"Don't worry," whispered Fishlegs, looking straight into Old Wrinkly's concerned old eyes. "Hiccup will make it. Hiccup always makes it.... Thor only knows how," and then he drifted off into nonsense again.
Out in the middle of the Sullen Sea, strange noises could be heard, like the creaking of an old man's knee, or the rapping of a gigantic knuckle on a door.
The ice was beginning to crack.
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Fishlegs was dying fast...
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10. FREYA'SDAY EYE ON HYSTERIA
When they reached the top of the cliff, the ground kept on rising up to Mount Hysteria, on which was perched the shadowy outline of the Hysterical Village, all in darkness.
One Eye dragged them right up to the bottom of the village walls, where Camicazi got out her ropes.
She threw up the rope with the metal hook attached, and on the first attempt it caught hold of the top of the wooden wall. She squirmed up it like a little blond monkey and disappeared over the top. One Eye spread wide his wings and flew after her.
Hiccup took a deep breath, grabbed hold of the rope, and climbed up, trying to ignore the skulls grinning at him from the top of the battlements.
They were the only visitors to the Hysterical Village in fifteen years.
The village seemed at first to be deserted.
There was no one in the streets, no light in the windows.
But the Great Hall was blazing with light. Smoke
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billowed out of several chimneys, music and chatter and laughing poured out of the windows.
Weirdly, beside the Great Hall, lying on great tree trunks, there stood the largest Viking ship Hiccup had ever seen. It did seem a trifle strange to keep a ship so far from the sea, but Hiccup supposed the Hysterics hadn't been doing any sailing at all for the last fifteen years, so perhaps the center of town was as good a place to keep a boat as any.
And what a ship it was ...
It was more the depth and length of a Roman galleon, and it was the only Viking longboat Hiccup had ever seen with not one but three masts. On its prow the figurehead dragon was a snarling Monstrous Nightmare, and Hiccup's heart beat a little faster with excitement as he read the name painted on its side in big flowing letters: The American Dream. Perhaps the story Old Wrinkly told him really WAS true...
In stark contrast to the ships Hiccup had seen in the harbor, this boat was in tip-top condition. The rest of the village was two meters deep in snow, but The American
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Dream was spotless, her decks entirely snow-free. She was freshly painted, the Hysterical flag flew cheerily from her central mast and her oars were all out, just as if she were about to set sail for distant shores at a moment's notice.
"We'll climb up onto the roof of the Great Hall and see if we can overhear what's going on," whispered Camicazi. Camicazi didn't even bother to use a rope this time. She just shimmied up the sheer wall, appearing to cling to it with invisible suction like a frog. Once she reached the roof, she let down a rope for Hiccup, and One Eye hauled him up with it.
The roof was thigh deep in snow, and Hiccup had to crawl through it, following the path made by Camicazi. She wriggled through to the central chimney, which had no smoke coming out of it, and she and Hiccup peered down into the room below.
A blast of heat so strong Hiccup had to close his eyes poured out of the chimney. Hiccup's hands burned as they began to warm up. Eventually his watering eyes adjusted to the heat and the light.
Down below, the Hysterics were enjoying a
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truly magnificent banquet. The long central table was loaded high with fish, flesh, and fowl cooked in every possible manner, whole stags, entire pigs, and brimming cups of beer and wine. A big drunken guy was dancing a jig on the table at one end, and the Hysterics were laughing and throwing bits of food and napkins at him.
Fires blazed in six huge fireplaces. Enormous white rugs made out of the skin of polar bears were strewn about the floor. Hanging on the walls were the heads of dragons of every possible size, color, and description. And also the heads of a couple of animals Hiccup had never seen before, one that looked like an enormous, depressed deer, and another that resembled a gigantic bull with black, curly hair.
A map of the Barbaric World drawn on deerskin was hanging in a
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[Image: Fire.]
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great curtain against the north wall. On the west of the map, someone had scribbled out the great tumbling waterfall which on most Viking maps was marked "End of the World," and replaced it with a crude charcoal drawing of an island it called AMERICA.
