Part Two: From the Fire
Pressed low to the rough grass of the meadow cliff, the ocean roaring below, Hiccup shifts one paw forward, silently sliding his small body across the ground. He shifts his weight with the ease of long practice and many similar hunts, ready to spring.
Humming on the edge of his own hearing, singing readyreadyreadyready to himself alone, the wild boy catches sight of his prey as it returns within his reach, and leaps. He pounces like any little predator, up and down like a hunting fox, but with the muscles in his shoulders straining to spread wide wings that are not there, and with his imitation of Toothless' diving scream tearing from his throat.
Just for a moment, he flies.
But even sprawled out and half-asleep in the unusually warm day, Toothless snaps his tail-fins away. Instantly, the black dragon slaps them back again, swatting his dragon-boy from the air.
Once their mother could hold them both, one cradled in each arm, but Toothless' growth has far outstripped Hiccup's over their life together. Toothless' tail is more than strong enough to knock Hiccup flying.
Yelping hey hey no mine mine I catch fly fly fly look me fly! – a tangle of hunting sounds flowing easily into cries of surprise and mingled exhilaration and uncertainty – Hiccup tumbles through the air, lands as best he can, stumbles backwards clumsily, and misses his footing, feeling the rocks slip from beneath his paws at the edge of the cliff.
But the cove beneath the weathered-away shore is deep, with no sharp stones or broken branches for Hiccup to strike as he splashes into the water and sinks in a shaft of bubbles and displaced pebbles.
Undisturbed by impact, cold, or immersion, the little boy spits a soundless hmph! of annoyance, and paws at his long fur, floating around his head in a blinding cloud. Through it, he watches for the movement of startled fish and water bugs, scattering in fear, and peers curiously at the bubbles flying back to the air where they belong. He takes in the shifting clouds of mud and silt, stirring in the shallower waters where the waves can push them. The water is calm again, no longer roaring and crashing like warring dragons beneath the howling, flashing thunderstorm that kept both young dragons from sleep last night, but the ocean is never still.
Twisting around, paddling as if his paws were wings, he turns to stare into the deeper waters, unafraid of the darkness and vastness of the true ocean while there is breath within him still. Is there movement there? A shadow of some creature or dragon-cousin much larger than him, but a cousin still?
Too far to see, too far into the dark cold distance of it, and Hiccup turns away, not without a flicker of regret.
It is not his world, and he does not see how he and Toothless could ever fly there, but it is there, another place they have not gone yet!
For now, he decides he would probably like to breathe again, and paddles back to the surface with a childish wave, which he retains as a paw batting at the air for attention, to the creature hovering far away in the deeper waters.
You! he shrieks with his first breath, treading water as he flicks his fur out of his eyes again and slashes out without hope of reaching the dark muzzle and green eyes peering curiously over the edge of the cliff far above, paws braced securely and wings half-spread. Toothless' tail flicks up behind him, and Hiccup cries you bad bad trick splash me down splash bad bad! but with undercurrents of teasing not-mad play me play love-you laughter laughter humming beneath.
He blinks away seawater from his gestures – splash is just that – as Toothless yowls back laughter laughter clever me clever Hiccup down and his tail waves can't-catch-this!
Grouching in aggrieved dragon noises, Hiccup sights on a lower stretch of shore and clambers out of the water. He pays no attention to the mud and slime coating his paws and drenched skins, snatching halfheartedly at a crab that scuttles away from him before he can catch and eat it.
Only when he has climbed back to the peak of the cliff – accompanied by Toothless' chortles of dragonish laughter – does he pounce directly under the black dragon's nose and shake himself dry as best he can. Brackish seawater flies everywhere, and Toothless recoils and pretends to flee, but in fits and starts, a shuffling retreat that allows Hiccup to almost keep pace with him.
Many of his leaps miss, but when the wild boy manages to land on Toothless' shoulder, the bigger dragon collapses sideways as if he has been struck down by a much bigger foe. Hiccup pounds his small fists against his dragon-self's ribs with all the solemnity of a mother inspecting her hatchlings one by one until Toothless strikes all of Hiccup's ribs at once with a single nudge of his wide nose.
The air warms even further as they tear up the grass and kick up tight-packed dirt, stumbling over small stones and each other's paws. Hiccup snatches hold of one of Toothless' ear-flaps and sets his heels into the earth, pulling back hard enough to drag Toothless' head to one side without yanking hard enough to hurt. The black dragon wheels in a barely-enforced circle before retreating backwards, knocking Hiccup off-balance and sending him tumbling to the ground, and then stands over him licking his face and fur and second skins for the moments it takes the much-slobbered-upon dragon-boy to roll away and scamper off in the all-paws-to-back-feet-to-all-paws-again run that is all his own, with his twin-self in joyous pursuit.
