Chapter 10: Chapter 10
AN: It has been a good while since I updated this story, but I am committed to finishing it. A sincere 'thank-you' to all my readers for your patience. At the end of this chapter I've included a synopsis of chapters 1-9, together with some short notes on themes and vocabulary.
A Dragon's Gift
Chapter 10
Orkney - 'orcs' - the school of sleeping whales,
To those who glimpsed it first,
Hills half-sunk in the sea.
- George MacKay Brown
So, what do you say to a dragoness of barely two day's acquaintance, to a Fury quite at home in Berk's northern skies and who had, it seemed, been watching over a village of vikings and dragons for the-gods-alone-know how long, unseen behind her mind-spun cloak?
To a dragoness who conjured fantastical alien worlds to tell the long sad story of her kind; who, if that tale could be believed, carried the terrible, ancient guilt of an entire species upon her broad black wings?
A Fury who'd have you understand that dragon-kind and human once stepped out as scale and skin together, in a time long, long ago when the first was already old beyond imagining and the other barely minted new?
Such was the conundrum facing Hiccup now.
Melisma hadn't broken eye contact for so much as an instant. And for now it was no draconic gaze that met his own, nor that of just any human, but the loving eyes of his own dear mother, pleading, ever-caring, reaching out in supplication from the still-clear memories of his childhood.
The soundless shore of the mindscape seemed to shimmer and fade, the horizon blurring as sea and sky merged to one. Hiccup's perception swam, and for a moment the only things that seemed certain in his world were the steady strength of Toothless at his back and the human form of Melisma gazing back at him. Her eyes verified, without any need for words, that which Toothless had already told to him that day: that the mindscape was a place only for the truth to be heard, and no place for falsehoods at all.
Words failed the young man still. But staring back upon his long-dead mother's form, Hiccup's thoughts drifted, by and by, towards her living mate.
Hiccup knew that at this moment, somewhere far from here, his father must be grappling with puzzles of his own. Not least of which a vanished, strange and wayward son who'd told him - such a little time ago! - such other things that simply could not be believed: that dragons were a people, that they thought, and felt, and spoke...
Did his own face bear the self-same mask of incredulity that Stoick's wore back then, when their own beloved village smoked and smouldered all around them?
Hiccup didn't have it in him to hold Melisma's gaze for any longer, but neither did he wish to turn away. And so he shut his eyes and bowed his head in simple acknowledgement and trust. It was the best – indeed the only – response that he could muster.
But as things turned out, it was the best response of all. Melisma's gratitude broke over him like some great ocean wave that, having travelled all the waters of the world, was relieved to spend itself at last, exhausted but fulfilled, upon some distant shore.
::Thank you, Hiccup...::
The voice of the dragon became the voice of the sea, the roar and tumble of waves on shore, the comforting, familiar hiss of backwash over timeworn rock. The sound beckoned to him, and his bewildered, unresisting mind was glad enough to follow.
Hiccup opened his eyes and saw the stars. A whisper-faint lightness in the east presaged the coming dawn. His ears filled with the surf-sound, overlain with a Nadder's gentle rumble and Viggen's muted human words.
The young man drew deep of the gathering breeze, the ozone-sharpness of the sea softened by his Fury's own dear scent; the young man's backside cramped against the turf, but Toothless' flank was warm and soft against his shoulder.
Hiccup reached down to his left leg and, sighing briefly, felt the wood and metal present and correct once more.
They were returned from the mindscape at last.
It came easier to Finna, the second time around. No less wonderful, of course; but now the wonder wasn't sullied by her stomach leaping up into her throat, by the quick and certain knowledge she was dead for sure.
It was true: she'd gotten comfortable in the red-scale's company. Found herself distracted from her daily chores with idle thoughts of more time at the barn. But that was before she'd barged in all unknowing on four live Nightmares, not just one. She'd cursed her own stupidity and ignorance, for it was fanciful to think that one could disturb a dragoness with her young and live to tell the tale.
And yet her friend had not attacked, and here came Finna, still alive today.
She'd brought along some fish this time. Mackerel, raw and oily, chopped up small; some decent lumps of cod as well. She'd worried she'd be spotted, sneaking house to house with the heavy creel upon her back, but hardly a soul was up so early on this morning. The villagers were still in shock after the dragons' sudden exodus, and exhausted by the rushed repairs of the day before.
A fresh sea breeze had gotten up to sing and sigh around the wrecked barn's roof and crumbling stones. It occurred to Finna that the wind might mask her footfalls, and she didn't want to ride her luck by surprising the dragoness two days in a row. So it was with an idly whistled tune that she swung her lightweight frame, awkward with the creel, around the jagged threshold of the ruin's seaward edge.
The odour of the fish, not just her tune, forewarned of her arrival. Four pairs of red-gold shining eyes swivelled up to meet her gaze.
Finna smiled, heaved the creel from off her shoulders...
...and cursed herself once more, as she realised just where she was and what she'd done.
The villagers had been offering food to the dragons for weeks now. But always in the open, the fish lobbed whole to grateful mouths or just laid out upon the clifftop turf. Either way, it came instinctively to keep one's distance as the dragons fell upon their meals. For while those awful jaws had never once been turned upon a human since the great Queen's defeat, there was nothing quite like the sight of feeding dragons to bring back bloody memories of when indeed they had.
Finna could command no such respectful distance, not here, not now, for the adult dragoness filled the barn to almost overflowing. The Nightmare mother whuffed at her, close enough to ruffle Finna's hair. Saliva began to dribble down a fang. To the girl it felt like some long-lost cousin had come to dinner and had, against all decorum, neglected to remove her sword and knives before sitting at the table.
Was she really pondering etiquette in a dragon's company?
The youngsters squeaked and twittered, jostled closer to the creel. Finna bumped up hard against the farther wall, the rough stone cold and harsh against her back, but her stumbling backward steps bought her hardly any ground at all. The reek of fish and the sudden, bitter taste of terror in her mouth swamped the salt-wrack scent of the sea.
Finna, skewered with fear, could only stand and stare and wait.
Half a barn upon a cliff. Within, a creel, still standing there unopened. On either side and locking eyes, death sublimed and one thin human – neither paying any heed as hatchlings yipped and bickered at their feet.
The moment stretching to a lifetime, out and out and out...
Finna shut her eyes against the inevitable end.
Nothing. No roar or lunging for the creel, no sudden gnash of lethal jaws. Finna forced her eyes apart, and looked anew.
The dragoness blinked at her, and... crooned?
Finna gazed on, unbelieving, as the Nightmare's legs and wings began to slowly shift. Ungainly here in her cramped lair the dragoness shuffled back, tucked wings and legs close up to her body. The huge head lowered till it rested on the dusty floor, the eyes holding Finna still. With a quiet bark from their dam the hatchlings scurried back to settle quiet beneath a wing.
The Nightmare huffed at her again, softer, no less insistent. Finna felt all speech leave her, but that was quite all right, because the imperative that seized her now did not need words to work. Absently she realised she could have read the dragon's body-language wrong, but even if she had it didn't matter. Something greater and far beyond reason, something deeper lodged and unutterably old, would drive her actions now.
A gentle smile filled Finna's face. Her rigid muscles fell to relaxation. It didn't matter if the dragon was acting deliberately or from deep instinct, for the girl felt no coercion. Nor was she being asked to make a leap of faith. She simply felt the strong conviction of something done together, that she was needed, valued, loved. A growing, glowing certainty that she was in no danger, that many, many like them both had trod this path before.
With easy, unrushed steps she left the meagre comfort of the wall. Moving past the creel she sat right down just by the Nightmare's side. A russet wing curled over her and drew her close.
Finna's notions of reality, already frayed around the edges, dissolved away entire.
Hiccup stared out into the leaden predawn light. Memories of the mindscape flooded him still, every little detail crystallized. Had he truly slept at all last night? It hardly seemed possible, yet he didn't feel tired at all right now, not one bit.
The young man blinked. How could she end the story there? How could she?
"Melisma?"
Hiccup scrambled on all fours across to where an inky curve of shadow suggested their companion lay. The dragoness was there all right, wheezing on the turf, splayed prone upon her back with legs and wings akimber. Her great pale eyes, staring wide and unfocussed, glinted with the stars.
A gentle nudge, just then, in Hiccup's side.
::Easy, Hiccup, easy. Creating the mindscape takes it out of a dragon. Best leave her be for a bit.::
::No, no, Toothless...::
The shadows shifted as Melisma blinked and groaned and heaved herself into a sideways crouch; despite her fatigue the Fury moved her legs and wings with an economy and elegance that Hiccup could hardly fathom. Close by, a faint chirp and an answering human murmur confirmed that Astrid and Viggen were listening in as well.
::He deserves to know; you all do...::
The Fury hung her head.
::...but I am afraid that what I have to say may scarcely satisfy you.::
Melisma paused, as if trying to find the words to continue, and for a long moment then there was only the waves and the wind and the scent of the sea. But eventually the dragoness spoke again.
::You trusted me before, Hiccup. Would you trust me again now? Trust me when I say to you that yes, the human kind - or thinskins, as we say - were once our most beloved creations?::
She breathed deep, sighed out heavily again.
