next to Hiccup’s bed,
‘… exactly THREE minutes to find it.’
Even Stoick seemed to feel that perhaps this
might be a problem.
He strode round the room, tearing at his beard.
Old Wrinkly, Camicazi and One Eye sat at
Hiccup’s bedside.
One Eye didn’t seem as happy as he might have
been two days ago at the thought of one less Human in
the world.
A big tear rolled out of his one eye and down his
Sabre-Tooth and plopped on to the ground.
Hiccup was stiff as a board, and his body was
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now red, and boiling hot. Toothless licked his poor red
face, to try to cool it down.
‘THE DOOMFANG!’ cried Stoick the Vast.
‘I COULD TRACK DOWN THE DOOMFANG
AND WRESTLE THE POTATO FROM HIM!’
‘You’re going to find the Doomfang in the vast
and trackless wastes of an immense and fathomless
Ocean,’ said Old Wrinkly wearily, checking the time
again on the clock, ‘in TWO minutes?’
‘Face it, Stoick,’ whispered Old Wrinkly. ‘What
you’re talking about is not just im-PROBABLE… it’s
im-POSSIBLE…’
Fishlegs had drawn back into the shadows, and
he was watching his friend’s face.
Hiccup was trying to say something, but his
frozen, burning mouth made it difficult for him to say
the words.
In fact he looked very like the Doomfang, when
he was trying to speak to Hiccup out on the Sullen Sea.
‘Ooot me…’ mumbled Hiccup desperately.
‘OOOOOT ME!’ and he tried to point, but his arms were
as stiff as if they were made out of wood.
Old Wrinkly patted his hand, and bathed
his forehead with water. Stoick’s shoulders heaved
with sobs.
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‘OOOOT ME!’ cried poor Hiccup again.
Fishlegs tried to follow where his friend’s eyes
were looking, and it seemed like they were staring at the
table by the door.
On that table lay Hiccup’s furry coat and his
helmet, bow and arrows that he had thrown there when
he first came in the room.
‘One minute left,’ whispered Old Wrinkly.
‘OOOOOOOOOOT ME!’ repeated Hiccup
desperately.
Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows
what we mean when we try to speak.
Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us,
and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and
tries to understand.
Fishlegs understood.
He didn’t know why he was supposed to do what
he was about to do, but he trusted Hiccup, who always
seemed to know the right thing to do.
Fishlegs picked up Hiccup’s bow.
Out of the arrow-case he drew an arrow, a
singularly beautiful arrow, decorated with feathers from
birds Fishlegs had never seen before.
Fishlegs fitted the arrow to the bow, and pointed
the bow towards Hiccup.
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Stoick looked up from his sobbing, in
amazement. Here was his son, moments away from
dying, and that weird fish-faced friend of his appeared to
be about to SHOOT him. TYPICAL. What a nutcase.
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cried Stoick. ‘DON’T SHOOT!’
Stoick threw his vast bulk across t
he room in an
attempt to shield his son from the arrow.
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Of course, he was trying to protect Hiccup’s heart and
chest. He didn’t realise what an appalling shot Fishlegs
was, so he jumped far too high.
Fishlegs let the arrow
go, and it soared in a wobbly
unsteady arc, finally landing in
Hiccup’s right big toe, piercing
through his wet boots, and into
the skin.
It was a bit of a miracle it hit
Hiccup at all. In fact, it may just be
the only time Fishlegs has EVER
hit something he was actually
aiming at.
The arrow that pierced the
skin of Hiccup’s big toe at ten o’clock
on the morning of Freya’sday Friday was the same arrow
that had been soaking for the last fifteen years in the
magical juices of THE POTATO.
Over the past decade and a half, those juices
had concentrated on the surface of the metal, and the
antidote now made its way into Hiccup’s bloodstream,
taking its cooling, healing work up every little vein, down
every little artery, into every little corner of Hiccup’s
poor, rigid, boiling little body.
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In front of their eyes, Hiccup’s stiff arms
softened. His chest rose and fell. The breath blew out of
his nostrils, and his eyes opened.
‘Hello, Father,’ said Hiccup.
This was just too much for Stoick. He fainted
dead away, on the spot, all six-foot-seven and three feet
round of him, and it took a great deal more trouble to
revive HIM.
He was out cold, and Old Wrinkly slapped him,
and Hiccup shook him, and Camicazi tickled his feet,
and eventually it was Fishlegs who ran out and filled
an enormous bucket full of snow, and threw it right in
Stoick’s face. That brought him to his senses, and Stoick
sat bolt upright, spluttering and spitting snow out of
his beard.
‘You’re ALIVE!’ he shouted joyfully, and he
hugged his son so hard Hiccup thought his ribs might
crack. ‘By the Bristly Beard and Thunderous Thighs of
Great Goddess Freya, you’re ALIVE!’
‘He is alive,’ said Old Wrinkly pointedly, ‘and I
think some apologies are in order.’
Stoick’s brows lowered. However relieved and
happy he is, a Great Chieftain used to absolute power
does not like to apologise, but after a short struggle,
Stoick swallowed his pride.
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‘You are right,’ said Stoick. ‘I have been
thoroughly wrong, and I am sorry. Old Wrinkly, you are
not the most pathetic soothsayer in the uncivilised world,
and I am sorry I ever said you were. Hiccup, you were
right to go on the quest for the Frozen Potato to try and
save the life of your odd little friend.’
Stoick turned to Fishlegs.
‘And most of all, FISHEGGS,’ he boomed
solemnly, ‘I have misjudged YOU.’
Fishlegs blushed. ‘No, no,’ he stammered.
‘Yes,’ said Stoick, holding up a hairy hand. ‘I
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have. A Chief has to be big enough to admit it when he
is wrong. You are a little weirdo, it is true, but you are a
LOYAL little weirdo, and one day when my son is
Chief I have a feeling he will need some loyal people
about him.’
Meanwhile, Toothless, who really couldn’t stand
all this soppy hugging and apologising, flapped away to
find a nice warm spot by the fire.
‘Hiccup,’ Toothless called out sleepily, when he
had found himself a particularly cosy position, ‘issa
anyone else gonna d-d-die inna next f-f-five minutes?’
Hiccup laughed, and he asked Old Wrinkly.
‘No,’ said Old Wrinkly solemnly. ‘I have
examined the fire very carefully, and I can say,
absolutely DEFINITELY, that NOBODY is going to
die in the next five minutes. However, Gobber the
Belch, I’m afraid, will catch Fishlegs’s cold, and it’s a
nasty one.’
‘OK then,’ yawned Toothless. ‘Iffa no one need
T-t-toothless, Toothless go
back to sleep.’
So just when the
Inner Isles were waking up
from the coldest, longest
winter in a hundred years,
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when the snow was melting, when all the other hunting
dragons were opening their eyes underground preparing
to burrow upward, and spring was eventually deciding it
was time to arrive, just at this moment, Toothless
FINALLY relaxed and went back into Hibernation Sleep.
One Eye settled down next to him, snoring like a
dinosaur with sinus problems.
Old Wrinkly began to explain to Stoick some of
the finer points of soothsaying.
And Hiccup and his good friends Fishlegs and
Camicazi wandered outside to spend the rest of the day
not doing very much at all – my favourite kind of day.
As for Gobber the Belch, why Gobber the Belch
woke up with a throbbing head and sore throat and a nose
that ran like a great green river.
So it appears that Vikings DO catch colds after all…
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229
232
EPILOGUE BY HICCUP
HORRENDOUS HADDOCK THE
THIRD, THE LAST OF THE
GREAT VIKING HEROES
I guessed, but never knew for sure, what had happened in
that strange frozen moment in my childhood, when the
Doomfang stole my potato.
But many years later, when I was a tall young man
in command of my first ship and we were just returning
home from some wild and dangerous adventure, we
suddenly realised that we were being followed by
something. For days and days it followed us, always
staying at the same distance behind the boat. I spent
hours up the mast watching the black pin-prick on
the horizon and trying to work out what it was, whale
or shark or dragon monster, friend or foe, with some
nagging feeling at the back of my mind that this was
something I recognised from somewhere in my past.
It wasn’t until we entered the Sullen Sea that the
creature came right up close. It was immediately clear
from its glossy dark colour that it was a Doomfang. It
didn’t attack us, as I had been secretly dreading, but
began to play with the boat, swimming alongside, diving
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underneath and coming up the other side, getting nearer
and nearer with each circle that it made.
This is common enough behaviour in dolphins,
and even in humpback whales, who are fascinated by
boats, and will play like this for hours. But it is hugely
unusual in a Doomfang. Doomfangs normally have the
same attitude towards humans that we have toward
insects: they loftily ignore us.
But this Doomfang was different. Even though
it was clearly a fully grown animal, at least five times
as long and as big as our ship, it played with us like a
child, swimming r
ound and round the boat, until finally
the great creature gave a mighty thrash with its tail and
soared out of the water, spreading wide its wings. It
jumped right over the ship, just clearing the mast.
My Warriors gasped in awe and fear and
amazement and wonder, as the great long body blocked
out the sun, and I gasped too, for I recognised the
animal at last. This was my Doomfang, not slain, not
dead, not gone away, but in the very pink of health, and
it seemed rather pleased with itself, and with me.
For when it entered the water on the other
side, the great Doomfang tucked its legs up neatly and
entered the water at exactly the right angle, so that it
would not cause a single ripple to rock our little boat.
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And when the creature swam alongside, so close now
that we could reach out and touch its glistening raven
black sides, it rolled on to its back and moved its wing
almost like it was waving, and its terrible mouth seemed
to be grinning at me.
That very same Doomfang has followed my boat
ever after, not like a Doom or a Curse, but more like a
guardian angel.
I have lost count of the times when I have been
out at sea in the most dreadful peril (for we Vikings lead
dangerous and exciting lives) and just at the moment
when all hope is lost, the Doomfang has appeared.
That Doomfang has steered my boat through
the Great Storm that drowned a thousand ships in the
Restless West Sea, it has rescued me from shipwreck on
Cannibal Isle, it has fought great Monsters that had my
ship wrapped around with their squids’ tentacles like a
cat’s-cradle.
It has returned the favour I once did it of saving
its life in a cold, cold world, a hundred times over.
It is following me still, even though I don’t need
rescuing so much now I am old and slow as a great
sea turtle, and my hair is as white as a Semi-Spotted
Snowpecker.
You can Cheat a Dragon’s Curse.
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You do not have to accept the hand that Fate has
dealt you.
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse Page 12
