jokes. I gave it to this girl Termagant, the one that I
was romancing at the time. I told her I’d lost the hand
in a nasty fishing accident, and she nursed me back to
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health. The necklace was fit for her, I thought. I wasn’t
going to give her anything NICE… ’
‘What happened to her? The girl, what happened
to her?’
‘Well… I abandoned her,’ said Alvin, as if that
was obvious. ‘As soon as I was well again, and she had
served her purpose. She wasn’t worth ME.’
‘AAAAARRGHHH!’ screamed the Witch.
‘AAARGH! AARRGH! AAAAAARGH! Don’t you
see, you imbecile, the Jewel was hidden INSIDE the
lobster claw? Of course it was! I know it was! You had
it! You had it! And you gave it away!’
For of course, what the Witch was seeing in her
mind’s eye was the final piece of the jigsaw.
Fifteen years ago, Termagant placed her little runt
baby in an old lobster pot, and set it out to sea in the
old barbaric fashion, the way that the Tribes had dealt
with their runts and their unwanted offspring for as
long as the world could remember. Setting them out to
sea, for the sea to deal with them.
And then, just before she pushed the little craft
away, she reached up and took the necklace from
around her neck, and placed it on her baby’s lap. It was
the only thing the poor girl had that the baby’s father,
Alvin, had given her.
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Then she pushed the baby out to sea, like a little
Viking funeral. Not knowing of course, that both the
baby and the craft would survive the journey, cross the
sea and land on the beaches of the little isle of Berk.
The baby of course, was Fishlegs.
And, it could be said, that the lobster claw had
saved his life. For inside the smelly claw was hidden
the last Lost Thing, and like all the Lost Things, it was
almost as if it had been searching for Hiccup, who was
the True Heir to Grimbeard the Ghastly.
That would be impossible of course. How could
that be?
Be that as it may, the hidden Jewel carried the
lobster pot safe across the waves, safe through the
storm, true as a star or a magnet, to the shores of Berk
where the baby Hiccup had just been born.
Perhaps Fishlegs’ mother had instinctively known
that?
Who knows? A mother’s love for her child is so
strong, that sometimes she can know things without
even knowing that she knows them.
All that she knew was that the lobster claw might
keep him safe, and she had been right.
Well, well, well.
Isn’t Fate artistic?
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I have said this before, perhaps, but…
Everything we do, you see, has its consequences
and repercussions, every kind act, and every bad, every
friend we make, and every enemy.
Everything is connected.
Like the complicated interlocking wheels of a
ticking-thing.
In that moment of suspended time, the truth
broke upon Alvin, and he turned deathly white.
‘I had it… I had the Jewel inside my hand and I
threw it away… The most precious Thing I ever had…
and if I hadn’t thrown it away I could have been the
King…’ he groaned.
The Druid Guardian was regarding him with
stern amusement, and he nodded his head. ‘For you
know the price of everything, Alvin, and the value of
nothing. You would have made a very bad King.
‘I may have been blind,’ added the Druid
Guardian, with deep satisfaction, ‘but the X-ray eyes of
the Dragon Guardians must have seen that Hiccup was
carrying the Jewel with him, even when he did not yet
know it himself.’
Fishlegs was white as he listened to this, and
realised what it might mean.
All around him, the Vikings were already
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celebrating, for Hiccup had found
the Jewel… and Fishlegs was over
the moon too, of course, for Hiccup
would be saved and they ALL
would be saved, and it was all
because of Fishlegs and the
fact he had given Hiccup his
lucky lobster claw necklace.
But Fishlegs was feeling some
rather more mixed emotions along with all the joy.
Oh for Thor’s sake. Fifteen years looking for his
father… fifteen years!
And his father turns out to be ALVIN THE
TREACHEROUS?
‘No,’ whispered Fishlegs, white to the lips. ‘It’s
not true… it can’t be true… That man cannot be my
father…’
He felt as if someone had just given him an
enormous present at the same time as punching him
rather violently in the stomach.
‘HE HAS THE JEWEL! HE HAS THE
JEWEL! HICCUP THE KING! HICCUP THE
KING!’ roared the crowd.
‘Thumbnails and Earwax and little Twirly Bits of
Thor!’ cursed the Witch. She was looking really quite
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insane. ‘O Curse you, Destiny!’
The Witch shook her bony fist up at the heavens.
‘How does he do it? It is almost as if those Things
were out there looking for him! As if he were some
kind of horrible Hiccup-shaped magnet…’
What the Witch hadn’t learnt you see, old as she
is, is that Hiccup had acquired these things as a result
of his very own nature. His lifelong kindness to his
good friend Fishlegs is what had led Fishlegs to give
him the lobster claw necklace.