::You were everything to us. Oh, you didn't look like much, not back then. You couldn't speak, could barely walk. Your bodies were covered with fur! But the Vigilants who discovered your ancestors were not concerned with your mean bodies. They only cared that, in the potential of your minds, they saw the pathway to their own redemption.
::You became their greatest cause. The dragons vowed that, through their actions, they would prove their learning from the horrors of the past. And perhaps, in time, they might shake loose the binds of all their loneliness, their guilt and their despair. Just think on it, Hiccup! Humanity, the saviour of all of dragon-kind!
::And so the dragons nurtured you, protected you from hardship and all harm. The clans fell to the task with relish. It became, for them... how would you thinskins put it? Almost – ah, yes! - a sacred endeavour. Down all of those long years they watched you, generation after generation, waiting patiently for the birth of those of you whose minds lit with a stronger gleam than those of all their kin. And the dragons so arranged things that it was those rare individuals, male and female, that would lie together and survive to raise large families – ::
"WHAT!" Hiccup could not restrain himself. Had he really heard her right? "You... you bred us? Like cattle, or like sheep? Or like... like... dogs?"
::NO, Hiccup!::
Melisma was instantly on all fours, all tiredness suddenly quite gone away. Her tail lashed; the tip of her urgent snout trembled an inch from Hiccup's face. But then she blinked, as if ashamed at her loss of control; and with that she did pull back a little, though still the tension crackled in the air between them.
::You have it all spun round. We... bred... you – if you really must use that crude term – not to be our pets, or livestock! We sought only to give you the best of ourselves!::
She rose to stand above him in magnificence, wings stretched up and over him and all fins fully flared.
::We raised you up to be our companions, and our equals!::
As he stared at her, incredulous, she folded wings and fell back to her lounge, sensors flat, staring at the turf.
::But you don't see any happy dragon-thinskin families in the world today. Present company excluded, of course...::
She raised her eyes then to smile sadly to each of their small group.
::...because:: she whispered, ::in this, the noblest of all of their endeavours, the dragons failed.::
Suddenly Melisma seemed much smaller than she had just moments before. Misery seemed to roll out from her compact, rounded form in dark and heavy waves, and it was fully a score of heartbeats before Hiccup could bring himself to speak again.
"Tell us, Melisma", he said, quietly. "Tell us how it happened."
Her great eyes lidded shut, and her voice was but a murmur in his mind.
::I cannot.::
Hiccup wasn't having it.
"Oh c'mon, Melisma. Cannot, or will not? Which is it?!"
She raised her head to stare at him in silence, her pupils thinning to ambiguous half-slits, and as he glimpsed the gleaming teeth half-concealed behind her snarl it occurred to the young man – altogether too late – that he might have overstepped the mark with her at last. But then she blinked at him, and huffed, and hid her teeth; and with that Hiccup dared to breathe once more.
::I cannot tell you, Hiccup, because I do not know. No dragon does, for none of the Counternamed have ever dreamed of those events. This is the part of our story that is not remembered, not yet told. We only know that our efforts were in some way insufficient or unworthy, for the thinskins came to hate us, and now the dragons hide.::
Hiccup drew a sharp breath. "You mean there's a... a... gap? In what you dream? You dream what came before and after, but not the in-between?"
::But not the in-between. Nicely put, Hiccup. Did you ever think of telling stories yourself?:: She favoured him with a soft smile. ::For Orknoyar, and for the Council, just remember this: Berk aside, the dragons of the world today still live in shame. And Berk aside, they have been hiding from your kind for three thousand long, long years.::
When Finna blinked and shook her head and dared to look around at last, it was the tapestries of the mead hall that first of all came to her mind.
Anything old in Berk survived only within the stout, stone walls of the mead hall. And for as long as she could remember – perhaps even before she could walk – Finna had loved its richly woven hangings. Never mind the bloody subject matter, the endless panoply of dragon slaughter, for the violent reality of such imagery seldom carries in its fullness to the very young. No, it was the richness of the colours that fascinated the Hofferson girl, the way the stylised, abstract designs tumbled down the yard-wide strips of cloth in ceaseless flow, scale and sword and tail weaving one about the others in hypnotic, lethal dance.
The glittering cascades of orange and vermilion that fell all round her now reminded her of those tapestries. But compared to this living, dancing backdrop, the hanging cloths now seemed to her like musty, faded relics, memorials of a time that was, gods willing, permanently past and gone.
The lights were beautiful, she thought, in a eerie kind of way. So many shades of red and ochre, brilliant and amorphous, shimmering in great translucent curtains as they fell. Entrancing and mesmeric, it wasn't so much that the lights defined and lit this world; they were this world.
Finna tried to focus, and found herself unable. She had no known reference point, no ready sense of scale. The lights might be dancing right before her eyes, or a hundred miles away. Finna frowned as consternation began to edge in front of her delight.