With a sinking of the heart, Hiccup recognized a big blond bearded guy sitting on a throne as the Chief, Norbert the Nutjob. It was definitely the Big Brute who Hiccup had shot with an arrow in the bottom the day before. His throne had a couple of plump cushions on it, but he was shifting from buttock to buttock as if in some pain.
In one hand he held a very unusual, enormous, double-headed axe. The axe was different in that one blade was a bright and shiny copper gold, but the other blade was rusted and blackened, and deeply scarred.
There was no sign of the potato.
Suddenly Hiccup felt a bit foolish. He had somehow expected it to be displayed somewhere obvious, preferably with a big sign underneath it labeling it clearly as THE POTATO.
Because, of course, he did not have any idea what a potato looked like, whether it was orange, or
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green, or large, or small. Hiccup had somehow imagined it as RED with little black spots, and kind of oblong, or triangular, just because it sounded so exotic. Purple, perhaps? Really, he hadn't a clue. "OK," whispered Camicazi, "I'm going to have to go down there to try and find out WHERE they keep the potato.... It could be absolutely anywhere."
She unwound one of the ropes from around her waist, and Hiccup suggested that they should tie it around One Eye's leg. "That way, if you get into any trouble, you can yank on it three times, and One Eye can haul you up quickly."
One Eye objected strongly to having anything tied around his leg, and only agreed when Hiccup reminded him what a HERO he was going to be in the Dragon World when they returned to Berk with the antidote to Vorpentitis.
The little girl then lowered herself down through the hole in the roof.
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It was completely dark and very quiet on top of the Great Hall.
Waiting by the hole, Hiccup felt rather like he had as a small boy going ice fishing with his father, when Stoick cut a hole in the ice, and let down the line, and then all there was to do was wait... and wait... and wait.
Toothless scratched behind his ears. One Eye picked at his teeth. And Hiccup shivered with anxiety.
"Hurry up, Camicazi..."
At any moment Hiccup expected a great crack to appear in that huge flat expanse of frozen sea, and then they would never get home ... and Fishlegs would be lost.
Or perhaps Camicazi had gotten into trouble down there?
Hiccup peered down through the hole. Camicazi was clinging to her rope like a spider, two meters below them. Hiccup
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leaned down a little farther to try and see what was happening ...
... And then, to his absolute horror, the edge of the chimney, already buckling under the weight of the snow, gave way beneath him, and with a shriek, Hiccup FELL into the Hall.
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11. IN THE SOUP
Camicazi watched with round, scared eyes as Hiccup fell past her, arms flailing wildly.
In ordinary circumstances, that would have been the end of Hiccup, for the Great Hall was fully twenty meters high, and he SHOULD have broken his neck falling all the way from the very top.
But, in a series of tremendous strokes of luck, the traditional Freya'sday Eve dish was Onion Soup, and on Hysteria it was served in a truly gigantic cauldron, two meters wide and a meter deep. This
pot was sitting on the table directly below the falling Hiccup, and he plunged straight into it, bottom first.
If the soup had been any hotter, Hiccup would have been burned to death, but it had been on the table for some time, and had cooled to a pleasant swimming temperature.
If the Hysterics had been any fonder of Onion Soup, it would not have been deep enough to break Hiccup's fall, but the Hysterics only served Onion Soup because it was the traditional thing to do, and had hardly touched it.
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So Hiccup merely bumped his bottom gently on the bottom of the cauldron, and rose to the surface, coughing and spluttering, his hair full of onions. There was a shocked silence. Nothing puts a quicker stop to a jolly meal than a stranger and a great deal of snow suddenly falling onto the banqueting table. The Hysterics sat, amazed, spitting snow out of their beards, staring at the unexpected visitor gasping in their soup.
Norbert the Nutjob was the first to recover, shaking the snow off and leaping to his feet. "ASSASSINS'" he screamed. "SEIZE HIM!"
Twenty Warriors sprang onto the table. Hiccup tried to swim out of trouble, but his backstroke couldn't make up for the fact that he was entirely surrounded. Two large Hysterics dragged him out of the soup and dropped him, dripping and gloopy, in front of Norbert the Nutjob.
