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Windwalker as his surfboard, just exactly as he had surfed the waves of the Long Beach on bits of old driftwood as a child (but rather more expertly actually -- when the sea below you is boiling at seven hundred and fifty degrees Celsius, it does tend to concentrate a person's mind on keeping his balance).
That final, impossible surf carried them the last three hundred meters or so of mountain.
And then, just as they reached the edge of the sea-cliff, the Windwalker gave a great push and a LEAP
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[Image: Hiccup and Toothless.]
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with its hind legs to carry them forward so they didn't get caught up with the lava as it fell off the edge of the cliff.
Hiccup had made leaps such as these all his life.
Leaps of faith, leaps of hope, leaps out into the unknown. Hiccup had always trusted in his luck, in his faith that the universe was ultimately kindly, a Good Egg, as Stoick would put it, rather than a Bad Egg, and would reach out and save him.
But this was more of a leap of despair.
The Windwalker leaped off the edge of the cliff, and his leap carried them just far enough to get out of the way of the lava -- and then they plunged immediately downward. The Windwalker spread out its wings to break their fall, but its wings were not strong enough, and in a matter of seconds they had blown inside out like an umbrella in a high wind.
The Windwalker and Hiccup sank like stones to the sea below.
That plunge into the ice-cold sea was a terrible reminder that perhaps, just perhaps, the universe was not a Good Egg after all. They hit the sea at such a speed that it was like crashing into an icy wall. Perhaps this is reality, thought Hiccup as he sank below the waves. This pitiless, uncaring, heart-stopping cold.
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And when he came spluttering up to the surface, gasping for breath, it was to the even colder reality of a great black cloud of Exterminators circling above them. A cloud that stretched right across the sky, blotting out the blue. A cloud that gave a shriek of evil joy when it saw their two little heads resurfacing above the water.
"THERE HE IS!" shouted Alvin, his eyes lit up with savage joy, as he wheeled his Exterminator around for the final attack. "GET HI - I-I-I-I-I-I-I-IMMM!!!!! "
The lava streams dripped off the edge of the cliff and dropped into the sea in an angry hiss of smoke. The black rain dropped steadily. The Exterminators pointed their beaklike heads downward and dived in a great storm down toward the sea, their sword-claws held outstretched in front of them, ready to destroy.
So this is the end, thought Hiccup, as he watched them come down, the quenching cold turning his entire body numb. Nothing can possibly save us now.
BOOOMMMM!!!!!
The Volcano exploded for the second time.
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[Image: Painting.]
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[Bank Page]
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19. HERE'S ANOTHER INTERESTING QUESTION. IS THE UNIVERSE A GOOD EGG OR A BAD EGG?
The Exterminators paused mid-dive, as the sea, and the sky, and the islands themselves, rocked crazily round them.
This eruption was different from the first.
This time, what had happened was that the heat of the Volcano had HATCHED the Fire-Stone.
For one of the many secrets of the Fire-Stone, that Hiccup had worked out from Old Wrinkly's riddle (and I am sure that you clever readers and listeners have guessed this too) is that it is not, in fact, a Stone at all.
It is an Egg.
The Egg of the exceptionally rare Fire-Dragon. And one of the reasons that Fire-Dragons are so exceptionally rare is that the conditions required for them to hatch are so unlikely as to be virtually impossible.
For the Fire-Egg can only hatch in the heat and
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turbulence of a Volcano that is exploding. But the Fire-Egg also gives out chemicals that PREVENT the Volcano from doing just that.
First, you have to imagine the extraordinary, impossible hugeness of a Fire-Dragon.
Then you have to imagine that hugeness all coiled up and packed inside an Egg no larger than a human head.
That is the Fire-Egg.
The walls of this Fire-Egg are made of a material so terribly, terribly strong that only a temperature of seven hundred and fifty degrees Celsius can melt them or crack them. Normally, the Fire-Egg is laid on a nook on the upper levels of a volcano crater, where the temperature never reaches levels high enough to hatch it.
