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

by Cressida Cowell

  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

  397

  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

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  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…’

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel