How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel

Home > Humorous > How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel > Page 17
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Page 17

by Cressida Cowell


  ‘You are important!’ said

  Hiccup, urgently trying to

  bring him back to life, by

  rubbing his arms, his chest,

  anything to try and warm

  him up. ‘Your lobster-claw

  necklace saved my life.’

  ‘Really?’ said Fishlegs.

  He opened his eyes in

  disbelief. ‘My necklace saved

  YOUR life?’

  306

  So Hiccup told Fishlegs the story of his mother,

  Termagant, and the Stealth Dragon, and the lobster

  pot lost in the mist fourteen years before.

  Who says stories cannot bring things to life?

  That story brought Fishlegs to life, all right.

  He turned from grey to a pale pink, and his

  heartbeat, so faint, flickered back into a steady rhythm.

  ‘So my mother, she did love me after all!’ said

  Fishlegs, in surprise. ‘She wanted the best for me. She

  wanted to meet me again, on Hero’s End!’

  ‘And she would have done,’ said Hiccup, ‘if she

  had lived. And the Deadly Shadow dragon who has

  sworn to look after you, is now your Deadly Shadow.’

  Fishlegs had spent his whole life having the worst

  of everything.

  He had the embarrassingly vegetarian hunting-

  dragon, the riding-dragon that was the size of a

  Shetland pony. He had been bottom of the class in

  absolutely everything, plus he had eczema, asthma,

  knock-knees and short-sight. So it was a pretty amazing

  moment to discover that somewhere out there is a

  triple-headed, armed-to-the-teeth, ridiculously cool

  Deadly Shadow dragon that had sworn to look after

  you, and lay down its life for you.

  For the final boost, Hiccup drew out of his

  307

  waistcoat… the Dragon Jewel.

  It shone like a warm golden star in the darkness

  of that glass cavern.

  ‘Oh…’ breathed Fishlegs. He put out a hand and

  touched it. ‘The Dragon Jewel,’ whispered Fishlegs.

  He looked up at Hiccup…

  … and smiled, with excitement, for the first time

  in a long time.

  ‘Hiccup, this really has got to mean that you are

  the King.’

  Hiccup smiled back awkwardly. ‘Well, it means

  I’m pretty good at finding the King’s Lost Things,

  anyway. But don’t forget, you were here first.’

  Fishlegs stroked the Dragon Jewel for a few

  moments.

  And then slowly, he got to his feet.

  ‘Right,’ said Fishlegs.

  He pushed his smashed glasses determinedly and

  securely on to his nose. ‘Now we have to get out of

  here. I just can’t miss everybody seeing

  me on the back of a Triple-

  Header Deadly Shadow

  dragon, I’m sorry, it’s just

  too good

  a moment.’

  Hiccup grinned, and took out the blasted, ragged,

  burnt and soaked remains of the disintegrated map to

  look for the way out.

  The two boys walked through the tunnels until

  they found the one that Grimbeard had helpfully

  marked as the exit.

  And as they walked, the tunnels seemed to be

  leading higher and higher, and there was a strange

  light that wasn’t the light of Electricsquirms or

  Electricstickys or Glow-worms, which had lit the cavern

  below, and suddenly the light felt as if it were all

  around them. And on the other side of the glass there

  were suddenly fern-shapes, moving and waving…

  Seaweed.

  The glass tunnel had emerged out of the sand and

  they were under the sea at the bottom of the ocean.

  Great drifts and shoals of fish drifted past, swimming

  in and out of the seaweed. Gentle jellyfish softly floated

  by, and as the tunnel moved up it left the seabed like

  a great glass snake, and they could see crabs scuttling

  below them.

  ‘Wow.’ Fishlegs pressed his nose up to the glass.

  The tunnel went up sharply now, and they slid

  so much they couldn’t get a grip. Hiccup had to carve

  little nicks into the glass so they could get a foothold.

  309

  They were just in time, as it happens, for the

  tunnel had one little loop that the sea had not yet

  covered. Once the tide covered it and the tunnel was

  entirely underwater, they would not have been able

  to break the tunnel without the ocean rushing in and

  drowning them.

  But there it was, one lovely little loop that was

  surrounded only by pure air.

  Hiccup broke the tunnel with his axe, and

  carefully they climbed over the broken shards and

  into the surrounding ocean.

  It was cold, that sea.

  As they looked around them, they were just two

  little heads bobbing beside the broken tunnel in the

  middle of a vast expanse of ocean. Sea, sea, sea, as far

  as the eye could see…

  The tide had come in completely.

  They had walked even further than Hiccup

  thought – a mile, maybe more – into the open ocean.

  To the west Hiccup could see a little smudgy grey

  outline that must be land, the land of the island of

  Swallow.

  ‘I’m never going to make it…’ gasped Fishlegs.

  He was already turning blue again.

