horrible moment when he could feel the Monster
sniffing, sniffing at his ears…
It’s going to start at the wrong end! thought
Hiccup, desperately trying to think of a plan on the
spur of the moment that would work on killing a
dragon that was swallowing your head.
But just as he was about to do something
stupid like try and jump to his feet, he felt a sort of
snuffling on his right big toe.
The Monster had changed its mind, what there
was of a mind of course.
Now why did the Monster change its mind?
I’ll tell you why.
Because Hiccup was wearing his helmet.
It didn’t want to start at the end with the long
broken tickly thing on it.
Well, the Wodensfang and Toothless will be pleased
about that, thought Hiccup, slightly hysterically. They’re
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always telling me not to forget the helmet…
There was a click, click clicking noise.
Hiccup could not resist opening his left eyelid
the smidgiest of a smidgeon.
He had seen many a strange and terrifying
sight in his life, but this was one of the
strangest and most terrifying.
Squinting down his own body,
lubricated in a strange luminous material
like a liquid shroud, he could see
his own feet, and beyond them
the Monster’s head, opening its
mouth and dislocating its jaws
so it could take in Hiccup
whole.
It began to
swallow.
It is difficult to
describe the
sensation
of being
swallowed by a
dragon. There really is
nothing quite like it.
Apart from anything else,
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it makes the most disgusting sound, like a very rude
liquidy slurping noise, and the feel of the suction
pulling on your skin, as the mouth closes round
your feet, and makes its way up your calves is both
revoltingly wet, and also slightly painful.
It was really very difficult for Hiccup to stop
himself from trembling, and keep his arms rammed to
his sides.
UP the mouth moved, and Hiccup’s feet began
to burn like he was on fire, as the dragon’s digestive
juices began to work on him. Very, very slowly, the
creature’s mouth moved around his calves, inching its
mouth over his limbs painfully, bit by bit.
Oh, Hiccup couldn’t wait much longer, but he
knew he would have to; the dragon had to reach his
knees at least.
He sneaked a peek downwards. The animal had
its arms stretched wide to steady itself, so its eyes
couldn’t see him if he suddenly sat up, but he had to
wait until j-u-u-u-s-t the right moment…
It was agony by the time the mouth reached his
knees.
Hiccup had the horrible feeling that his toes
might be dissolving. He had lost the feeling in his
right foot. But he had to strike at exactly the right
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moment…
As the disgusting monster’s mouth crept over
Hiccup’s knees, Hiccup slow-ly, care-fully wriggled his
left hand around the handle of Camicazi’s spare sword.
The monster tensed, perhaps sensing the
infinitesimally small movement of his prey…
It lifted up its arms. All ten eyes were focused
on Hiccup. Was it Hiccup’s imagination, or did they
see something there? Did they see something that
made the Monster start, and the eyes open wide with
amazement? And then as their talons poised to strike,
the eyes on the talons opened wide with fury, and
turned green and then black, as they suffused with
blood…
Hiccup only had one second, one chance.
He sat up in one quick cat-like movement,
reached out, and plunged his sword right in the middle
of the creature’s forehead.
For one awful moment Hiccup thought he might
not have hit the right spot. Both the creature’s arms
sprang up and out. Hiccup hauled desperately on the
sword to try and get it out again so he could strike once
more but…
SQUERCH!!!
There was a small popping noise as the weak spot
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burst and…
WHHHOOOOOOOSHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Out of the mouth Hiccup shot, because as the
Monster died it let out a great shooting burst of sand
and seawater and Hiccup raced on his back across the
slippery glass floor, landing upside down at the end of
the cavern in a swooshing tide of brine.
Even upside down, Hiccup could see that the
creature was dead, although it was still quivering and
jerking all over, but Hiccup didn’t even stop to check,
he was so desperate to get the creature’s digestive
juices off him. He rolled and rolled in the seawater,
rubbing and rubbing at his feet in particular, which
were still burning like they were on fire…
Eventually the burning died down until it became
almost bearable. The creature was lying quite still now.
Hiccup’s poor feet were in a very bad state though,
he could see even in the dim Glow-worm light, and
the little toe on his left foot would never be the same
again. It had shrivelled into nothingness like a scraggly
little pink worm with the stuffing taken out of it, and
he couldn’t move or feel it.
But at least it wasn’t Hiccup’s head that was a
scraggly little pink worm. That would have been a
disaster.
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However, as he looked round the underground
cavern, Hiccup realised he was still in a serious fix.
He was in a glass cavern, underneath the sand,
and presumably up there on the surface the tide had
come in and so he was underneath the sea as well.
How was he going to get out of here?
But even as he was looking around at the
extraordinary glass cavern, and the tunnels that ran
off it, he had a tingling at the back of his head as a
thought fell into place.
He reached into his fire-suit, and took out the
raggedy remains of the map. It was looking a little
worse for wear, that map, because like Hiccup himself,
it had had rather a hard time of it. It was burnt, torn
by poisoned fingernails, and covered in seawater and
dragon digestive juices.
MAZE OF MIRRORS.
Oh for Thor’s sake.
The red herring at the top of Grimbeard’s map
now seemed to be winking as well as laughing at him.
The Jewel was here.
Of course it was.
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24. THE WINK OF A RED
HERRING
You know how it is.
You search high and low in the Archipelago
for something, and it’s only when you’re looking for
something else that you accidentally find it.
Squinting very hard at the map, Hiccup thought
the lines and scribbles might indicate a way through the
maze. Limping and slithering on the wet glass, Hiccup
went through the exit of the cavern, and made his way
through a warren of tunnels, following until the lair of
the Monster opened out into a great glass chamber,
and Hiccup let out a cry of wonder.
There it was, the Maze of Mirrors, the creature’s
secret chamber of treasures. How could such a
primitive creature create something so very, very
beautiful? Maybe the Wodensfang was right. There
must be poetry, even in Monsters. For the glass in that
chamber was woven with such artistry, and polished
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so fine that it had turned into mirrors. The ceiling was
woven with glass like a spider’s web, and then in the
centre of the chamber was column after column of
mirrored glass, as beautiful as columns on a Roman
temple.
When you got closer still you could see, encased
in the glass, the Monster’s treasures that must have
been stolen from generation after generation of poor
Viking amber-collectors.
The Monster must have attacked Romans too,
for there were gorgeous Roman silver cups floating
in the columns like flies in amber. And speaking of
amber, there was quantities and quantities of the
stuff studded in the glass columns, the colour of
honey, the colour of gold, the colour of fire, some
with little creatures stuck in the golden liquid.
But Hiccup ran through that maze without
even stopping, guided all the way by the squiggles
on Grimbeard’s map and his own gut. It was very
confusing, just as confusing as looking into the eyes
of a Triple-Header Deadly Shadow, for some of the
columns were glass and some were mirror, and it was
very difficult to tell what was see-through and what
was a reflection.
On he slipped and slid through that sliding
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mirror maze, searching, searching, for he knew what he
was looking for now. And heart lifting with hope…
… he found it.
Wonder of wonders.
Water into stone.
A single glass column, shining, pure as a drop of
water.
And right in the centre, suspended there as if it
were floating, a little higher than Hiccup’s eye level,
was the dark red heart, the dark red Jewel… the
Dragon’s Jewel.
The Jewel that spelt the destruction of the
dragons, and the humans’ only hope.
The Jewel was hanging on a necklace, encased
in the glass in such a way that it was as if the necklace
was hanging on the neck of an invisible ghost. And as
Hiccup circled round the column, nose pressed to the
glass, his imagination filled in the torso of a gigantic
bearded man: Grimbeard the Ghastly.
As Hiccup circled the column, he could just
make out, on the golden backing of the necklace, the
scratched initials: G.G.
Hiccup felt in his waistband for Camicazi’s
sword.
He took it out and took a good aim at the
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column of glass about a foot or so below where the
Jewel was suspended, swinging at it with all his might,
as if he were swinging at a tree in the Hooligan forest.
The first swing took a big glass chunk out of the
column.
The second, a larger bite.
And on the third swing of the sword Hiccup
ducked as the entire column of glass came down
with an almighty musical crash, tinkling little pieces
raining down on him, and the echoes ringing out
in that gigantic underground mirrored cavern like a
pealing of bells.
Before Hiccup reached out to take it, he
hesitated.
What if he were to take the Jewel, and it were
then to fall into the wrong hands?
But what if he did not take the Jewel, and there
was nothing then to stop the anger of the Dragon
Furious?
He put his head in his hands.
How I wish that I were not the one who finds
the Lost Things! thought Hiccup passionately. Why
does it have to be me who makes these choices?
