The Heather Channel Chapter 12

Two weeks had elapsed since the poorly-attended wedding. Some of the women in town had begun to warm up to Heather, but some still refused to give her the time of day. She did nothing to offend anyone; she went out of her way to be pleasant. But her very presence had upset their small-town order of things, and that was not a small transgression in their eyes.

Hiccup tried to spend time with his friends now and then. It never went well. Astrid would leave as soon as she saw him coming, which made the others resent him for breaking up the group. They never knew what to say to him, either; he had left their world, and crossed the line into the mysterious adult realm of marriage. The fact that they profoundly mistrusted his wife didn't help, even though she seldom joined them. Eventually, he gave up trying.

Her parents borrowed a small sailing ship and returned to their home island. It would take a week to get there and a week to return. When they came back, they would return Berk's ship, and one of their own town's ships would bring Bergsveinn and his parents. They would collect Heather, and they would all go back to Fetje together. That was the arrangement.

Hiccup was having mixed emotions about that.

With no one to spend time with except each other, they spent almost all of their time together, and their agreement about marital behavior was slowly crumbling. They hadn't shared another passionate kiss like the one in the forge, but quick pecks on the lips were becoming common between them. She always smiled when she saw the effect that her kisses had on him.

The day after her parents left, they rode Toothless out to the cliffs for another picnic, this time with the fish already broiled by the Mead Hall's cooks. After they ate, they walked along the rocks, talking about this and that. They came to a narrow crack in the rocks that they easily jumped over, but the edge crumbled under Hiccup's false leg and he fell back into the crevasse. He slid twenty feet down before he could stop himself.

"Hiccup!" she screamed.

"I'm okay," he called up to her, "but I can't get out." He was too far down for her to reach.

"Ride Toothless back to the village!" he told her. "Get help!"

"Me? Ride him without you?"

"He's used to you now. He'll let you. You've seen how I work the foot pedals. Please hurry – I'm mostly above the tide line, but the waves are going to soak me through if I can't get out of here soon."

She explained the problem to Toothless. She couldn't read his expression. But when she slid into the saddle, he didn't fight her, and when she told him to take her home, he did, quickly but smoothly. In less than fifteen minutes, a rescue party on dragons had found Hiccup, dropped him a rope, and pulled him to safety. He was scratched and scraped in many places, but he was otherwise unhurt.

The village couldn't stop talking about the incident, especially the part about how Hiccup's beloved dragon had flown with Heather as his rider. Some had seen her arrive on Toothless and assumed that she'd killed Hiccup. Others fanned the rumor that she was a witch – they could think of no other way that the notoriously possessive Night Fury would let anyone else ride him. Still others thought Heather had also been hurt, because she'd made a beeline for Gothi's house as soon as they'd gotten home. The reality was that she'd asked for some healing ointment for Hiccup, which she insisted on applying to all his wounds. He thought she was making a fuss over nothing, but he didn't resist her ministering fingers.

After all those years of being ignored, it felt nice to receive all that attention from someone.

Two nights later, he woke up screaming again. Heather sat upright, found him in the darkness, and took his hands in hers.

"It's all right! It's just a dream!" she tried to reassure him.

"Dont' let it... don't let it..." He was half-awake, half-asleep, and totally terrified.

She couldn't help him relax! At last, she lay down on the bed and led him to curl up next to her. He flung one arm around her and clung to her desperately, shaking as though he were dying of cold. Slowly, he settled down. The shaking stopped. His death-grip on her relaxed somewhat. He faded back into sleep. She remembered the first time he had tried to cling to her in the night – so much had changed! She stayed awake for a while before she fell asleep as well.

When he woke up in the morning, he couldn't remember how he'd wound up in bed with his wife. She had to reassure him that he hadn't broken their arrangement in his sleep.

He spent a few hours in his room at Stoick's house that day. When he returned, he gave her a rolled-up piece of paper. She unrolled it, and exclaimed with delight. "Hiccup, this is beautiful! I love it!" He'd drawn a picture of the two of them as they had looked on their wedding day, with her smiling as she served him the mead. She fastened it to the wall near the door, so she could see it from anywhere in the house. As far as she knew, she was the only girl in the village who had a picture of her wedding.