Whereas Alvin’s habitual meanness towards
others is what led him to give it away.
19. AND IT HAUNTS THE
PRESENT IN MORE WAYS
THAN WE THINK…
Hiccup held aloft the Dragon Jewel in one fist.
The Dragon was blinded for a second by the ray
of light hitting the Jewel – saw immediately what it
was and, giving a snort of pure terror, he closed up his
fireholes in the nick of time, before those bolts of flame
could be released.
The Dragon screamed, as if he had been hit by a
gigantic spear, eyes turned black in horror.
And then…
‘The Dragon Jewel,’ he hissed with a terrible
sigh. ‘The real Dragon Jewel…’
‘He’s found it…’ whispered the Wodensfang, his
eyes alight with hope and desperate relief. ‘He’s found
it! Fate is on the side of the good after all…’
In that second the Jewel was in his hand, Hiccup
could feel its power.
The power to rule over the dragons, the power of
life and death. The power to destroy them completely.
‘I have the Jewel, Furious!’ Hiccup shouted.
‘And I know its secret power!’
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The Dragon
paused. A moment caught
out of time.
The destiny of dragons,
caught up in a human hand.
‘Then use it,’ hissed the
Dragon Furious,
panting, his eyes
black with pain. ‘Break it. End it.
Fate has landed on your side.’
‘We do not need to break it,’ said Hiccup.
‘We can bargain, I can promise. I promise you that
now I am King, dragons will be free. We can end this
War, we can make a peace, and dragons can be free
again to fly wherever they will…’
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‘But you will not live forever,’ sighed the
Dragon.
The boiling, steaming Dragon was racked with a
confusion of emotion: distress, fear, anger. His great
body shivered, his head twisted from side to side.
Hiccup looked the Dragon Furious in the eye.
It was dangerous, but it was the only way to see
what he was thinking.
There was a pause, and then within the stormy
black depths, the pupils flickered and went pinprick
bright with flame once more.
‘End it! End it!’ urged the Dragon. ‘Whatever
way, this must end now. I will not take your promise.
We cannot go on like this. Dragons cannot be slaves
again!’
‘I cannot end it!’ yelled Hiccup, tears streaming
down his face. ‘It would break my heart!’
‘You are a KING!’ screamed the Dragon
Furious, angry once more, flames shooting
out of those eyes again. ‘A KING must act
in the interests of his people. You cannot
hesitate. You have to make the kill, that
is what we teach our dragon young from
the very start…
‘Look at me, that is human blood that you
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see here on my fangs, those are human rags you see
dripping from my claws. I am a MONSTER, can you
not see that? See that, and end it!’
‘You are not a monster!’ cried Hiccup. ‘You are
no more a monster than Toothless here…’
‘Well if you will not end it, then see what a
monster I can be,’ roared the Dragon, and he exhaled
again. ‘Break it, or I kill you, and once I have the
Jewel in my power, I will keep my promise and I will
kill the whole human lot of you…’
This was the moment for striking.
The carnivore in the Dragon Furious knew it.
Only Hiccup now stood between him and victory for
the dragons, an end to their misery of enslavement.
Prey, Hiccup was prey, only prey, strike first, and
think afterwards…
The Dragon Furious threw back his head, the fire
holes already filling with the deadly flames, his intake
of breath so huge that Hiccup’s body was dragged
forward in the wind of it. One more second and it
would be over…
Hiccup’s arms were wide, the Jewel held aloft in
his right hand. In that instant he knew, as he had always
known, that he would not break the Jewel, he would
not kill the dragons for all time, he would not make the
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decision that a King ought to make.
Great hot tears rolled down his cheeks.
‘I can’t do it,’ whispered Hiccup. ‘I will not do
this… I will not break the Jewel.’
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It was
not in Hiccup’s
nature, and he could
not be anything other than
the boy he was.
Instead, he turned right around and
flung the Dragon Jewel as far as he could way,
way out into the sea. And then he turned to the Dragon
Furious.
‘You would not break the Jewel, either, if you
were living in my skin,’ shouted Hiccup passionately
to the Dragon. ‘I know you would not do it. You are
not a monster, and I trust you not to kill me. And I
promise you in return that I will build a new world, a
better world, a world worthy of both our species. Not
our species as they are, but as they could be.’
Hiccup shut his eyes and waited.
The Dragon could not believe it. The sheer
unexpectedness of this action on the part of Hiccup
made him halt once more. He started in shock, as if
he was reminded of something, and after watching
in confusion as the Jewel dropped into the ocean, he
seemed to grow angrier than ever.
‘What are you DOING?’ roared the Dragon.
The Vikings could not believe it either.
‘I DON’T BELIEVE IT!’ roared Very-Vicious
the Visithug, who was having his turn with the
telescope-thingy. ‘THE KING HAS THROWN THE
JEWEL AWAY!’
There was a cry of horror from the Vikings
watching on the clifftops.
‘NO! NOT POSSIBLE!’
And then a groan…
‘WE ARE DOOMED…’
‘SING, BOYS, SING!’ roared Gobber the
Belch, desperately, as if by the mere power of song they
could reverse the doom that awaited them.
Half of the Vikings fell to their knees and began
to sing. The other half prepared for the Total War that
they felt sure was now about to happen after Furious
killed the King.
‘I told you,’ hissed the Witch. ‘I TOLD YOU!’
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When you are doomed, there is still some small
satisfaction in having been right all along.
‘Fool,’ snarled the Dragon Furious, recovering
himself. ‘Fool… Your puny human arms cannot throw
that Jewel far enough. You cannot lose it that way…’
The Dragon’s enormous eye could see the Jewel
as it dropped, like a speck of plankton, through the sea.
He reached out, and caught up the Jewel with his left
paw as if fell through the ocean. The Dragon held up
the Jewel victoriously, so his dragon troops could see he
had it.
‘Our leader has the Dragon Jewel!’ roared
the Dragon Rebellion dragons in triumph. And then
the Dragon prepared to kill the boy. But in that second,
when the Dragon should have made the final deadly
strike, something happened.
The Dragon saw the boy in front of him, arms
spread wide and defenceless in supplication. There is
nothing more defenceless than a defenceless human.
No teeth, no talons, no thunderbolts, no fire. No
Jewel, the wet hair sticking up around the Dragonmark
on his forehead. The boy stood there calmly with his
arms wide and his eyes shut, and around his head there
flapped a tiny, selfish little dragon, Toothless, who was
frantic with anxiety.
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Finally, in a pathetic attempt to shield the boy,
Toothless settled over Hiccup’s heart and spread wide
his wings.
On the little dragon’s chest there was a scar.
And in that moment in which the Dragon
Furious should have taken the kill, an old, old memory
intervened, of another boy, another time, another scar.
For there had been three Hiccups: Hiccup the
First, Hiccup the Second and Hiccup the Third. And
here there were three Seadragons: one old, one young,
and one in the prime and glory and power of middle
life. Every one of the three had a scar upon his chest.
The Dragon Furio
us had got his own scar from
when he had once leapt, with the same terror and
desperation as Toothless, to try and save his human
brother, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Second.
The Stormblade pierced his chest in that terrible,
hopeless leap. It wounded but did not kill his younger
Dragon self, so much larger and grander than this
ridiculous little creature. But for all the Dragon’s might,
his muscles and his fire, he could not save Hiccup
Horrendous Haddock the Second from dying.
The Dragon Furious thought he had forgotten.
He thought that one hundred years in chains,
broken and in wingless solitude, had killed the love that
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had made him leap. But the past never really leaves us.
Love never dies, as the ruby heart’s stone taught
Hiccup, and even the Stormblade cannot kill love.
Once we love, we cannot forget, though the flesh
hardens around the wound that once bled, though it
be buried in one hundred years of chains and twisted
round with the cruel growing thorns of the choking
forest. A door opened in the Dragon’s mind that the
Dragon had been trying to keep closed for many long
years so that he could carry out his Rebellion. When
it finally opened, it did so with the same sudden force
with which Hiccup’s memory had returned in the ruins
of Grimbeard’s Castle. And now it had opened, even
just a crack, it was impossible to shut it once again.
The mind is a strange universe. In that precious
second, that moment on Tomorrow in which the future
of human and dragon hung in the balance, the long
distant past of yesterday came back to the Dragon
Furious as pin-sharp fresh as if it were right now, this
minute… and he could not make the kill.
The Dragon snorted, shook his head, tried to
force himself to do it, make those electric lightning
bolts come out… but they would not come. The
Dragon bellowed with fury at himself, tried again
once more…
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‘NOOOOO!’ roared the Dragon Furious. ‘I have
to do it! I must fulfil my promise!’
But no, however hard he tried, thrashing his tail
madly with anger, he could not make himself do it.
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 18