And then the Nightmare's great horned face poked right through the shining veils. Over Finna's head, a sudden spiral swirl resolved into a wing. The dragoness crouched low, dipped her shoulder, and beckoned Finna with a gentle nod.
Finna scrambled up into her –
::known and rightful::
– place, right up onto that scaly back, right hard up against that long and thick-set neck. She was – she felt – undeniably –
::comfortable / warm::
Blinking then, she saw her unsaid thoughts – or perhaps emotions, she wasn't really sure – spinning up and away from her in vivid, twisting cyanic rays. That she could perceive of such a thing did not seem odd to her, no, not at all. She was, after all, in a Nightmare's mindscape, so what else should she expect to see right now?
Whoa whoa whoa, just wait a moment. She was in a...what? Or should that be a where?
But then there was a feeling of ::hush hush:: coupled with a sense of everything ::being quite all right...::
Her blue-green light met with the dancing reddish curtains. Through some sweet and unknown marvel they seemed to fit and mingle there, filling all the spaces in between, slamming home with an essential force. The blue-green brightened, rippled and expanded, cascading with the red to spread through the entire sweep of her vision.
Immediately the feedback was stronger and more focussed.
::Finna welcome. Safe.::
She'd had no idea.
It's like her first climb, edged with fright, up Berk's high peak to see for herself a horizon not quite straight. It's the sharp and sudden autumn-scent in broken, blazing leaves. The tang of cloudberry preserve upon her tongue with winter's drifts outside. The tingle up her spindly arms as she parries Astrid's thrust.
It's all of this, compressed into one moment.
But then she thinks again and knows it's much, much more. It's –
:: – five thousand feet aloft to see the planet's rim through sharper, keener eyes... the blissful reek of fish-oil as she bites down on the cod... the taint of woodsmoke picked up from the other side of Berk... the tremble through her very core as she stretches wings at dawn – ::
She's never felt less human or more fully whole. She's suddenly augmented, and complete.
Sometime soon, Finna supposed, she'd find out what the Nightmare's taken in return. Right now, the notion didn't bother her one bit.
Right now, she'd settle for finding out her new companion's name.
The Nightmare glanced back at her with gentle, loving eyes, and smiled.
::You have to be kidding me. I can't fly in that!::
The weather had finally broken with the dawn. Under lowering morning light Astrid crouched low upon the clifftop, braced on half-bent knees against the quickening gale. As the wind keened across her scales the Nadder shifted weight from foot to trembling foot, eyeing the heave of the swell and the whitecap lines that raced and raced and dashed themselves upon the shore. As if to mock her in her nervousness a sheet of spume detached itself from off a crest, whipping forwards; an instant later Astrid tasted salt, and blinked to clear the stinging foam from out her eyes.
Taking off wasn't going to be a problem; it was what came afterwards that worried her. At this point she almost wished she was back in the mindscape. Her only consolation was that Toothless, Hiccup and Viggen all seemed just as cagey about the journey that lay ahead.
This lovely winter's breeze was coming, as far as Astrid could judge, pretty much from the north-west. Their desired direction of flight to Orknoyar was south-west.
Melisma cocked her head to the Nadder, sensors perked and thrumming.
::Phah! Course you can. You'll be in Orknoyar before you know it, and with hardly a beat of those pretty wings.::
Set four-square on short and slender legs the Fury seemed quite immune to the wind's buffeting. Indeed, all her muscles seemed to strain in joyous anticipation. Astrid could only stare at her in silence, biting back some uncharitable thoughts about dark dragons who might have a lot of the answers, but none of the social graces to make her own learning curve a little easier to negotiate.
The Vigilant sallied on, cheerfully oblivious.
::Y'know Astrid, not all problems need to be faced head on.::
Oh, great. Now their guide was talking in riddles. The Fury could scarcely be any more infuriating if she tried.
Melisma was fairly quivering now, desperate, it seemed, to get up into the sky, all exhaustion quite gone away. Perhaps all Furys lapsed to sarcasm and impatience after a few hours trapped upon the ground. Or was the dragon's attitude just some weird backlash from a night spent spinning wild, black tales of slaughter and catharsis?
Whatever the cause, Melisma had clearly reached the end of her tether.
::Oh, just stay there and watch for a moment then!::
The Fury crouched low to the wind and became very quiet. Her stocky neck angled sharply upwards, reaching for the sky; nostrils flared and great wide eyes lidded shut. She stood thus rooted for a second longer, a jet-black mass of stilled perfection, unperturbed by the gale that howled all about them and challenged lesser beings to remain standing.
The long black wings snapped out. The wind caught them with a crack! and in that moment the Fury was gone, flung away in a dark and tumbling whirl. Her dwindling form seemed no more in control of its flight than some scrap of sailcloth ripped from the yard of a storm-tossed karfi.
::Woo hoooooo!::
Melisma's laughter rippled clear and bright across the distance. She righted herself in an instant, angling half-folded wings against the weather's blast to hold position maybe fifty faðmur above their scrubby refuge. Then, as a child might swoop a kite, she began to slip and sidle back towards them, trading height for ground position. Reaching the cliff-top she again surprised them, passing low over their heads and continuing her descent toward the waves below. Melisma dipped into the lee of a crest and started beating strongly, matching her flight to the folds of the waves as she clawed her way upwind.
Astrid and Toothless traded sidelong glances; this flight looked like very hard work. Somehow, Melisma picked up on their scepticism straight away.
::Patience, patience! Just getting a bit of distance from the shore...::
She ceased her crazy flapping, lingering in the dead air of a trough before flexing her wings to catch the wind once more. And just as before the wind took her in its grasp, throwing her up and away from the angry face of the sea. But this time there was no chaotic tumble, just a graceful, curving climb, arrow-quick, that within moments put her within reach of the very clouds. Just before she was lost from sight the Fury stall-turned on a wingtip and hurtled back towards the waves with wings and fins closed tight, a blur of black with the wind behind her, charging back towards the cliffs.
::Now here's the real trick!::
Just above the sea the dark wings shot out once more, locked at full extension. Melisma slewed across the wind in a single movement of pure fluidity, barely losing speed, and now the dragon hugged the windward face of a swell, as one with the wave, her wings canting minutely to her glide. The momentum from the dragon's dive carried her far, far out across the ocean – and on a distinct sou'westerly track.
The Fury had stolen ground from the very wind itself. It was mesmerising, and it was beautiful, and in truth Astrid couldn't see how it was done.
Once, her lack of understanding would have bothered her insanely. And now? Well, now all she knew was that her own wings had already been folded for far too long.
As Melisma flicked up from the sea to start a second dizzying ascent, Astrid knew it was a challenge that could not be ignored. The Nadder, sensing quick and easy the readiness of her mate upon her shoulders, leapt away to join in battle with the howling gale.
Viggen
The long glide
Together we tear forwards in this valley of calm air. The ocean towers on either wing, steep water-walls to crash on down upon us. But Astrid's wings are broad and strong, whetted with the sea and sparkling now in bright defiance. Playfully she clips the foaming wave to splash the Fury riding in our wake.
No need to worry now about her flight. No need to stay alert lest she should slip and stall. Though we dash ahead to meet a fate unknown, you'd hardly know it from my mate today.
She chose a dragon's form above her own. She chose it quick and certain in a dragon's way, no thinskin's thoughtful pause to slow her down. With every passing hour she stretches out to fill my form with easy grace. From tip of snout to tip of tail she is a Nadder now.
My only role: to stretch out flat upon this leather pad, thinskin small and frail to scarcely brake her flight.
A silver flash within my mind, quick as dancing sunbeams on her polished axe of old. Astrid's sinnljós glitters now, adamantine, vital.
Does mine own still shine out bright, as once it did?
Astrid
The arrow-climb
The trick is not to use all my wings at all. Just the tips alone will do. Just the tips, flexed just so to break back to the wind that surges just above the rolling wave.
How do I know this, without needing to be told?
Now's not the time to think on that. Now's the time to feel the surge, the tension in my chest, the elation of the blood-rush as we hurtle to the clouds. No effort on my part; I feel no drag. The pull of the ground below is nothing to me now.
The wind's a harpy's scream across my scales. My wingtips thrum and sing.
Toothless and his rider can't keep up!
Melisma
Stall-turn
The world is poised. It trembles, set upon a wingtip, ready to tumble forward or else crash back. Only the days ahead will tell.
Strange that I who sees the dreadful past so well, cannot sense at all the shape of things to come. Except I know they will fall forward, or else back. There'll be no middle way, no easy thermal ride in cloudless skies.
No motion in this moment; the gale is strangely still across my fins. Pivoting, I fold my wings tight shut. The wind finds me again, firm and strong upon my back. My speed picks up into the dive, inevitable, unstoppable. Orknoyar edges ever nearer.
Do I fly us now unto deliverance, or oblivion?
It was somehow reassuring to see an actual scene emerging from the veils. Something tangible for Finna to lock onto, other than the close, warm body of her friend beneath her thighs.
Not a single human in sight. No boats, no village. Only a cavernous gaping chasm, filled with lurid light and smoke and dragons.
A scene remembered by her friend? Finna squinted closer then, and gasped.