That night, it was her turn to wake up with nightmares. Without thinking, she left the bed and curled up with Hiccup on the floor. He never woke up, but his arm wrapped itself around her as he slept. She had no more bad dreams that night.

The night after that, as she retired for the night, Hiccup climbed into bed with her. "Are you planning another nightmare in advance?" she asked, with a trace of amusement.

"We keep winding up in each other's arms," he shrugged. "I figured we should skip the frantic scrambling in the dark, and just admit that we do better when we're close to each other."

"Our agreement is hanging in tatters," she said. "Do we want to risk breaking it completely?"

"Whether we start the night in the same bed or not, we keep ending up together, so the risk is the same either way," he replied. "All this means is that, if one of us has a bad night, the comfort we need is right there when we need it. If we make a no-kissing-in-bed rule, we ought to be okay."

She didn't want to shame her family or dishonor Hiccup by breaking the agreement they'd made.

She really didn't want to push him away.

For the next week and a half, they shared their bed. Their agreement held, somehow. He woke up with nightmares twice, she three times; each time, they just held each other until the fear passed and they could sleep again. On the other nights, she woke up more rested and relaxed than at any other time in her life.

All this time, Astrid was almost never seen in public. She was close to a total breakdown. She left her room only to do her chores and take her meals, which she ate in silence. Ruff had to feed Stormfly and take her for exercise rides; the blue dragon didn't understand where her beloved rider had gone, and was beginning to show signs of stress herself.

Snotlout made multiple attempts to get her attention. She passively ignored him. The fact that she didn't hit him seemed like good news to him, which made him try even harder to win her, and made him even more frustrated when he kept getting no reaction out of her.

At last, Ruffnut had had enough. Who was this impostor in her friend's clothes? She wanted Astrid back! She went to her house one afternoon, greeted the rest of the Hoffersons, and trooped upstairs to Astrid's room. She found her best friend lying on the bed, red-eyed and disheveled.

"I can't believe what I'm seeing!" Ruff burst out. She got no response.

"This is the girl who almost won everything in dragon training! This is the girl who rides a Deadly Nadder! This is the girl who's the meanest axe-thrower in the entire village! And you're totally falling apart over a stupid boy!" No response.

"Fine. Be that way." Ruff sat down heavily on the bed. "Just tell me one thing. When those two say they have an 'agreement to behave ourselves,' what's that about?"

Astrid's head whipped up. "How did you know about that?"

"I overheard them one night. They were doing something in the forge; I was there looking for my brother's spear. Look, I might not be the smartest knife in the drawer, but I can tell by your reaction, I'm on to something important. Talk to me, Astrid. If he's married and out of reach forever, then why are you getting worse instead of better?"

"Ruff, I swore I would never tell anyone about this! Someone could die if this gets back to the wrong people."

"Astrid, I'm afraid you're going to die if you don't deal with this! I've never seen you fall apart like this. I'm really scared for you."

Astrid thought hard and took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's go throw some weapons at trees. You and me."

Once they were in the forest, Astrid heaved her axe at the nearest hardwood tree and left it there. "Ruff, I can't tell you all the details, but here's what I can tell you. Hiccup and Heather's marriage is a fake. They're legally married, but they... aren't acting like it. Got that so far?"

"Uhhh... no. Why would they do that?"

"She's going to have a real fiancée in her home town. Hiccup married her to... to deal with a situation that could be really bad for everybody. As soon as their honeymoon is done, they're going to get a divorce and she's supposed to go home."

"Uhhh... so that's good news, right? She'll go away and you can get Hiccup back. Right?"

"Not if she keeps sinking her claws into him like she's been doing," Astrid said quietly. "They were supposed to be hands-off, but you told me yourself, they're lips-on. I don't think she wants to let him go."

Ruff recalled the scene in the forge. "Uhhh... is this one of those 'brain under siege' things again?"

"She's got all of him under siege! He can't stand up to that kind of pressure all day, every day! She's too good at it!"

Ruff shook her head. "I'm not getting half of this. If this 'under siege' thing works so well against Hiccup, then why don't you put him under siege?"

"I can't do that when he's married," she said quietly. "It's against all the rules."

"But if she's going back on the deal and breaking all the rules, why can't you give her a taste of her own medicine?"

Astrid stared at her, suddenly alive again. "You know what, Ruff? That is a very good question."