But if it topples down (or in this case, is thrown) into the heart of the Volcano itself and sinks down deep into the molten lava, then that kind of heat is sufficient to crack the unbelievably hard shell.
It takes about six or seven minutes, the same sort of time that it might take you to hard-boil a chicken's egg.
Then, when the shell is cracked, all that energy and hugeness packed down to such a pinprick smallness are
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suddenly released in an instant and the Fire-Dragon EXPLODES outward with an energy and a force impossible to describe, like a sort of mini Big Bang.
So what the Exterminators, and the Vikings, and Hiccup and Toothless saw was SOMETHING erupting out of the Volcano crater, SOMETHING that shot up so high it seemed as if it could touch the very stars.
Down on the deck of The Blue Whale, Stoick flung up an arm to shield himself from the brightness, for to look at it was a bit like looking at the sun itself, and pained the eyes.
"What is that?" breathed Stoick in awe.
Humungous and Camicazi and Fishlegs, who had landed safely on the deck of The Peregrine Falcon, forgot their fear as they gazed up in wonder at the extraordinary, terrible beauty of this sight.
The SOMETHING that erupted out of the Volcano was a DRAGON that seemed to be made entirely out of fire.
Of course, that is impossible, but this is what it looked like.
Gleaming muscles and scales of flame. Burning talons and scorching fangs.
It threw back its great fiery head and let out a great ROAR that echoed across the islands, and even
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reached the trembling ears of the fleeing Viking Tribes miles and miles to the south, watching all this unfold on the horizon, standing silent on the decks of their rocking ships, soaked to the skin by the wildness of the storm.
The Fire-Dragon turned its great flaming red-gold eyes down toward the earth and they focused on the Exterminators, hanging below it in great black trembling clouds.
And when the Fire-Dragon looked at the Exterminators, what it saw was PREY.
The Exterminators knew it too.
One minute they were the predators, leaping down toward Hiccup with greedy talons outstretched. The next, the world was shaking and vibrating around them, as if the gods had suddenly re-shaken the dice. And now that the world had stopped shaking again, they had suddenly become the victims.
The Vikings were now in the extraordinarily privileged position of being the audience to a scene played out in the blue skies above that had not taken place for hundreds and hundreds of years. A scene that dramatically demonstrated the exquisite balance of nature that Hiccup had placed such trust in.
The fight was played out against the background of the tempest at its peak, Thor's thunder rolling out
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magnificently from the blue-black clouds, great flashes of white sheet-lightning lighting up the drama in intermittent bursts, and then dying away to darkness.
Hiccup watched the combat lying floating on his back, in the grave coldness of the sea below, and the battle raging in the sky above him reminded Hiccup of a shoal of fish trapped in a tide-locked bay by a mighty shark.
The Exterminators shot shrieking across the surface of the stormy sky in their panic.
They scattered hither and thither, in great fleeing groups that sped across the firmament, splitting and reforming as they dodged through the jaggedy lightning, right to the very edges and corners of the horizon.
But however fast
or far they flew, they couldn't escape the Fire-Dragon.
The Fire-Dragon never moved from its position on top of the Volcano.
It reached out with its great arms, flaming gloriously upward like tall watery trees of fire, and scooped up the Exterminators in huge handfuls, thrusting them down its glowing gullet with noisy relish.
It played with them like a cat does a mouse, letting them think they had gotten away, and then catching them up with its burning tongue.
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The Fire-Dragon swallowed the whole lot of them, tossing them into his blazing mouth in their struggling thousands, plucking them out of their hiding-places in the smoke, sucking them in in satisfied, crackling bursts ...
... until there was only one left, zigzagging across the sky like a demented bluebottle.
This was the one with Alvin on its back.
'"You haven't seen the last of me, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Thi-I-I-I-ird!"
yelled Alvin the Treacherous (but he was far too far away for Hiccup to hear him properly).