  ‘You will make it,’ said Hiccup between

  310

  chattering teeth. ‘Swim!’

  And he began to swim himself, towards that

  smudgy grey outline on the very distant horizon.

  ‘Swim! Swim! Swim! You must make it…’

  But the vast echoing sea was so large, and they

  were so small, and the distant land mass was so very,

  very far away…

  26. A GHOST FROM THE PAST

  Sometimes our little human splashings are not enough.

  However hard we try, however strong our heroic

  human wills (and us humans have such a capacity, such

  a heroic capacity for believing that the impossible might

  be possible), sometimes our ridiculously puny human

  arms are too weak. Sometimes the world is just too big

  for us, the hurricane too wild, the sea so huge, that it

  wears out even the bravest of hearts, the strongest of

  wills.

  So it would have been with Fishlegs and Hiccup,

  I have to tell you – they would have drowned that

  day in the seas around the Amber Slavelands, despite

  everything, despite their miraculous escape from the

  Maze of Mirrors and the lair of the Slitherfang. Hiccup

  would have sunk to the ocean floor with the Dragon

  Jewel around his neck, and this story would have had a

  very different kind of ending.

  If it hadn’t been for one thing.

  That one thing was flying right now on invisible

  wings, above the oceans of the Amber Slavelands,

  searching, searching.

  A ghost from the past.

  A ghost that was hoping to make amends, a ghost

  312

  that was never going to give up because of the promise

  he made to Fishlegs’s mother.

  The Deadly Shadow would not give up.

  ‘There is alwa
ys hope,’ whispered Innocence.

  ‘Remember the last time this happened we gave up,

  and Fisshlegss was still alive? You have to learn from

  stories. We will not give up this time…’

  Even the boundless optimism of Camicazi, riding

  on the back of the Deadly Shadow, was fading.

  Of course it was, for had she not seen with her

  very own eyes, Hiccup dragged down under the sands

  by some terrifying eyes-on-claws monster?

  With a howl of terror, the Deadly Shadow had

  dug at the spot with his great claws, and she had dived

  down and joined in with her own pathetic human

  hands, digging, digging, digging at the spot they last

  saw him.

  But sometimes the world is too big even for

  dragon claws. The Deadly Shadow was an Air Dragon,

  not a Sea Dragon, not an Earth Dweller – he was

  not built for burrowing. He could not follow Hiccup

  underneath the sand, however hard he dug. But on, on,

  he and Camicazi dug, until the great tide swept in, and

  swallowed up their pathetic diggings, their pointless

  hole and turned the world to water.

  313

  Hours and hours they searched the world-now-

  turned-to-ocean.

  I do not know what moral you can take from this

  apart from one: they carried on, even though all hope

  was lost, for it was impossible that Hiccup should have

  survived being buried deep under sand and under

  ocean.

  ‘But perhaps he wriggled out of the Monster’s

  claws at the last moment,’ said Camicazi to the Deadly

  Shadow. ‘Trust me, guys, I have seen Hiccup survive so

  many other impossible situations…’

  But yet again, this seemed like even more of an

  impossible situation to survive than the last one.

  Nonetheless, they carried on, and it was good

  that they did, for as we know, despite all odds, Hiccup

  had survived, and he and Fishlegs needed them now.

  The Deadly Shadow had gone back in time.

  He had forgotten that thirteen years had passed.

  It was as if it were that very same day that he

  promised his human, Termagant: ‘By our bright-green

  blood and our shining claws, we will keep your baby

  safe.’

  Just such a day it had been, a day of blue, with

  just a hint of clouds on the edge of the world.

  ‘We promise… We promise…’ Patience muttered

  314

  to the others in Dragonese. ‘We promise, Termagant,

  we will keep your baby safe…’

  ‘We promisse… We promissse…’ Arrogance

  and Innocence whispered back.

  Swooping over the blue expanse of ocean, the

  endless waves that stretched for ever, they searched

  for a little lobster pot, bobbing on the waves. Their

  six Deadly Shadow eyes, the sharpest eyes in the

  world, the eyes that can see a nanodragon moving

  from a distance of half a mile, clicking, clicking,

  scanning the ocean. Their senses all alert.

  Then, with panic rising, they could feel the

  clouds moving in, suddenly, a mist beginning to

  form… Surely history could not be about to repeat

  itself? Surely this was a day of second chances?

  They swooped down further, desperately

  looking for the little lobster pot. And the Deadly

  Shadow found it.

  Way down below, a flicker of movement, a

  smudge of pink, of human life, a tiny wriggle on the

  endless stretch of blue.

  Down the Deadly Shadow swooped, joy

  leaping in his camouflaged breast, and as they soared

  closer, Camicazi could see it too, and she let out a

  joyful whoop.

  315

  A smashed and broken lobster pot, attached to

  the back of a boy swimming, a boy with a lobster-claw

  necklace around his neck. The boy was supporting

  another boy with broken glasses, and even at the

  height it was flying, the dragon could see in the face

  of that boy, the smudged and vague outline, the wet

  bedraggled memory of a human it had loved.

  Termagant’s child!

  316

  ‘We’ll meet again, Termagant! We’ll

  meet again!’ snorted the three heads of the Deadly

  Shadow triumphantly, shooting out bolts of lightning

  as he swooped ever downwards.

  317

  ‘We’re being attacked!’ whispered Fishlegs,

  shielding his eyes and looking upwards, as the

  Deadly Shadow made a rather clumsy crash-landing

  beside them, due to over-excitement.

  Hiccup and Fishlegs were nearly dead, and the

  shock of a highly camouflaged dragon landing nearly

  right on top of them out of the blue, practically

  finished them off. But as they gasped and coughed

  up water, the dragon plucked them out of the sea

  and deposited them on his back, still gasping and

  coughing up water… but alive.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ crowed Camicazi, with

  shining eyes. ‘I mean, I do believe it, because you’ve

  done it so many times before, but this time I really…

  do… not… believe… it…’

  Hiccup smiled because he didn’t really believe

  it himself either, what with one thing and another,

  and panting, he drew the Dragon Jewel out of his

  waistcoat.

  Well of course, Camicazi couldn’t believe that

  even more than anything else. She made him take

  it out, and put it back again, and he let her hold it,

  and she turned it over and over, saying: ‘I DO NOT

  BELIEVE IT… I DO NOT BELIEVE IT… How do

  you do it?

  318

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ asked

  Camicazi.

  Hiccup sighed. ‘I’m not quite sure,’ he admitted.

  ‘I have to think of some way to use it so that I can

  stop this war.

  ‘Fishlegs,’ said Hiccup, as the dragon took off

  into the sky, ‘this is your mother’s dragon, the Deadly

  Shadow. The head on the left is Innocence, the head

  on the right is Arrogance, and the one in the middle

  is Patience, because that’s what he has to have.’

  Fishlegs was sprawled on the Deadly Shadow’s

  back, holding on for dear life, his clothes already

  steaming as the dragon’s back was as warm as an

  oven. He felt his whole body coming back to life.

  ‘How do you do?’ whispered Fishlegs. ‘Excuse

  me if I don’t sit up… I’m a bit tired.’

  Something about this dragon made him feel

  secure, and even in his weakened state he struggled

  to sit up, the wind blowing back his wet hair, the

  Slavemark burning bright on his forehead. ‘So… you

  are my mother’s dragon?’

  ‘I was!’ sang the Deadly Shadow. ‘But now I

  am yours. Yours for ever. I promise I will never

  leave you. I am at your service… I will serve you

  faithfully, from now until death.’

  319

  Hiccup translated.

  Wow…

  Fishlegs’s back straightened. His eyes shone.

  Things were looking up. He, Fishlegs, the ex-most-


  despised-member-of-the-Hooligan-Tribe, the slave,

  the orphan and runt, was now the proud owner of

  literally the coolest dragon he had ever seen. ‘And my

  mother… was a Chief’s daughter?’ asked Fishlegs.

  ‘The best and truest human that I ever

  met,’ said Patience.

  ‘She was a poet, too,’ explained Hiccup. ‘And

  half-Berserk, as we always thought.’

  Even in his ragged, hungry, cold state, this put

  so much heart into Fishlegs. His mother was a poet!

  That must be where he got his bard-skills from. His

  father was a Hero! Well, that was a bit of a mystery,

  but…

  … finally he knew who he was.

  320

  ~ STATISTICS ~

  FEAR FACTOR: ............................. 3

  ATTACK: ...................................... 6

  SPEED: ..........................................4

  SIZE: ............................................ 5

  DISOBEDIENCE: ............................1

  These dragons

  make excellent

  guard-dogs and baby-

  sitters. Fishlegs was

  looked after by one of

  these dragons when

  he was a baby.

  Relax for a Second...

  If you want to end the story here, please feel free.

  In a way it would be best.

  For what could be a happier ending than this, the

  three friends soaring up into the clouds, the Dragon

  Jewel safe around Hiccup’s neck?

  It has been a long, long day, and that really should

  be the end of it.

  But I have to confess…

  … it isn’t.

  So if you really do want to carry on to the bitter end,

  I suggest, dear reader, that you take a little break

  for a moment.

  Drink a large glass of water. Have a nibble of

  something sustaining, with slow release energy,

  a snack perhaps with oats in it.

  Relax for a second.

  There.

  Then here we go…

  27. THE STORY ENDS AS

  IT BEGAN...

  This story, you see, began with Hiccup being

  ambushed by his mother, Valhallarama.

  And that is also how it ends.

  Nobody can track a Deadly Shadow dragon.

 

‹ Prev