this than he was actually feeling.)
‘And you are no longer so alone. Look how full
this cave is! You have your human companions, now,’
he gestured with his wing to Fishlegs and Camicazi,
‘not to mention all the followers your splendid
mother has brought you with her Dragonmark. What
a magnificent warrior she is!’ said the Wodensfang
admiringly.
‘Anyway,’ said the Wodensfang, ‘as I was
saying, the rest of the Quest should be a piece of
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fish-cake. Now all the Lost Things are found, all
you have to do is present yourself at the island of
Tomorrow, get yourself crowned King instead of
Alvin the Treacherous, learn the Secret of the Jewel,
and use it to persuade the Dragon Furious to call
off this war… See what I mean? Easy peasy, viking
squeezy!’
Hiccup was not to be so easily comforted.
‘You’ve forgotten a few important details,’
Hiccup reminded him.
‘I just heard the Dragon Furious and something
tells me he’s going to be impossible to persuade. And
Alvin the Treacherous has nine of the Lost Things,
which might make the Tomorrow Men think that
Alvin is the true King. I only have one. And Alvin
has the Dragon Jewel, and we know what kind of
man Alvin is. He would use the Jewel’s power to
destroy the dragons, without even blinking.’
‘Ah, but Alvin won’t do anything with the
Jewel… yet,’ said the Wodensfang. ‘Alvin needs that
Jewel to take to Tomorrow if he wants to become the
King himself. And only if he became the King would
he learn the Jewel’s secret. We are perfectly safe…
for the moment, admittedly.’
Hiccup sat up on his bed of grass, filled with
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sudden, desperate anxiety.
He looked straight into the Wodensfang’s brown
eyes earnestly. ‘Doesn’t it worry you, Wodensfang,
that I only had the Dragon Jewel for a few
minutes before it fell into the hands of Alvin the
Treacherous?’
The Wodensfang said nothing.
‘I’ve just been worrying and worrying about it.
Do you remember the last time you trusted a human
with the Dragon Jewel? Hiccup the First? And how
eventually it fell into the hands of Grimbeard the
Ghastly? What if this is history repeating itself? It
does seem that I collect all these Things, but they all
end up in the hands of Alvin the Treacherous…
‘Maybe you shouldn’t be trusting me,
Wodensfang,’ said Hiccup. ‘What if the Dragon
Furious is right? He told me that I would be the
one who sent the dragons into their final oblivion…
Maybe that’s because I’m going to collect all the
Lost Things, and then Alvin is going to use them to
destroy the dragons.’
Hiccup covered his face in horror.
‘I can’t bear to think of it – but that is what
the Deadly Shadow said, that Alvin could not get
hold of the Jewel without me finding it for him. If
398
that is true, then is it all going to be my fault?’
It was a truly dreadful thought. A world without
dragons. A world with no Windwalker. No more
flying on his back. No more soaring into the clouds
in slow beats of the Windwalker’s wings, up, up, up
and looking down on the islands of the Archipelago
sprinkled way, way down below.
A world without Toothless, perching on your
arm, giving you that naughty look, opening up his
greengage eyes so innocently as he tells you that he’s
going to do something you wanted him to do, he p-p-
promises, cross his claws and hope to die, and then flies
off and does precisely what he wants?
No, it was too horrible to think about. And all to
be Hiccup’s fault?
No, and again no. Never, never, never.
But then again, things can go awry, even if you
have the best of intentions…
‘Nonsense and fiddlesticks,’ replied the
Wodensfang. ‘You are young. Leave these worries to
us old creatures. I trust you, Hiccup. Besides, don’t
forget, Alvin the Treacherous doesn’t have ALL the
Lost Things… You still have one of them, one that
you have always been able to hang on to.’
He pointed with his wing at Toothless.
399
Toothless was fast asleep, curled up reassuringly
warm and solid and heavy and alive on Hiccup’s
tummy, and snoring great grey smoke rings. So he
made them both jump when he said loudly and clearly
in his sleep: ‘Yes, I’m a Lost Thing… and I’m the most
important one of all… Thank you… Manners…’
That made both Hiccup and the Wodensfang
laugh, and Hiccup fell asleep at last.
But it was the Wodensfang who could not sleep
now.
Eventually he flew to the entrance of the cave,
and curled into a little wrinkled ball, looking up at the
night sky.
‘I have to confess,’ said the Wodensfang to the
stars, ‘this is worrying me a trifle, too. What can I
do to prevent this from happening? Am I right in
trusting the boy?’
It didn’t seem possible that a world without
dragons could ever exist. Look at the world, filled with
dragons everywhere, dragons of all shapes and sizes.
The great ones, larger than the Big Blue Whale, half-
swimming, half-flying through the oceans. The tiny
little nanodragons hopping through the heather in their
numberless multitudes. The cliffs and their mazy rocks
beneath just teeming, bursting, over-flowing with the
400
abundance of dragon life.
Such was the generosity of nature, and the
multiplicity of dragon species, surely it could never
happen?
The stars looked down on the Wodensfang,
winking at him, just as they had done for thousands of
years.
And of course the stars made no answer.
So the Wodensfang answered his own question.
‘Perhaps I am a foolish, fond old dragon, who
never learns from his own mistakes. But I have to
believe that the humans and the dragons are capable
of living together. I have to hope that the impossible
can be possible. I have to trust in the boy, and hope
for the best…’
EPILOGUE BY HICCUP
HORRENDOUS HADDOCK III
Last night I did not sleep well. I am an old man, and
I dreamt I went back to the Amber Slavelands, flying
over those windy sands like I was the Deadly Shadow,
following a set of footprints across the desert
desolation.
At first I thought they were the footprints of the
Monster.
And then I realised they were the footprints of
my childhood self.
Eventually I caught up with him, a scarecrow
of a boy, struggling defiantly across those dreadful
sands. And in this dream a great wind had come up,
> and all around him the blackened, burning remains
of Hiccup’s past went bowling past – the houses of
the Hooligan village where he grew up, the skeletons
from the Dragons’ Graveyard – all blown away by the
winds of the war that Hiccup had begun.
But the boy still walked onwards, towards
Tomorrow.
What was it my mother Valhallarama had said?
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Hiccup, if things do
not turn out well in the end…’
403
I know what awaits Hiccup on Tomorrow, so
in my dream I tried to shout to the boy-I-once-was,
‘Go back! Do not go to Tomorrow! Stay where
you are!’
But of course my boyhood self could not hear
me.
‘STOP!’ I shouted in my dream, but how could
he hear me above the roaring of the wind that was
blowing away the world all around him?
And even if he could, it is already too late for
him to go back. The winds of the Amber Slavelands
have already blown in the Rebellion. They have
torched the little Hooligan village where I grew up. No
one could live in those black smoky ruins.
And even if he could hear me, would I really
want him to do anything differently?
Would I really want the ticking-thing to stop, for
time to stand still, for Hiccup never to grow up, or to
be something other than the boy he is?
This is all his— sorry, my fault, but if Hiccup had
not acted as he did, there would still be slaves in the
Amber Slavelands, Eggingarde would never have made
it back to the arms of Bear-mama, the Dragon Furious
would still be in chains, the world would still be back
in the terrible barbaric times of slaves and tyrants and
404
witches, and monsters with no hearts.
You see, it was not only Hiccup who was growing
up, it was the entire world around him – and when
whole worlds grow up, that can be painful and
difficult.
Was it all worth the Archipelago in flames?
I do not know, you decide.
But Hiccup could not be anything other than
the boy he was, and so his footsteps do not stop; they
walk on. With every step he is a little older than he
was before, walking slowly towards me and into
Tomorrow.
The chapter in my life that Hiccup has just
walked through has been a story of three mothers:
Valhallarama, Bear-mama and Termagant.
Of how even when they are not there, when we
cannot see them, when they are parted from us by
quests, or by slavery, or even by death itself, they are
still watching over us, yearning for us, loving us, though
they lurk in the clouds as invisible to our eyes as the
Deadly Shadow.
Far away by cold campfires they are thinking of
us, dreaming of us, loving us long-distance.
Fishlegs’s mother could not come back to hold
him. She had gone behind that glass wall of death. But
405
still she held up her hand from behind the glass, and
pressed it up to Fishlegs’s hand and willed him to be
alive, to walk, to laugh, to love. As if she could breathe
life into him, as if she could be there with him, as if she
could pass through the glass with the sheer hopeless
longing of her love.
And perhaps she was still there to love him.
Termagant’s eyes had once shone into the six eyes
of the Deadly Shadow.
The reflection of those eyes now shone back into
the eyes of Fishlegs, so it was almost as if, sometimes,
she herself were looking back at him. When the
Shadow dragon pressed itself protectively against
Fishlegs, it was an echo of the embrace that Termagant
had given that same Shadow dragon once, long ago.
The past never really leaves us.
And now I am an old, old man, I hover over my
childhood self, as if I were a dead mother, and I am
anxious for Hiccup’s future, because I already know it,
and I want to protect the boy from pain.
But I am happy too, because I know the future is
a curious mixture of joy and sadness.
So suddenly I throw away my fear, and I no
longer shout ‘Stop!’
I am shouting something slightly different now.
406
Walk on, Hiccup!
Have courage!
Walk into Tomorrow…
And I will meet you there at Hero’s End…
THE
BOY SHALL
NEVER
REACH
TOMORROW...
Oh dear, now things are looking even worse than
they were at the end of the last book, and the Dragon
Furious has sworn to KILL Hiccup himself...
What path will Snotlout take, will he follow the witch,
or will he go with Hiccup?
How will the Ten Companions of the Dragonmark
stop Alvin, now that he has NINE of the
King’s Lost Things?
They must all make their way to Tomorrow for the
FINAL CONFRONTATION...
Can Hiccup save the dragons
from extinction???????
Watch out for the next volume
of Hiccup’s memoirs…
Don’t miss Hiccup’s next adventure!
1. YOUR MOTHER SAID NOT
TO LEAVE THE HIDEOUT
It was a chill and foggy night in the Murderous
Mountains.
A good night for treachery.
Humans should not have been out in the forests
of the Murderous Mountains in those times of war. If
the dragons of the Dragon Rebellion caught even one
hint that there were humans moving in the burnt trees
of those misty mountain passes, they would hunt them
down and kill them.
But somewhere deep in that forest, far away
from any aid, a terrified human voice was shrieking,
‘Help! Help! Help!’ and a little party of brave but
foolish humans and dragons had set out to offer their
assistance.
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was
sitting on the back of a Deadly Shadow dragon, flying
so low over the treetops that every now and then the
slow downward beats of the dragon’s wings brushed
the scorched topmost twigs of the trees.
Deadly Shadow dragons are chameleons, and so
this beautiful three-headed dragon was exactly the
colour of the midnight sky, complete with stars slowly
shifting across its shining sides.
Hiccup’s knees were trembling with the effort to
keep a grip on the saddle.
Hiccup was a very
ordinary looking boy,
for one so sought after
by so many people. A
ragged little string-bean
of a teenager, his fire-suit
torn to ribbons, his face
bruised and scratched,
with the wild hair and
scared eyes of one
who had been
hunted by too
www.cressidacowell.co.uk
This is Cressida, age 9, writing on the island.
www.HowToTrainYourDragonSeries.com
Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Page 22