Dust from the ground scatters to join the haze still filling the air as black dragon and feral boy scuffle and roll, yelping and yowling in laughter and pretend snarls, until Hiccup signals stop ready Hiccup-self stop no-more enough stop Toothless-mine tired now! and collapses flat across Toothless' back, almost entirely dry again and quite done with pouncing for the moment.
As he gasps for breath, Hiccup picks up a new scent in the wind, familiar but unexpected, and raises his head to track it. That? he whistles curiosity as his dragon-love rumbles uncertainty and follows his lead.
There is a deep roar in the distance quite different from the clashing of waves and the wind hissing through the grasses, although it has been buried beneath those sounds and the dragon-pair's cries. It growls, hungry; it rumbles, coming.
Fire! Toothless signals, roaring a mimicry of other dragon's flames before letting his own fires pool in his jaws, swallowing them away again at once. He tenses alarm beneath Hiccup's touch, wings spreading go go go ready us go,for the sounds and the scents are not of dragon-fire, but of a wild, eating blaze that devours forests and those too slow to flee.
Hiccup cries danger! reflexively, in case there are other flock-mates around to hear their warning, and scampers across Toothless' side as his dragon-partner rolls to his feet.
The little boy drops into his accustomed place between the bigger dragon's shoulders, clinging tightly to his scales, and Toothless waits only a moment more to be sure Hiccup is ready to fly before taking off with a single powerful downbeat. It is not his strongest leap – Hiccup cannot hang on against that quick a jump, they know – but even as the echoes of Hiccup's warning cries fade, they are already in the sky and away.
They have no better way to fly together, yet. The riding-harness their mother wove for Hiccup once has been transformed beyond recognition; its remnants formed the skeleton of the makeshift clothing Hiccup first created for himself, knowing only that it traced his shape conveniently enough. It has long since been outgrown. The greater harness she created for Cloudjumper has been forgotten. Too big for Hiccup to understand, and too painful for Cloudjumper to face as a reminder of his lost beloved, it has been scavenged and repurposed, cut apart and lost.
From above, the forest fire burns like the sunrise, on the horizon but inevitable. The heat that has made the day so warm boils from it in waves of air, twisting the winds and shimmering against the sky. Reds and golds and oranges blend and meld and flare like a living thing; the fires are so powerful they seem to burn black, rich and intricate and uncontrollable. Sparks fly from the land beneath the tar-rich, sticky pines as the mast of the forest floor becomes coals and embers.
Even from far away as they are, the fire is an awesome, wondrous beast. They are beyond its reach for the moment, but the flames roar like a king dragon, a behemoth of fire rather than ice, wreathed in its own element like a nest it has built for itself.
Staring in wonder, mouth open to taste its ashes, Hiccup cries aloud a low, soft sound of pure awe, a small and cowering sound that does not expect to be heard. Beneath his chest, Toothless rumbles wariness in reply.
Neither of them truly fear fire. They are dragons, and fire is in their nature; they have fires inside. But neither of them feel any desire to race towards such a danger – fire can hurt, or why else would dragons hunt and fight with it?
Careful Toothless-beloved us careful, Hiccup murmurs, but he cannot take his eyes from the flames. Part of him wishes to cringe before it, to crouch submission as he would before an Alpha, pleading with its power to accept them and show mercy.
The dragon-boy has always understood that the world is much greater than him; he is a child of a dragon nest, and the world has never been otherwise. With the cheerful ease of familiarity, he scampers among the feet of giants and growls back to jaws larger than his entire body. He climbs down the backs of dragons as tall as great trees as if they were shallow slopes, and if he is bothered at all by wings wide enough to blot out the sun, it is only when he is drawing and they are in his light.
The sky is wide, the sea vast, the winter long, but they are his, his playground and his territory and his home. They are, in a way, too big. Hiccup cannot be overwhelmed by these things, for then when would he hunt? How would he play? How could he think of anything else but the greatness of it? He would be caught fascinated and terrified, unmoving, and some enemy would snap him up to be shaken in her jaws and cast aside broken.
But the fire, blazing and roaring to devour all within its reach – it strides between familiarity and incomprehension with its head high and its shoulders broad, heavy paws pacing with perfect confidence. The inferno is big enough to cower before, but small enough to be understood as itself and trembled before.
They could turn and fly away, seeking out a different, safer island, but Hiccup does not signal reluctance and draw away anxious. He only watches, and Toothless with him.
They do not shudder or mourn for the forest the inferno consumes, or the island crackling beneath it; it is not theirs. It was only the nearest refuge when the clouds grew heavy like a dragon-mother lumbering through the caves to claim the nest where her eggs will lie warmed and protected and sung to, knowing that wherever she walks, her flock-mates will step aside and lower their heads to offer not even the threat of a glare, not even a resentful grunt if she should choose to claim their nest for her eggs to rest.
With the smell of rain and lightning washing through the air, Toothless had turned and let the restless winds of the storm carry him before them, seeking shelter.
They had found a place where two freshly-fallen trees, their needles still green and bitter and the edges of their broken places still sharp, had been caught by a jagged rock face. It had served them less as a shelter than as a corner where they could watch the storm clouds engulf the sky and break it open. The wind shook the dying needles from the dead trees and scattered them all around the dragon and the wild boy as they huddled pressed close together for warmth and comfort in the face of the power cracking across their world. And they had watched wondering and exhilarated, startling with every flash of lightning and the answering roar of thunder, but not in fear.
Never in fear; only with the desire to leap and soar and roar reply, and with the frustration of all small creatures that long to be big enough to fit their soul.
Eventually Hiccup had fallen asleep out of pure exhaustion, and with a gentle paw, Toothless had nudged his dragon-boy closer, against the dark scales of his ribs, and spread a wing over him, engulfing Hiccup in a living cave. Thrumming with contentment and exhaustion of his own, the black dragon had tucked his own nose beneath that same outstretched wing, and fallen asleep with the scent of his beloved-self overlaying even his dreams.
From their half-hidden nest, beneath the high-rearing rock face and the blinding pine branches, and the whipping sheets of rain, neither had seen a bolt of lightning strike the heart of the island, nor could they have known that the embers of that strike had smoldered there, waiting to burst to life in the next day's winds.
And now it blazes, and the storm's hatchling roars answer to its absent mother, and Toothless hovers and hesitates. His instincts tell him to flee – fire is a thing of dragons, but fire can kill them, if there is enough of it.
Dragons can burn; dragons burn their dead, and so those who wish to remain living flee great fires that are not their own.
(Toothless does not think of this in so many words; it is merely an instinct, something as part of his bones as his need to fly as far as he possibly can.)
Both Hiccup and Toothless know that they should be away from this place as it burns. They do not know these waters where they have traveled – it is a new place – but the sea is full of islands.
But fascination crackles between them, and Toothless cannot turn his eyes away even as he feels Hiccup put more of his weight on a single small paw as his dragon-boy leans towards the flames, crooning amazement that Toothless echoes.
Below, flickers of movement betray animals fleeing from the devouring fire, panicked and heedless of the danger in the sky, but Toothless ignores them. He too can feel wonder and consider it more important than his instincts to hunt and feed. He can imagine the heat of the heart of the flame rather than the taste of quick blood in his jaws, can notice the contrast of dark and dying tree trunks striped against the light of the fire and consider this new thing more interesting than an easy strike. He can even, faintly, judge that there is enough fear racing across the ground without subjecting the panicked wild creatures to his own teeth and blasting-fires as well.
Instead, Toothless turns his wings to the heat of the flames and only glides on the rising thermals, circling wide and wary around the burning forest. When the fire lunges towards them, hot and close enough to pull his dragon-boy's skin tight and make Hiccup pull away, then Toothless veers further away to match, dancing with it careful and slow.
They do not fear fire, but they respect it, just as they do not fear the sky, but they respect storms.
For now.
The wind changes, driving the ash and heat of the fire out of their noses, and instead the sharp salt smell of the sea washes through them, breaking Hiccup and Toothless from their rapture. Shaking himself and touching his nose to Toothless' scales, grounding his paws on the familiar texture of his dragon-twin's shoulders, Hiccup is, unusually, silent, and Toothless lets him be, only humming reassurance and keeping his wings level as they fly away.
The untouched forest rolls beneath them like ocean waves, deep valleys like wave-trenches and higher peaks like breakers, as they fly across the heart of the island and towards the other shore.
The strongest scent in the air is still the fire, and neither Hiccup nor Toothless understand the meaning of the wide, bare channel cut in the earth, trees fallen and dragged aside, ground bare and burnt when the fire has not yet come here.
Look! Hiccup yelps, taken by surprise.
At once, Toothless backwings, spinning almost in place. Below his wings there are dark shapes crouching beneath the shelter of the valley, clustered near the small stream that he can see becomes a greater river as it runs down to the sea. They are strange, sharp-cornered things with nothing living about them, things made rather than shaped by the wind and the tide or the hurrying paws of dragons that knock away loose stones as they run. Some rise to sharp peaks, while others are rounded, like gentle hills, and the ground between them is bare and barren, trampled flat, with strange objects scattered around. Spread out beyond them, long furrows stripe their way across the fields as if dragon-claws had torn through the earth, still visible beneath the plants growing in unnaturally orderly lines.
He does not need to know the words hut or hall or longhouse; he cannot think market-stall or stable or forge, but Toothless recognizes the smell of humans and the shapes of their dens. While he cannot think village, either, he does not need to, to understand that this is a place of humans they have almost stumbled into, and he can recoil, body anticipating the hiss of arrows as his ear-flaps flatten back to his skull, already expecting the alien sound of human shrieks.
Humans are a part of their world but an unwelcome one, to be avoided when possible and fled when not, and, increasingly, to be fought. Their mother's battle against the trappers who stalk the far northern wastes and the mildly more hospitable south is becoming her children's, as Hiccup learns more of how to pick apart the mechanisms of snapping traps and slice through the triggers of snares, and as Toothless grows big enough to carry them on longer and longer journeys out into the world, and to fly away in a flicker of dark wings when threatened.
Once, the dragons of their flock knew to race home and cry out to Valka when their friends were captured or when the gleam of metal, unearthed by a scavenging paw, flashed back at startled eyes. One day, the king's dragons will call on Hiccup and Toothless the same way.
For now, they are only children, and they consider humans – the word Viking is lodged in Hiccup's memory from his mother's stories, unspoken and unused – with childish fear and hatred.
Danger! Toothless yelps, and casts about for cover, up into the sky in search of clouds to hide in, and down towards the ground. As he does, his flight, aided by the pushing heat from the flames behind them, carries them ever-closer to the village.
From his shoulders, Hiccup whimpers and snarls bad bad no fly-away bad danger fear flee fear no no go us go away away…
But in the moments it takes Toothless to look for a hiding place, his dragon-boy's signals change, becoming danger Toothless-heart careful danger curious careful us Toothless-love curious hesitation thinking thinking wait thinking hunting look hunting thinking – this, an atonal hum of more spilling through him than Hiccup can keep up with verbalizing, for he thinks aloud quite naturally – wait Toothless-beloved look look wait look wondering here where? where? He clicks the puzzled sound of a dragon that has lost its prey, shifting on Toothless' shoulders as he searches.
Hiccup-beloved? Toothless vocalizes, the (click)-phuh they retain of Hiccup's spoken name underlaid with pure adoration. He whines puzzled don't-like go go bad uncertain you you what? and growls urgency, eager to be away.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Hiccup wave a small paw, gesturing to the settlement below Toothless' anxiously hovering wings. The dragon-boy chirps and whistles where humans uncertain humans no and the inquisitive gone? of a dragon searching for her friends, but leavened with distrust. He paws at the air as if digging in an ermine's burrow, casting aside clods of dirt and brushing unfound things aside, searching for his prey even as the tension in his body betrays his readiness to leap away.
Ermines do not like small dragon-children digging into their dens to steal pawfuls of soft fur or the still-smaller predator's own kill, and they bite.
Shuddering, Toothless nevertheless looks closer, as Hiccup is urging him to do.
Fear is Hiccup's primary association with humans – that he was born one of them is something he cannot comprehend, and he does not identify with them at all – but laid atop that deep foundation is an additional layer that will lead him and Toothless into danger, all their lives. Entirely too clever for his own good sometimes – but exactly as clever as he needs to be, to survive and flourish in a world that regularly tries to kill him – Hiccup is smart enough to look at his predators and their skills and wonder, how can I use that?
Hiccup also looks at the humans he fears with entirely practical greed.
The enemy, yes, but humans make things, and Hiccup shares with his dragon-kin the same ruthlessly practical approach to possessions as understood by all human toddlers, or any cat in history, which can be broadly summarized as, "But it can't be yours! I want it."
And here is a human den all laid out before them, and empty.
No shambling two-leggers, heavy in their furs and metal, glaring from beneath their horns, roar and wave their paws and brandish sharp things at Toothless in the sky. No Vikings huddle in the shadow of their dens, staying still like a deer waiting to be overlooked through the trees.
It has been years since Hiccup and Toothless were anywhere close to awake and angry humans, although they have flown wide of ships with humans seething across their backs, darting into clouds to hide. They followed along beside Shadow-Across-Water as she snuck around the edges of a pack that had gotten lost in the woods, perhaps – who understands what humans do? Shadow-Across-Water had only wanted to chase them from her hunting-grounds, and had come home with laughter in her eyes and her shoulders, hiding the fear that pinned her tail to her belly, inviting her flock-mates to follow her and snarl intruders away from their forests.
But they remember that humans move so strangely, lurching and rearing tall, baring their stomachs for a blow; the little dragons would surely know, if there were humans still here.
The only movements are the flapping of cloths that seem suspended between two of the dens, hanging in mid-air like small and solid clouds, and the small, jerking steps of fat stupid birds, which scatter as Toothless' shadow passes over them, screaming mindlessly. Small fires burn abandoned in wide metal holding-things, and clumps of straw shuffle across the trodden-solid ground, blown by the wind. A round thing spins in an eerily perfect circle (dragons must think very hard to understand wheels, and Hiccup and Toothless have never seen an unbroken cart, much less one on its side this way). Colorful strips and sheets of cloth wave from the edges of the nests, and mud dries to dirt again beneath the open mouth of a carrying-thing, on its side on the edge of stones; the water within winks at them, catching the reflection of the hazed-over sun.
The only sounds are the wind humming through the stones and wood of the village, and the distant-now roar of the forest fire further inland. The ocean breathes on the edge of even Toothless' hearing; the screams of the fluffy birds are far louder, practically demanding that some ever-hungry dragon bite through their feathers to silence them.
Descending almost against his will, caught by his own curiosity and Hiccup's low chatter of interest, Toothless' murmurs of uncertainty counterpointed by anticipation, even as his body shows wary and yet strives towards brave, wind their way into the small sounds as the black dragon lands.
He is at once ready to leap again, to fly without hesitation, never looking back.
Humans would find the village eerily silent, deserted. To Hiccup and Toothless, the near-quiet is the most reassuring thing they could hear.
Nothing strikes them, no one roars trespass!, no one charges with shoulder lowered to knock the young dragons from their paws and send them scampering away.
Gradually, Toothless uncoils from his half-defensive crouch, folding his wings back against his spine and raising his head to look all around. The tightness in his chest, half muscles tensed for quick action and half excitement, loosens and uncoils with every moment no danger leaps from the shadows and curiosity wins out. His ear-flaps twitch and turn, fanning out as he tries to pay attention to everything at once.
This is a very new place to be!
Wonder, Hiccup churrs, chuckling mischief. His paws tap excitement against Toothless' shoulders, an uncontrollable staccato of anticipation and the shuddering edge of danger that, even at this young age, he thrives on.
Toothless has always been with him, and Toothless will always protect him, and so a very small child in a very hostile world is perhaps more fearless than he should be, with such a force at his side.
(There was a time that was not enough, but he has forgotten, save in brief moments of hesitation. There will be times when that will not be enough, but then Hiccup will defend Toothless in his turn, and has before.)
Hiccup has no nightmares of empty human nests; part of him remembers playing among ruins, Toothless at his side, knowing with perfect faith that they were safe and watched over.
Thinking for the moment only of new things to play with and steal most cleverly – the dragon-boy is and always will be a proper little thief - Hiccup leaps from Toothless' shoulders and darts away a few steps, laughing as dragons laugh. He nearly tumbles over his own front paws as he tries to at once glance back at Toothless and run headlong to the nearest new toy he can pounce upon, whistling c'mon Toothless-beloved c'mon c'mon c'mon look want want us brave us good clever us brave yes yes c'mon want want!
And Toothless races after him, yelping eagerly, the entire deserted village theirs to explore.
You! Hiccup challenges, poking Toothless' shoulder with one paw. He crouches in his dragon-companion's shadow, the thrill of the unknown humming through him in a steady keen interspersed with short, excited yelps. He peeks around Toothless, eyes wide. The opening in the wall is no less dark, nor are the scents from within any less strong, but neither has anything snarled from within that they are not welcome.
Behind them, a trail of destruction and disarray marks their small adventures. The cloths once seemed to hang in mid-air, but then small dragons came to play peekaboo among them, peeking around their edges and snarling in play, trying to tackle each other regardless of anything in their way. Most have been torn from the clothesline and to the ground, and they lie fluttering piteously, accumulating dirt again. One end of the line remains anchored to the eaves of the longhouse, clinging doggedly to the few sheets and linens that remain.
Hiccup had managed to drag a wide piece of cloth over Toothless' head and blind him, leaping to the crown of his dragon-companion's head and leaning precariously over Toothless' muzzle to weigh his nose down, only to be distracted by the colorful patterns worked into it. The embroidered lines of thread might have succumbed to the little boy's picking at them, had Toothless not immediately thrown him off and away. The cloth had gone with him as Hiccup had tumbled to the earth, and wind-blown ash had turned everything the same shadowy brown.
Half-empty barrels lie on their sides, clawed at and stepped upon, the prints of Hiccup's summer-bare feet upon the wood smudged beyond recognition by Toothless' heavier paws. Many of them have rolled away and fetched up beneath the overhanging eaves of a nearby storehouse that has resisted all efforts by the dragon-pair to break into.
The scorch-mark of Toothless' blasting-fires marks the near-obliteration of a hapless chicken; blood on stone betrays where another had met its panicked fate. The scattered feathers not adorning Hiccup's matted fur scud back and forth in the confused vortex of winds as they change with the tides, caught between the distant fire and the distant sea.
That fire is not forgotten, but the dragon-pair have set it aside as not quite an immediate threat. Perhaps it will not come this far, perhaps the fire will eat enough forest to not be hungry anymore, or perhaps it will hunt elsewhere. And if it does come here, they will see it coming, for the fields around the village have driven the forest far away from the doors of the village itself, creating a wide-open space to watch across.
With that understanding held tightly in their jaws to be licked at and kept for later, Hiccup and Toothless are free to play.
Banners that hung over the doorways of many of the village houses have been snatched from their moorings by sharp teeth and clever paws and run away with. Toothless had nipped Hiccup's favorite from his paws and tempted the dragon-boy into a yowling, scolding chase through the village and into the waving fields. He had weaved between the barley stalks that bent before his weight but sprang up again to swat smaller, lighter Hiccup away, until the banner had fallen from his jaws and been lost.