And then the Fire-Dragon picked up the Exterminator Alvin was riding by the spear in its breast, between two delicate flaming fingers, for all the world as if it were a wriggling worm on a cocktail stick ... and down it went too.
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The Vikings held their breath.
Were they to be the next to go?
But no, the Fire-Dragon has particularly evolved to only feed on Exterminators.
The Fire-Dragon let out one final ROAR of triumph, the contented song of a meal caught and ready for digestion.
And then it leaped up into the sky, and dived back down into the Volcano crater, its great tail sending fresh waves of lava spilling over the top and down the sides of the mountain.
Swimming down, down, who knows where?
To the earth's core?
I can imagine it there in my mind's eye, swimming as free and joyous as a dolphin in those fiery waters.
There were two final flashes of thunder and lightning, louder than all the rest, whose rumbles echoed dramatically before growing gradually fainter and fainter...
And then all was majestically silent.
The peril was over.
The Volcano still spewed out its lava, but it was moving more slowly now.
The rain thinned down from deluge, to downpour,
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to drizzle, before petering out completely, to mere drips on the wind.
And even ALVIN, surely, surely, would find it difficult to swim his way up to safety through the burning waters of the earth's core?
The thunderstorm drifted away toward the Mainland, and the sun was coming out through the clouds. But the strange, boiling-hot weather had broken at last, and this was a very different sort of sun from the sun that had been beating down unrelentingly on the Archipelago for the past three months. This was a kindly benevolent sun, with a gently blowing cool breeze.
A great sigh of satisfaction went murmuring along the lines and lines of Vikings, watching from their boats to the south. One began to clap, and soon they were all applauding, as if what they had been watching had been some great Play.
"Bravo!" shouted out Mogadon the Meathead, stamping his feet on the deck of the ship, "BRAVO!!" And the other Vikings followed his lead, cheering and clapping, and making ready to sail back to their homes again, their safe, quiet little homes in the bogs, that had been saved by this miracle.
"He's ALIVE!" cried Stoick the Vast, embracing
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the nearest thing to him, which happened to be his repellent nephew, Snotface Snotlout. "He's ALIVE!"
"YES, I have this feeling that he probably is," snarled Snotface Snotlout through gritted teeth. "What excellent news."
[Image: Men.]
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20. WHEN THE PLAY IS OYER
Camicazi, Humungously Hotshot, and Fishlegs had to sail The Peregrine Falcon across the Bay to pick up Hiccup. By this time they had been joined by Stoick in The Blue Whale, and Big-Boobied Bertha in The Big Momma. The Windwalker flew across to them in order to show them the way, because of course they couldn't pick out one small lopsided helmet across those choppy seas, that had been so stirred up by the explosions and vibrations of the Volcano.
They were all extremely worried, because the seas around Berk are very cold, and it is perfectly possible to freeze to death if you spend too much time in those icy waters.
But in fact Hiccup was all right. The red-hot lava now pouring down from the cliffs had swiftly heated the shallow waters of the bay to what was really almost a very pleasant swimming temperature.
So he lay calmly on his back, waiting to be rescued, letting himself float up and down supported on the swell of the warm water, looking up into the blue sky and thinking what a great joy it was to be alive.
Toothless had been hiding up in the great billows
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of mustard-colored Volcano smoke, peeking out from his hiding place in the drifts of cloud, absolutely terrified.
But when he had satisfied himself that all the Exterminators had been Exterminated, and the Fire-Dragon meant him no harm and had disappeared, he sped like a whirring green butterfly down to the bay where he was the first to find Hiccup, turning gentle circles as he floated peacefully in the water.
"Toothless d-d-drop the Stone in the Volcano!" stammered Toothless, giving Hiccup a lovely surprise by landing on his chin. "All on HIS OWE."
[Image: Hiccup and Toothless.]