::That's you there, isn't it? That smaller hatchling, right there in the middle. Your scales are so distinctive, just that shade...::
The Nightmare blinked at her, and nodded.
::Well, I suppose the Nest must've been a cosy place. Crowded, though - so many dragons here! I can see why you chose the barn instead.::
Her friend gave a noncommittal grunt.
::Oh, look at that! Your brothers just lit up. Such pretty flames! I had no idea you could do that from so young! Ha, just look at them, they look so smug...::
That comment earned a sadly rumbled moan, and when Finna looked again she saw the middle hatchling turn and back away, no sign of flames at all. An image of ::a slack-winged Nightmare standing all alone upon the shore:: welled up, and Finna's breathing hitched.
Her friend had been the runt of this litter, and cursed to boot with uncooperative flame. To a young Nightmare it must have been a double stigma.
::Oh, no. Oh, I'm so sorry...::
::Do not be. It happens, sometimes.:: The voice of the dragoness rolled through Finna like the gentle ripples of a summer sea might rock a dinghy safe inshore. But then the Nightmare huffed, and there was the edge of an old, tired bitterness in that simple sound. ::Still, ever after, I was Långsam Kol to all my kind.::
::Långsam Kol.:: Finna rolled the words around her mind. They had a lumpy, ugly feel whichever way she tried them, not fit at all for a creature of such elegance and beauty.
::They called you Slowflame?::
The name was at least half an insult, she was sure.
::You are close enough.:: The feeling was of resignation now. ::Yes, I will be Slowflame for you, if you like.::
::No, I don't like! That doesn't sound like you at all!::
She thought back then on all the times she'd met with the dragoness in the barn. So tolerant had the Nightmare been of Finna's young naivety, so patient and so trusting; how many of the villagers could she think of who would act the same?
It was not a very long list.
Perhaps it was not that long a list among dragons, either. This was a special dragoness; yes, Finna was keenly certain of it now. A dragoness who carried all her strength and heat within, not wasting any of it in some mere flashy show.
::You're plenty warm on the inside, I think...::
The creature misnamed Långsam Kol turned to her with questing eyes that seemed to light with some eternal glow. It spoke to the girl of -
::comfort and security...::
Of family. Of home.
::Vikings aren't like dragons,:: Finna started, hesitant and slow, defining her thoughts as precisely as she could. The Nightmare's eyes, curious now, never left her own. ::Our bodies can't make fire inside like yours. So when the days get short and cold we have to make a fire elsewhere.::
The hearthfire was the living heart of every Viking home. It kept the people warm, it cooked their food, its rich smoke cured the herrings hanging in their roofs. And with its reddish glow it fended off the evils of the night while songs and stories traded round and round.
The villagers all worked hard to earn their winter warmth. With aching backs they cut the peats in spring, then dried them on the hill all midge-filled summer long. When at last the heath glowed bright with heather-bloom they lugged their prize back home in cart and creel. And then they burned those peats and kept the hearthfire in, no matter what the winter threw at them.
There was a special knack to that last bit. A way to stack the peats just so, just as the day wound down, the blue clods densely packed inside, the mossy ones on top. And when the morning came they'd rake the snow-white ash aside, and there would be the embers hidden deep within, forever glowing strong.
::Ember.::
Finna rolled the name around, and found it had no sharp edges at all. The Nightmare's very body shook with her approving croon.
And then a very Viking shout, raw and raucous, rent the dreamlike beauty of their world.
Hiccup was getting better at reading wind and waves. And to flying blind.
He wasn't exactly new to north Atlantic storms, of course. Growing up on Berk you quickly learned to keep a weather eye, for those that didn't might not live long enough to grow up much at all. And flying with a Fury for the past six months had sharpened his sensitivity to the wind a hundredfold.
But flying over open ocean, far from sight or scent of land... well, this was something altogether new. The deity of western winds held single lordship here, and he was a capricious, unforgiving master. In one short breath he'd gladly give his strength to aid your flight, and with the next he'd blind you in a sleet-filled squall.
Still, even in the whiteouts Hiccup wasn't truly without sight. He just hunched lower in the saddle, flung his arms about his dragon's neck, and read the Fury's shifting muscles without conscious thought. The tailfin clicked and shifted like a thing alive.
More than half a day aloft, and most of it spent in a dizzying, endless cycle of glide, climb, and stoop. The dragons didn't seem unduly fatigued, but now the daylight was starting to fade, and Hiccup was more than ready for this flight to be over. Toothless was up to his skin-warming tricks again, so at least the young man didn't feel too cold, but there wasn't much the dragon could do about the dull ache in Hiccup's backside, nor the wind's blast on his chapped and numbing face.