It waves from among the growing crops again, unnoticed by the little dragons who have found a new game to play.
I brave look-at-me brave yes me me big not-afraid I go look me, Toothless boasts, raising his head and baring his teeth, showing the unmarked scales of his chest and throat to any enemies hiding within, daring them to do better. And yet his tail waves uncertain and excitement, and he glances anxiously to the side to be sure that Hiccup is with him as they slink, low and careful, into the longhouse.
Hiccup had reared to his full height to grab at a tough leather loop hanging from what they had only seen as a wall, and nearly lost his balance when it had given way and the door had swung open. Toothless had found him lecturing it in dragon sounds, scolding bad you bad liar this liar you well? well? snorting a disappointed hmph and turning his shoulder to it as if he were a big dragon quite unamused by the antics of a hatchling.
Their eyes adapt to darkness quickly, though. Darkness is their natural habitat and their home. And in moments they understood that there was an inside here that they could venture into, if they were brave enough…
Goaded on by each other's encouragement, the dragon-pair bristle and stare at the long, shadowy space they have discovered within. The air is thick and heavy, full of the smell and the heat of the raised stone hearth that fills the center of the room, and with the fug of many human bodies in close quarters.
But the scent is stale, and so Toothless snaps his fangs away and turns to nuzzle Hiccup calm again, pushing his dragon-boy out from beneath the black dragon's chest where he shelters, growling. They were taught very young to fear that scent, and neither of them had understood the irony in being taught to fear reeking furs, and being praised for recoiling with defensive hisses, only to run happily back to their human mother's voice when – or somewhat after – she called for them. The furs had not smelled like her at all.
Narrow slits set high in the walls admit shafts of light that slice down into the room, illuminating shapes new and unknown. Human eyes would see fire-pokers, benches, a wooden sideboard, a pair of cradles, and this tribe's crest at the peak of the far wall.
The door swings closed, nearly catching Toothless' tail, but it opens again when Hiccup pushes on it. Reassured to know that they are not trapped, that they can leave again, Toothless breathes love into his dragon-boy's fur and only licks him a little bit, only until Hiccup can squirm away.
This? Hiccup clicks inquisitively, springing onto the heavy stone block of the hearth. At once, warm ashes stain his second skins and his wet fur greyer and grubbier, and he sits back on his heels, careful to keep his paws from the heat of the still-burning coals in its center. Hot, he snorts, drawing his paws back to his chest; the ghosts of burn scars, not the last he will ever acquire, discolor the sensitive skin of his palms.
The fire is familiar and unimportant, but the smells from the dark metal thing nestled in the ashes near it make his mouth water. Skirting the edges of the hearth, balancing easily on the edge, the feral boy reaches out. He hesitates only for an instant before dabbling his paw in the thick mutton stew, left cooling within the cauldron.
Hot this good good like Toothless-beloved look food good this like like, Hiccup chirrups between licking his paw clean and purring pleasure as Toothless noses a fire poker off its hook, sending it clattering to the ground. Ignoring the ladle left to sit in the stew, he briefly considers drinking the warm, rich liquid straight from the surface as he often does water, but instead presses his paws together and scoops up a pawful. Stew drips from his face and down his forelegs, bothering him not at all as he licks away the escaping food.
Me? Toothless asks, ear-flaps perking up as he sets his jaw on the stone block, and Hiccup blinks love at him, thrumming amusement at his dragon-beloved's unnecessary begging.
Patting at the metal and finding it cool enough to touch, he tips the cauldron over until Toothless can put his nose into it, and between them, the stew vanishes. The loaves of bread left by the fire meet a similar exploratory fate, pieces torn off and bites taken out of each, knocked into the fire or to the ground.
The plates on the sideboard are ransacked, salted fish pulled apart between them in small tugs-of-war; they overturn half-drunk, abandoned mugs, and both little dragons recoil with nostrils flaring from the strong, alien smell of barley beer.
Hiccup snatches up something that shines intriguingly, and coos over the sharpness of the little eating knife. He has a similar one at home in the nest, left behind in their haste to escape their flock-mates' temper. He carves aimless lines into the wood of the sideboard where he crouches, happily destructive, until Toothless rears up to see the patterns his dragon-boy has made. The wood cracks beneath the young dragon's weight, and both scavenging dragon-children tumble to the floor amidst the wreckage.
Unhurt and unbothered, Hiccup signals mine, chirruping amusement. He wraps it away into a thick fold of his second skins, and scampers away to the other side of the den.
There are shapes on the walls, carved into and painted over the wood, and Hiccup runs his paws across the stylized images of monsters and beasts, demons and gods, heroes and tricksters, legends and lies, triumphs and truths without understanding any of them, only wondering at the colors and the smoothness of the carvings.
There are patterns there, but not ones he knows, though Hiccup can draw, and loves to. Ironically, Hiccup's own drawings, though more often scratched into sand or chalked across stone, are more realistic than the stylized art of the Vikings. Hiccup draws what he sees, as he sees it, and when he imagines things that he would like to make, he sketches with a natural engineer's practical eye.
Toothless rears to his hind legs to bat at a bundle hanging from the rafters of the ceiling, chirping bird bird bird – he knows it is not, but he swats at it as he would try to bring down a pheasant startled from a clump of grass. His claws catch in the oiled net, tearing through.
Onions rain from on high, and Hiccup shrieks with laughter, wrapping his forelegs over his head as they crash down and bounce away. One strikes his shoulder, and he immediately leaps off the metal-bound sea chest and after it, pouncing and rolling with it successfully caught and clasped to his chest. The moment he tumbles back to his feet, he rolls the onion away chirruping wonder and mimicking its spin with his paws, over and over, around and around.
Ugh! Toothless spits, grimacing and licking at his jaws, howling regret and hissing irritation at his attempt to eat the one he snatched from the air. He backs away and shakes his head as if he could retreat from his own tongue, tail lashing.
Hiccup vanishes into the shadows beneath a heavy trestle table after the onion Toothless bats angrily towards him, the bigger dragon whistling the sharp warning of not-to-eat!
Not-to-eat! Toothless' whistle becomes a scolding shriek. Anxious to protect the other half of himself from this half's mistake, Toothless dives after him, and a bench goes flying. The black dragon drags him out again past its upturned legs, a single sharp tooth caught with infinite gentleness in a fold of the dragon-boy's leather skins, and Hiccup sighs silly and pats his nose understanding and soothing and love.
A tall metal torch near the hearth gutters out, deprived of fresh coals, as the mercurial pair tire of onions and continue to explore.
Strange, Hiccup mutters, wary again without the distractions of food or chasing. Perched atop the table, crouched with his weight on his hindquarters and his paws lowered before him, balanced and ready to leap, he looks almost exactly like a little dragon, lacking only a tail. And yet, he imagines that lack as if it were a part of him, only unseen because it is behind him. He can all but feel it coiling in close, pressing against his flank and the wide tail-fins of the tip of it – for of course his tail would be like Toothless' tail, only smaller – twitching against his stomach, small blows like the heart pounding within his chest.
Danger wary us you? you? us together yes Toothless-love here yes together good good good us, he mutters and gestures. The presence of his dragon-partner is the one familiar touchpoint in this strange place they have ventured into, and he is constantly moving to keep Toothless on the edge of his vision, if not right before his eyes.
This? This? what this? this? danger? Danger? No-threat? Toothless' body says, even as he grunts and whuffs and declares brave us brave this ours us here yes us brave! in small roars.
Here cave-nest here look us want? Hiccup asks, skittering across the room and coming to a stop against one wall. He has paced out the perimeter of this space, and the smell of the air tells him that there is another space beyond it. When he sits up and brushes his paws across it, he can catch his claws in the small gap between one piece and the next. It is like the one outside, he reasons – it is exactly like. There is even another loop to pull on, and so this one can open too.
Keeping low, all but howling caution, Toothless joins him and sniffs at the small gap between ground and piece-of-wall-that-moves. In among the bristling-boldness in his shoulders and the jangling almost-frightened and trying-not-to-be humming through his breathing, Hiccup understands the still-smaller signals that say you here you here you here good good best Hiccup-mine beloved-always you here reassurance comforted you here.
The dragon-boy leans against Toothless' shoulder in reply, setting their hearts alongside each other to beat together, mimicking Toothless' crouch and matching his dragon-partner's breathing, and Toothless relaxes just a little.
There is no fresh scent of humans beyond, either, and Hiccup lifts a paw to tug on the loop and make it open.
I do! Toothless insists, nudging him aside. One ear-flap flicks back, annoyance, but not at Hiccup; his tail-fins slap against the floor with a sharp declaration of bold!
Meekly, Hiccup drops back to his crouch, the movement quite naturally becoming a roll that leaves him sprawled out easily, only waiting. You yes safe I safe you you strong I here see you.
Reassured by Hiccup's trust, Toothless considers mimicking the way his dragon-boy had caught and pulled on the other loop, but the moment he raises one paw, he sets it down again. It is only the pulling, the clever young dragon understands, not the paws. And so, he snaps out his fangs and very carefully catches the loop with them, backing away.
Half of the double doors swings open, and Hiccup whistles delight and praise even as the dragon-boy leaps back to his paws, already crouched alert and ready to run from imagined monsters in the space beyond.
All their attention is ahead of them, and so it comes as a terrible shock when the door behind them opens again, spilling sunlight down the length of the room.
