Snotlout's Bride Chapter 21
When Sukiaqui and Snotlout set out in search of Trader Johann that afternoon, she nudged Spotwing close enough to Hookfang that she could speak to her husband without shouting. "I have a problem," she admitted, "and I wondered if you could come up with an awesome solution for me."
"Awesome is what I do for a living," he nodded. "What's the problem?"
"Well… suppose you did something that was totally awesome, that maybe you shouldn't have done, and now you have to find a way to undo what you did."
"That's an easy one," he stated. "You deny that you did anything wrong, and if people don't believe you, you try to convince them it's really their fault."
"Suppose those options are off the table," she said.
"When that happens, which is usually the case when I do something totally awesome, I just take my lumps and get it over with," he answered. "Once the jig is up, there's no use pretending."
"That might not be my best option, either," she thought out loud.
"Well, what did you do?" he asked.
After hesitating a moment, she said, "Will you keep this a secret?"
"Sure, babe," he smiled. "I'm great at keeping secrets. But the people I tell them to… sometimes they blab stuff all over the place."
"Snotlout, I'm serious! People could get hurt if this gets out."
"Oh. You're serious." His expression changed to a remarkably somber mien. "What did you do?"
She told him. He whistled. "Whoo-ee! You're a lot like Hiccup – when you mess up, you mess up big-time." He considered things for a moment. "I don't have any good ideas, but I'll promise you this. You're my wife, and I'll stay with you through anything."
"Even if my mother throws me in jail?" she asked. "Even if Chief Stoick throws me out of the tribe?"
"Like I said, I'll stay with you through almost anything. Is there any chance I could see this amazing helmet?"
"I'd rather you didn't, Snotlout. If you know too much about it, you could get stuck in the middle of a tribal feud, just like me. I want to spare you that. This is all my fault; I'm going to take the fall, if somebody has to fall."
He leaned over toward her. "Babe, we're married. We do everything together, the good and the bad. That's one part of being a Jorgenson that I don't have a problem with."
"I appreciate that," she nodded, more grateful than she was willing to admit. "But what I really need is a plan."
"I have lots of plans," he nodded. "Sometimes they even work. But in a case like this, you need an airtight plan, and I'm not so good at those."
He was distracted by Hookfang shaking his head and neck. "What's up, big guy?" he asked.
"Look down!" Su exclaimed. "There's a ship below us, and it's about the right size for Trader Johann's ship." The two dragons spiraled downward. As soon as the ship's sole crewman saw them, he grabbed a spear and brandished it threateningly at them.
"Go away, lizards!" he shouted, putting on a show of bravado. "I am not afraid to use this!"
"Relax, Johann, it's just us," Snotlout shouted.
"Us? Who is "us"? Oh, it is my good friends from Berk on their flying dragons! How may I be of some service to you, my friends?"
"You land first and talk to him, Su," Snotlout suggested. "If both our dragons land at once, their weight will sink the ship." She nodded and guided Spotwing in for a fairly gentle landing on the ship's deck.
Johann rubbed his hands in anticipation of some unscheduled trading on the high seas. "Now, my fine lady, what can I get for you?"
"I'm looking for beads," she said in her best business-like voice. "The little ones. You sell them to the Bog-Burglars all the time."
The trader's face fell. "Alas, fair lady, I do indeed sell them to the Bog-Burglars. I just sailed from their main island two days ago. They bought my only box of beads. I have no more. Perhaps there is something else you might desire?"
"No, but thank you," she said with a shake of her head. "Maybe I'll think of something by the time you get to Berk, or maybe you'll have more beads by then." She climbed back onto her dragon's back and they flew up to meet Snotlout.
"No luck?" he asked.
"No luck," she said disgustedly. "My mother just bought all his beads. No one else on my island would want that many."
"Your mother is causing you all kinds of trouble lately, isn't she?"
"She's my mother!" Su snapped. "She's always been a good parent to me, unlike some parents I could name. I'm just catching some bad breaks, that's all."
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry!" he stammered, taken aback by her outburst. He and Hookfang broke away and landed heavily on Johann's deck. He traded away a flail he never used, in exchange for a pair of polar-bear-fur-lined boots to keep his feet warm during high-altitude dragon flights. They flew most of the way back to Berk in silence.
Finally, she asked, "Have you thought of an airtight plan for me yet?"
"I've got nothing," he confessed. "But if I wasn't a Jorgenson, I'd say, 'Go talk to Hiccup; he's great at coming up with plans.' Of course, I'm a Jorgenson, so I could never suggest a thing like that."
"Of course you couldn't," she nodded with a ghost of a smile. "A good Jorgenson would never do such a thing." They sat with Hiccup and Astrid at a secluded corner table for supper that night, and told them what had happened. By the time they were done eating, Hiccup had suggested a course of action. It wasn't guaranteed to work, but at least it had a fair chance of keeping two tribes from going to war.
As they parted for the night, Astrid offered Su some last-minute advice. "Your burgling skills and Berk don't seem to mix," she suggested. "Every time you try it, disaster falls. Maybe you should find some other way to live."
Su was indignant at the thought. Give up burgling? That would mean giving up her entire heritage! That would be like…
…like Snotlout turning his back on his Jorgenson heritage. But he was already doing that, little by little, for her benefit.
She decided to think it over, after she survived this current crisis. If she survived.
o
A/N
This story will get its 10,000th hit sometime tonight. Thank you to all of my readers.