The latest of the sleet-fronts passed. Hiccup wiped his eyes and dared to crouch a little higher, scanning the fuzzy far horizon where the grey of sea merged imperceptibly to grey of sky. A blur of blue and yellow flickered past: Astrid, obviously competent and still full of energy, revelling in her flight. The Nadder flipped up fast above the fury and his rider, matching speed; then flicked a quick half-roll to glide inverted. Astrid glanced down to Hiccup with laughing eyes and lolling tongue, while Viggen, clipped in tight, flung her arms wide to the wind and met his gaze with a grin to match her mate's.
All right, Hiccup thought. That's new.
His own dragon's eyes slewed up to him.
::I do hope that we get there soon. Those two are going to be insufferable otherwise.::
Smiling, Hiccup focussed again on the far distance. He thought he'd caught a glimpse of something there before, an perturbation in the endless grey. Ah yes, there it was again, just off Toothless' left wing: the suggestion of an off-white smudge atop a charcoal blur.
Melisma slid up towards them.
::It's Háey, Hiccup. Big enough to make its own cloud. Means we're through the worst of all this weather. This wind should ease off for us now.::
And sure enough, by and by they were able to return to normal flight, keeping low – just as the seabirds did – to ride the cushion of still air that clung above the sea's now calming face. The prospect of their journey's end seemed to sober up the Nadder-human pair, for Astrid ceased her antics and formed up neatly on Melisma's left wing, mirroring Toothless on the right. They pressed on like that together, a tight and silent echelon of black and yellow-blue streaking forwards under a grim sky.
Before them Orknoyar rose up from out the sea in ghostly monochrome, a herd of low and rounded humpbacked spectres perched atop the far horizon, fragile islands barely borrowed from the waves. The definition tightened as the distance closed, and soon they streaked down North Sound, Sandey's impossible golden strands on their left side, Hrolfsay's looming bulk ahead.
Orknoyar was no Berk archipelago, Hiccup saw at once. Berk was all sharp edges, cliffs and stacks and promontories, defiant salients against the ocean's wrath. Orknoyar had cliffs too, or so he'd heard, but on this approach it was the horizontal aspect that dominated as the islands showed their gentler face. Slick with oily light the layers of steely sea slid through the layers of land, intermingling with them there like two old lovers - or perhaps old enemies - twining hands.
Pinpricks of light began to flicker along a fast-approaching shore, and Hiccup caught the pungent whiff of peat-smoke on the breeze.
:: Follow me close,:: was Melisma's curt instruction. ::Meginland approaches. We fly hard and fast from here. You cannot Shadow yet, but I will see to it that we are not observed.::
They powered across a low and stony beach, and without hesitation sped on inland. Hiccup barely had time to glimpse the longhouses ranged along the shore, the capacious barns, the treeless patchwork fields of arable and green. Orknoyar was renowned for fertile soils; the Norse who had settled here were farmers first and fishers a poor second.
And there were lots of Norsemen here. Hiccup, whose whole world had been just Berk, could only baulk and stare at the sheer extent of settlement. It hardly seemed possible that their group would not be spotted, yet every single person they encountered seemed to look the other way, and the dragons passed above them undetected.
They climbed to top a broad and rolling heath, unsettled and untamed and glowering near-black there in the failing light. Passing its low summit they glimpsed, a little way ahead, two great mirrors of freshwater, dully-gleaming. They were split by what, at this range, seemed to be a low and knife-thin tongue of land.
::That is our destination: Brúar-jorð, and the great stone Gathering-Ring - ::
But that was all the explanation Melisma managed to get out, for just then the air exploded with a piercing shriek and a tumult of scarlet wings and stocky, blood-red thighs. The unknown Nightmare, plunging high-speed from above, flung out its feet and claws as it shot past, catching Astrid's flank a dreadful raking blow. The attacker vanished in a blink, but Hiccup heard the leather snap, and suddenly Nadder, rider and saddle were all apart and tumbling chaotic and headlong.
Melisma snapped out a bark, banked sharp over and drove her wings down hard. She plucked Viggen from the air with feet to spare, then flared her wings and fins to make a ragged landing on the shore. But there was no helping Astrid, still tumbling in a blue and yellow blur. For one heartstopping moment Hiccup caught his friend's eye and saw the rampant fear and panic captured there. He thought, aghast, that she must hit the rocky lochside edge, but her forward momentum proved just enough, and Astrid struck the shallows in a terrible eruption of flailing wings and spray.
AN: Synopsis: chapters 1-9
The Berk midwinter festival approaches, and Astrid wants to give something special to her Nadder companion, Viggen. Hiccup helps the young woman with that. As things turn out, dragons don't have much desire or need for material things; all that Viggen wants is Astrid's absolute trust.