Most of us are lucky not to be Kings and Heroes,
because we do not have to make the choices that
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Kings and Heroes have to make.
Hiccup chose to take the Jewel.
Hiccup tore a piece off his shirt and wrapped
his hand in it so he could draw the Jewel out of the
mound of shards of glass.
He held it up, so that the light shone brilliantly
off the golden amber depths, and carefully swept off
the powdered glass with one finger before putting
the amber Jewel around his neck and dropping it
down his fire-suit so it wasn’t visible.
And then he said:
‘Thank you, Grimbeard the Ghastly.’
I don’t know why he said it, for there was no
one there of course.
But there was a beat of about two seconds.
And the hairs on the back of Hiccup’s head
stood up.
‘Hic-cup…’ said a faint, spooky, echoing voice.
‘Hic-cup…’
Oh for Thor’s sake.
What was that?
It couldn’t be the voice of the Dragon Furious,
could it? Hiccup’s mind went back to the Dragon
chasing him through the cave warren of the Flashburn
School of Swordfighting.
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No, it couldn’t be…
But so spooky, so echoey was the voice that for
one mad minute Hiccup thought it might be the ghost
of Grimbeard the Ghastly, come back to haunt him for
taking his Jewel.
‘Hic-cup… Hic-cup… Answer me… Hic-cup…’
And then, Hiccup stopped dead and started to
run back through the cavern, checking column after
column.
‘Hic-cup… Hic-cup…’
The voice was weak, despairing.
There, in one cloudy glass column was the
outline of a human boy.
A boy like himself.
Was it just a trick of the echoing
mirror maze?
Hiccup pressed his palm against
the glass.
And as if the boy were a
mirror image of himself, a hand
on the other side of the glass
pressed back, hand-to-hand.
Gently Hiccup pushed his
forehead with the Slavemark on
it on the glass. And as the boy
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inside the column dropped
his head forward too, the
two Slavemarks touched, on
either side the glass.
The boy was Fishlegs.
25. I DON’T THINK I’M DEAD...
Fishlegs’s weary face was looking back at him
through the smoky glass of the column.
‘Oh, Fishlegs!’ cried Hiccup. ‘I thought that you
were dead!’
‘No,’ said Fishlegs. ‘I’m not dead. At least… I
don’t think I’m dead…’
His voice was very, very weak.
‘Though I have to admit, I’m not feeling at my
most lively. What with one thing a
nd another I’ve had
better weeks in the Archipelago.’
Hiccup laughed, shakily. ‘No, you’re not dead,
Fishlegs. You’re in the lair of the Monster of the
Amber Slavelands. The Monster likes eating fresh
meat so it must have been keeping you alive.’
‘Ah,’ said Fishlegs. ‘I knew I had a feeling I
wasn’t in a great situation…’
‘Lean against the other side of the column,
Fishlegs,’ Hiccup ordered, and he began to swing
his axe, gingerly cutting through one side of the glass
column, being very, very careful, for he did not want
to hurt Fishlegs when it broke.
Thor’s birthday, it was cold down there. Hiccup
shivered as he swung his axe, the damp
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seeping through his sandals, the cold of the
underground glass tunnels penetrating right into his
heart.
‘Put your hands over your head, Fishlegs,’
whispered Hiccup. (He didn’t know why he was
whispering – the Monster was dead but it was
SPOOKY down there, in the dark, in the cold.)
Chunk! Chunk! Two more swings of the axe and
the glass column encasing Fishlegs fell away. His friend
was standing there, curled over in a slight ball, his
hands over his head. Slowly he brought down his arms.
It was as if Hiccup was bringing a frozen statue
into life. A bedraggled, weary figure he was. Tear-
stained, rags flapping around him like the tatters of a
scarecrow ripped to shreds, nearly
blue with cold, his smashed
glasses falling
off his nose.
Hiccup was the very mirror-image of him.
Neither of them were Vikings now. Lost Tribes,
lost dragons, lost everything. Hungry, thin as brooms,
the Slavemarks proclaiming their slavedom, both runts,
the two boys stood looking at each other, swaying on
their feet.
Fishlegs was cold as ice, and Hiccup rubbed his
purple arms, trying to get his circulation going.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Fishlegs
through chattering teeth.
‘Looking for you…’
‘But I’m not important,’ said Fishlegs weakly
and drearily. ‘You ought to be on your Quest… Your
destiny. What about the Dragon Jewel?’
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Page 16