"Are there more of you?" barked Norbert the Nutjob, brandishing the blackened blade of his axe in front of Hiccup's face.
Hiccup shook his head, spraying soup in all directions.
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Norbert the Nutjob and his Warriors peered upward. Camicazi was hanging way up in the darkness of the ceiling, and her black clothes came in handy, for they could not see her.
"SEARCH THE ROOF AND THE VILLAGE!" screamed Norbert the Nutjob.
He turned to face Hiccup again. Norbert the Nutjob had a tic in his left eye, and it was jerking around frantically like a fly doing a jig.
"I'm sure I recognize you ...," he said, using the edge of a nearby Warrior's cloak to wipe the soup off Hiccup's face. "Great Thumbnails of Thor! It's the revolting Hooligan worm who shot an arrow in my Royal Bottom yesterday!"
This wasn't a very good start.
"How do you do?" gulped Hiccup politely.
"I DO NOT VERY WELL!"
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screamed Norbert the Nutjob. "MY BUTTOCKS ARE BURNING!"
The Warriors came panting back into the Hall ' and said they had searched both the roof and the village, and there were no more Assassins to be found. One Eye and Toothless must have flapped off to hide in the darkness.
Norbert the Nutjob looked rather cross. "You're a very SMALL Assassin," he said huffily, removing Hiccup's sword and stuffing it in his own sword belt. "And so, come to think of it, was the one who attacked us with you yesterday, the one who skied like a grandmother with knee trouble. I know I've been out of the loop for the last fifteen years, but do the Hooligans really think they can assassinate me with CHILDREN?"
"I'm not an Assassin," pleaded Hiccup quaveringly.
"LIAR!" screeched Norbert the Nutjob, and he lurched forward as if to kill Hiccup with the axe right there and then. And then he calmed himself, and smiled again, and settled himself back on his throne with a wince.
[Insert: Is THIS a potato?]
[Image: A carrot.]
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"So if you're not an Assassin," smiled Norbert, "what are you doing here on Hysteria, shooting me with arrows, and poisoning my soup?"
"I'm looking," said Hiccup, "for THE POTATO."
There was an astonished silence.
"Ssssssh!" said Norbert the Nutjob, looking over his shoulder as if walls had ears, "You're not supposed to NAME the Vegetable-That-No-One-Dares-Name ..."
"Of course," said Hiccup craftily, "now that I'm here I realize that it was all just fairy stories. There's no such thing as a potato, is there? Because there's no such place as America.... The earth is as flat as a pancake, and if you sail to the west eventually you just fall off the end of it..."
"RUBBISH!" shrieked Norbert the Nutjob. "KILL HIM!" he screamed, his eyes bulging, his mouth foaming, before, with an enormous effort, he gained control of himself again. "No, educate him, and then kill him!" said Norbert the Nutjob, twiddling his fancy mustaches to soothe himself.
"The earth is as round as a circle, and a circle has no end," explained Norbert carefully. "There is
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such a thing as America, I know because I've been there ... and as for the Vegetable-That-No-One-Dares-Name ... I don't know what you're talking about..." "That's because there's no such thing," repeated Hiccup.
"There IS such a thing," insisted Norbert, trying to keep his temper.
"Isn't," said Hiccup. "Is!" "Isn't." "IS!" "Isn't."
"IS, IS, IS, IS, IS!!!!!" yelled Norbert the Nutjob, twiddling his fancy mustaches so hard they got all tangled in a knot.
"Prove there is," challenged Hiccup.
"I know there's such a thing as a Vegetable-That-No-One-Dares-Name ... because the
Vegetable-That-No-One-Dares-Name ... is right here in this room!" cried
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Norbert the Nutjob. He ran over to the wall where the map of America was hanging.
With two grand sweeps of his axe he threw aside the curtain.
[Insert: Are potatoes spiky on the outside out juicy in the middle ]
"VERY SMALL ASSASSIN," announced Norbert the Nutjob proudly, "SAY HELLO TO PAPA..."