The sunbeam, broken by the broad forms of two humans standing in the doorway, stops just short of the black dragon and the feral boy, who stand frozen and frightened only for a frantic heartbeat. Terror washes through them like a wave, whimpers of fear caught in throats too paralyzed to give voice to them. For all their different shapes, Hiccup and Toothless drop into identical cringes, bodies pressed close together and cowering down into the too-shallow cover of shadow, shoulders hunched defensively, heads down even as their eyes remain fixed on the predators in the light. Toothless' tail whips to the side, shielding Hiccup, who sets his paws against the earth with claws crooked ready to strike, even knowing the soft claws that are all he has will do nothing against thick fur and gleaming metal.
From beyond, the sounds of human voices, raucous like seagulls' cries, drift in through the open door. The longhouse walls are thick enough to keep its inhabitants warm even in the brutal northern winters. They had been enough to keep out the sounds of the returning villagers too, allowing them to sneak up on the distracted dragon-pair.
Now one of the creatures in the light makes an angry sound, waving its forepaws in the air and setting them against its sides. It mutters and grumbles to its companion, which shakes its head sharply – the fur on its face waves like a fox's brush.
The angry creature makes no sounds they recognize specifically, but the tone of its voice is one they recognize clearly. The dragon-pair recognize anger, and frustration, and confusion.
Memories Hiccup cannot place suggest mess this mess who mess everywhere! But it is not at all unusual for bigger dragons to be frustrated with hatchlings tumbling all over each other, racing through others' nests and mobbing their flock-mates' tails and wingtips, swarming around the jaws of hunters returning from fishing and pleading to be fed. He himself has made similar howls, when his younger cousins have scattered the toys and tools he hoards across half the cave, and he and Toothless have been similarly howled at.
Beside him, Toothless is whimpering low in his throat, barely more than a thrum, and Hiccup can sense his dragon-twin breathing in sharply, ready to flame through his fear.
The fox-fur human steps into the room, looking around.
The moment it does so, the young dragons dart away, deeper into the shadows of the den. Closer to their predators, yes, and it terrifies them, but they are hiding just as they would hide from an angry flock-mate (it is easier to think of that, they can think through that), dodging past and away.
Dropping into the shadows of the table, behind the undisturbed bench, twin to the upturned one, Toothless feels more than sees Hiccup pressed against his chest, matching his movements. (The wild boy has been scrambling about on all his paws for most of his life, and has no trouble moving low.)
Through its legs, they watch the two humans lurch into the room, snapping to each other. One stoops – at once black dragon and dragon-boy scramble a little closer to the open air and freedom, trusting to the heavy stone block of the hearth to conceal all but the tip of Toothless' nose and his tail-fins – and rises again with an onion in its paws.
It bears the marks of Toothless' fangs, nearly bitten through and still fresh enough to ooze thinly.
It says something to its companion, and the other human shambles closer to see –
And at once Hiccup is on Toothless' shoulders and the bigger dragon is streaking towards the light as fast as he can possibly go, dodging around a half-strung loom Hiccup had wondered at without comprehending and leaping over a discarded round shield, its shining metal boss for a moment reflecting only night-black scales.
Toothless skids to a landing just over the threshold of the longhouse, briefly gawky as his hindquarters regroup beneath him and his wings spread and his tail-fins hiss across the packed earth in his wake –
And even as he does, he tries to recoil at the sight of human eyes fixed upon him, wide and amazed and shocked.
If anything, the child's stare, jaw fallen as if to scream, crude straw moppet slipping from its grip, saltwater dripping from the edges of the cloth wrapped around it as it climbs to the top of the path and freezes there, only drives Toothless to leap faster.
On his back, Hiccup clings tightly to his scales. He is blind to the human child – not the other human child, the only human child here – for his face is buried in the nape of Toothless' neck and his dragon-scent in pure fear he cannot face, all the tension in his small body urging his dragon-beloved up up go now now up go! and Toothless is only too willing to fly.
Only when they are safely high in the air and out over the sea again does Toothless follow Hiccup's unsteady snarl and the wave of his companion's paw at the ships drawn up to the shore, shapes scattering away from them, and understand that the humans who abandoned the village had come back.
By then they have flown a little further inland, back towards the forest and the fire, to confuse any hunters who might chase after them. But the fire has not come this far; the changed wind has turned it away from the bare swath of ground where there was nothing to eat, and the flames have retreated towards the nest of their birth again.
Still, it is enough of this island, and Toothless shudders as if he was shaking water from his scales.
Hiccup whistles agreement and relief and no-more, a surrendering, backing-away sound.
And Toothless turns away, and beats his wings strongly to soar upward, hunting for a wind that will catch them up and carry them away over the endless ocean towards somewhere else, without forest fires or humans or onions.
Neither of them suggest anything about going home just yet.
To be continued.
Author's Note: If you, your local library, or your dad subscribes to National Geographic, the Viking longhouse Hiccup and Toothless just ransacked can be found on pages 36 and 37 of the March 2017 issue.