When Hiccup had recovered from the shock of
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the sudden arrival, and coughed out some of the seawater, he stroked the little dragon's back, as Toothless licked his face with his little forked tongue.
"You," said Hiccup, as the two of them revolved gently around, looking up at the sky, "are a Great Hero, Toothless."
Toothless lifted up his head and did his Victory Cock-a-doodle-doo.
And so when the others did finally haul him out, Hiccup was calm and relaxed.
"Are you hurt?" asked Stoick anxiously.
"No," smiled Hiccup. "I burned my heel, but that's it."
"THANK THOR!" bellowed Stoick. And then with a great roar of pride he enveloped Hiccup in a stifling hairy embrace. "MY SON! I am sorry that I doubted you! We didn't let those Extermina-whosits beat us, did we? NO, by Woden and the lovely flowing armpits of Freya, we whopped their little Extermi-wotsit BOTTOMS; they never knew what hit them. THAT'S the spirit of the Horrendous Haddocks in you, NEVER SURRENDER! And by Thor's thighstrings we DID NOT. I can't wait to tell Valhallarama ... Humungous, I have to admit, I owe you a great debt."
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He smiled, only a trifle reluctantly, at the irritatingly perfect Hero, sitting bloodstained but content on the deck. "What a wonderful idea of mine it was to make you Hiccup's Bardiguard!"
Humungously Hotshot was looking happier than Hiccup had ever seen him before. A great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He rolled up the helmet of his Fire-Suit, and ruffled his slightly-thinning-but-still-handsome golden hair.
"WELL, I'd forgotten what fun Questing could be; I really enjoyed myself there," beamed Humungously Hotshot the Hero breezily. "And I thought I didn't do too badly, considering I haven't done that sort of Hero Work for over fifteen years. A smidgen out of practice, but not a bad effort, on the whole ..."
"You were MARVELOUS!" said Hiccup enthusiastically. "STUPENDOUS! BRILLIANT!"
Stoick the Vast's smile froze behind his beard. But he had to admit that the guy had saved Hiccup's life. A Chief should give credit where credit was due, whatever his personal feelings. "It was a fine piece of Bardiguarding, Humungous. You must name your price as your reward. Anything I have is yours, anything at all, Humungous, you just have to say the word ..."
"Well it's terribly kind of you," said Humungous.
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"If you INSIST upon rewarding me, there is one thing I would like from you, Stoick ..."
"Yes?" said Stoick.
"Your boat, The
Peregrine Falcon," replied Humungous. "I plan to start a new life for myself, right here and now, and what I need is a good fast boat like this one so I can get away from here as quick as I can."
"Are you quite sure?" asked Stoick. He had mixed feelings about this, because on the one hand, he was secretly rather relieved that this annoyingly brilliant Humungous wasn't going to be hanging around much longer, but on the other, The Peregrine Falcon was far and away Stoick's favorite boat.
"I'm quite sure," said Humungous firmly. "If you're going to start a new life, you might as well start it NOW."
Humungous smiled at Hiccup and patted him on the shoulder.
"Thank you, Hiccup," said Humungously Hotshot, "for finding my stone for me. It has meant a great deal to me in the past, but now I am looking to the future, and I would like you to have it."
He leaned over and pulled the bracelet with the ruby heart's stone in it off his arm and gave it to Hiccup.
"I'm back in the Hero Business!" he said, happily
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swinging his sword from side to side, juggling it with his axe, balancing it on one finger, and then thrusting it back in its scabbard again. "I'd forgotten how good it feels!"
Humungous took a big deep breath of the fresh sea air.
"I must say," said Humungous, "it's a great day to start a new life."
Humungous called across the waves between the two boats, and he was so far away now that Hiccup could only just catch the words.
"Send my regards to your mother, Hiccup!"
Hiccup shouted back to say that he would.
"And thank you for giving me back my gift!"
"Your gift?" Hiccup shouted back.
How to Twist a Dragon's Tale (Hiccup) Page 11