"Oh whoops!" breathed Hiccup.
Norbert the Nutjob was clearly madder than a Mad March Hare having a nervous breakdown.
For there, on a stand, larger than life, stood what looked horribly like the frozen body of Norbert the Nutjob's Papa.
He was standing proud and upright, every whisker frozen solid, mouth open in a soundless YELL, a scary monumental sight. One hand was on his hip, and in the other he held a casket with glass sides, filled with ice.
On top of the ice sat the round, rather disappointing shape of a lumpy brownish vegetable.
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Surely THAT can't be the magical, wondrous POTATO, thought Hiccup. Sticking out of the vegetable was a single arrow.
Norbert's Papa was surrounded by a carpet of unusual dragon-creatures, called SQUEALERS.
These weird animals are often used as primitive burglar-alarm systems. They have no legs to chase after their prey, so they lie on their backs waving their extra-long nails gently in the air. Any animal that comes into contact with those nails causes the whole pack of Squealers to scream unbearably loudly. The sound is so piercingly noisy that it actually kills smaller dragons (who have much better hearing than humans) stone dead on the spot. The Squealers then devour their victim, and rather like piranha fish, they can strip an animal to the bone in sixty seconds flat. "But, Norbert," gasped Hiccup. "I thought your father was supposed to be DEAD?"
"Oh, he's dead all right," smiled Norbert. "He's as dead as a doornail... but as I was keeping the potato frozen anyway, I thought I'd freeze Papa too."
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"You could give your father a proper Viking funeral," shuddered Hiccup. "He looks untidy standing there ... and a bit spooky ..."
"MY FATHER HAS HIS FUNERAL OK THE DAY THE DOOMFANG DIES!"
shouted Norbert the Nutjob. "That's why I froze him. Just before my father breathed his last, he stuck into the potato the only arrow he had left given to him by the Feather People, and made me promise to use this to get rid of the Doomfang."
"That's impossible," objected Hiccup. "You can't kill a whopping great creature like a Doomfang with one tiddly little arrow!"
"Not im-POSSIBLE, weird little red-haired boy," corrected Norbert the Nutjob. "Just im-PROBABLE. And made more improbable by the fact that we can't get the arrow OUT of the Vegetable-That-No-One-Dares-Name.... Take a look at the inscription on the casket."
[Image: A Squealer asleep.]
Hiccup looked at the casket Bigjob was holding. In it, frozen by the ice, w
as the disappointingly boring vegetable called the
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potato. And stuck in this potato was the gaudy little arrow, decorated with brilliant feathers taken from birds Hiccup would not have recognized. American birds that once flew about in undiscovered American skies. On the front of the casket was written in flowing script the following inscription:
[Image: A tree.]
[Insert: Whomsoever removes the Arrow from this Vegetable
Shall Rid Us of the Doomfang and Prove Himself
Eight True Hero and Ruler of all the Viking Tribes. ]
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"We can't get the arrow OUT of the Precious Vegetable ..." said Norbert the Nutjob sadly. "We practice all year round with constant arm wrestling, and every year our strongest Champions try and pull it out. Even I do not seem to be able to do it, although the verse is obviously referring to ME. The arrow is stuck in the vegetable, and we are stuck on Hysteria, until the death of my father is avenged."
Hiccup looked at the potato.
"You can't get the arrow out of the potato because it is frozen solid. If you DEFROSTED the potato, a child could pull it out," Hiccup suggested.
The tic was back in Norbert the Nutjob's eye.
"My dying father gave me this arrow for a reason," snapped Norbert the Nutjob. "It's supposed to be a test to find out who is strong enough to defeat the Doomfang. What would be the point of the test if just ANYBODY could do it? Who are you, anyway, you small boy, and how dare you ask ME all these questions?"
"Now, I'm very glad you brought that up, Norbert," said Hiccup soothingly. "I am Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, only son of Stoick the Vast, and my friend Fishlegs, whom you also met
How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse (The Heroic Misadventures of Hiccup the Viking) Page 6