Astrid pledges it, and is transported to a world of telepathic dragons and their ways. Unfortunately Viggen gets a bit carried away, and she and Astrid accidentally end up in each other's bodies. Cue embarrassment for Astrid, and impromptu flying lessons during which she manages to invoke a raw, untrained form of telepathy which spooks all of the village dragons to riot. For the first time since the great Queen's death, Berk burns by way of dragon flame.
Melisma, a strange new Fury complete with tattoos and rather amazing flight ability, makes a dramatic appearance. Apparently some sort of guardian or watcher (she calls herself a 'Vigilant'), she persuades Hiccup that all the village dragons need to leave Berk for a while, for their own safety. Hiccup gets the village dragons to depart, and then reveals to his amazed father that dragons are intelligent, communicative beings, not just the glorified pets that the villagers imagine them to be.
Our core party of five (Toothless, Hiccup, Astrid, Viggen and Melisma) depart from Berk too. Later that night Melisma teaches them about 'shadowing', a mind technique that allows dragons – except those from around Berk – to go un-noticed. Toothless also discovers that there might be more to Melisma than meets the eye. The next morning marks a breakthrough for Astrid when she realises she prefers the Nadder's body to her old human one.
Back on Berk, Stoick breaks the news of Astrid's departure to her parents who, in the absence of further information, seem ready to blame the dragons. Astrid's younger sister, Finna, seeks solace in the company of her secret friend, a gentle Nightmare who didn't leave with the other dragons, and who has built her nest in a ruined barn within the village.
Melisma points out how unique Astrid and Viggen's achievement is. She insists that she, Hiccup and the gang need to fly to a Council of senior dragons which is currently underway in Orkney. The young man is impatient with the limited information he's getting from the dragoness, and presses her to tell all of her story. That night he gets to hear it in the 'dragon way': through mental images of scenes from the dragons' distant past. Melisma is shown to belong to the 'Counternamed', a clan of rare dragons that's able to dream of long-past events, and so to guard the history of their species. She reveals that, millions of years ago, dragons carried out a terrible genocide against some of their relatives, and that ever afterwards all dragons lived with the guilt and shame of that ancient crime. Only the discovery of early, still-evolving humans gave the dragons any hope – for those primative humans possessed a weak telepathic 'spark', the same trait that long, long before had developed into the dragons' defining ability...
Themes in chapter 10
- Species uplift: a trope made famous by David Brin's novel 'Startide Rising'.
- Complementary colours in the red-green-blue colour model.
- Dynamic soaring: the cyclic flight pattern demonstrated by Melisma – glide, climb, stoop, repeat – is how albatrosses fly around the south Atlantic with very few wing-beats or energy expenditure. The aerodymanics get pretty complicated, but at its core the technique relies on the fact that windspeed is greatly reduced when you're very close to the surface of a wave. (In fact Nadders are completely the wrong shape for dynamic soaring, and Fury's aren't much better, but hey, artistic licence.)
- Ground effect: the increased lift and reduced drag experienced when a flier is at very low altitude.
Words, words:
faðmur - fathom, six feet (Icelandic)
Långsam Kol - literally, 'slow coal' (Swedish)
Blue clods - the best quality, dense and coal-like peats from the bottom of a peat-bank; they often have a dark blue sheen (Shetland dialect)
'Sinnljós' is 'mind-light'. It's a Nadder thing. See Chapter 5.
Háey - high (Old Norse) - the highest island of the Orkney group; modern name Hoy.
Sandey - sandy island (Old Norse) - so named because of its long sandy beaches; modern name Sanday.
Hrolfsay - Hrolf's island (Old Norse) - modern name Rousay.
Meginland - mainland (Old Norse) - the large land-mass at the centre of the Orkney group - modern name Mainland.
Brúar-jorð - earth-bridge (Old Norse) - modern name Ness O' Brodgar.
Comments on cutting peats for fuel:
With the soaring cost of other heating fuels, peat-cutting has seen a resurgence in the Northern Isles in recent years.
Everything about using peat as fuel involves long, hard work. You'll find aches in unknown muscles as you cut the damn things, then turn and stack them to dry, and later hump them off the hill. All in, you're looking at a good week's work, maybe more, to see you through the winter.
It's a low-grade fuel. You'll struggle to heat your home with peat alone, even though these days we use nice efficient multi-fuel stoves, not the open fires the Vikings did. And peat produces mountainous quantities of very fine white ash that goes everywhere when you clean it out.
To be honest, the only attraction is that the fuel itself is free. Oh, and the smoke smells kinda nice...
Orkney (Orknoyar):
I was lucky enough to live in this diverse and beautiful island group for four years. The quality of the light there is unique, and the seascapes are amazing. I hope I haven't over-cooked the descriptions of them in this chapter.