Chapter 7
How to Train Your Dragon
Hiccup wasn't entirely sure where to start. The history of Berk? Probably something a bit closer. How she shot down Toothless? The last thing she wanted to do was give Kiefer any reason to hate her. But . . . she had to tell it as it happened. She couldn't whitewash it.
She looked at the other Hairy Hooligans. Even they didn't know the full story. She had never talked about it. Never explained what happened in the cove.
"You have to understand, we were fighting dragons at the time. Please don't think too harshly of me — of us, I mean."
Kiefer chuckled in a way that put her at ease. "Hiccup, I've heard some barbaric stories from other rider groups, and some of them became our strongest allies. Unless you ripped off Toothless's tail yourself, I don't think you're capable of anything that I would be concerned about."
She swallowed a lump in her throat and tried not to grimace at that.
"Well, it started about a year ago. Bork Week had finished a couple weeks before. At the time we were dealing with dragon raids every few days, and this was one of those days. It was late at night, there was chaos everywhere — but we were used to that. But this night . . .
"Well, we were hit by a Night Fury. So it was a bad night. I tried to help; I always tried. I had built bola launcher since —" She held up an arm and flexed it pathetically. " — I'm no good at fighting. Of course I'd never actually shot it at a dragon and Gobber told me I was just going to get in the way, but . . ."
She stopped. She put her elbows on the table, clasped her hands together and rested her lips on her knuckles. She took a breath, thinking about what came next. The excitement she had felt at the time, and the shame she felt now at the pain she had caused her best friend. She let out the breath.
"I took it out to Wreathed Ridge. I saw a silhouette against the stars, and I shot. Thor himself must have guided the bolas because I hit him. I hit Toothless, I knocked him out of the sky. He fell, he crashed — and I was elated. I had finally helped!" She opened her hands to emphasise her excitement.
"And then a Monstrous Nightmare climbed up the ridge." She looked at her dad without meeting his eye. "I made a mess of things after that. Like I always did. The night kinda got worse. Like it always did. Of course, once it was over, I tried to tell dad about the Night Fury I'd shot down, but no one believed me. I suppose I don't blame them, what with the mess. Plus it was me, they wouldn't believe me if I said I'd killed an ant."
"Well that's not true," Astrid said. "We knew you could kill any kind of bug. Probably not a Terrible Terror, though."
Hiccup's shoulders fell and she glared at her friend. "Thanks."
"It's different now." Astrid smiled in a way that was probably supposed to be reassuring. "You've proven that."
"Anyway." Hiccup shook her head and looked back at Kiefer, who gave her his attention. "I spent the rest of the morning looking for him. I had seen him go down around Raven Point, but he was nowhere to be found. I thought maybe he'd gotten away, but then I noticed some broken trees and — there he was. Still tied up in the bola, still breathing. I pulled out my knife and got ready to finish the job. I had to bring his head to Dad, I had to prove to him that I was a Viking . . . prove it to myself.
"He stared at me. This dragon, helpless before me, just stared. He didn't fight or squirm against his bonds. He just looked like he was accusing me. Then he accepted his fate, closed his eyes . . .
"And I couldn't do it."
She looked at her palms. They felt dirty. Tears welled in her eyes and she clenched her hands into fists. "For all I tried to be like the rest of the Hairy Hooligans, as much as I desired to be a Viking, I couldn't even kill a dragon I had downed myself! He was at my mercy, but I was the one to drop the knife.
"I made to leave, but I realized that doing so was as much a death sentence as using my blade. So I picked it up and I cut his bonds. I freed the most dangerous dragon we knew. He jumped up, knocked me to the ground, and pinned me with his claw. He stared at me. Just, stared. Then he opened his jaws, I braced for the fireball, and he just roared.
"Then he left. He turned and he left. I was so shocked, I think I fainted." She smirked and eyed Kiefer. "Unless that's just how bad a Night Fury's breath smells."
Kiefer let out a chuckle, easing some of the tension out of her. "Some dragons. There are species with sleeping breath, but not Night Furies."
Hiccup nodded, noting that she'd need to tell Fishlegs about that. He'd certainly find that interesting. "When I got back home, Dad announced that I was going to start training in dragon fighting. It was exactly what I wanted, but now it filled me with dread. I tried to explain, but Dad had made up his mind, so to training I went. I was almost killed by a Gronckle on my first day."
She sat back and placed her opened hands flat on the table.
"Gobber stopped her, of course. But he emphasised that dragon always kill when they have the chance. And I wondered, why hadn't Toothless?
"After training, I went searching for him. It was a stupid idea. He could fly, what was I thinking? But I found him. His tail had been damaged in the crash. You saw what it looks like. He was trapped in Long Shale Cove."
She thought back to the sun-soaked cove, its beautiful, clear blue pool fed by a small waterfall. She remembered the wild dragon that seemed to soak up the light around it, and yet was so gentle. She found herself smiling at the memory.
"Honestly, I was surprised by how friendly he was when I went into the cove and we bonded."
"How did you bond?" Kiefer sat forward, crossing his hands in front of him. "It's important. Please don't leave out any detail."
"Uh . . . Well . . ." She ran a hand through her hair as she gathered her memories. She realized after a moment that she was able to run it the whole way through. It was so rarely out of its braid that it felt odd to do so. She pulled a plait over her shoulder and looked at it. "I started with a fish."
She looked back at Kiefer. "He was interested at first, but he spotted my knife. So I threw it away." She tossed the hair back over her shoulder. "The knife, I mean, not the . . . Anyway. He took it — the fish, I mean — and that was when I noticed he didn't have teeth. So I started to call him Toothless. Of course he popped his teeth out to chomp the fish in half. Then he sniffed me like he wanted more fish. I told him I didn't have any, so he puked up half the fish and spat it into my lap. He then looked at me like, 'Aren't you going to eat that?'" She let out an uncomfortable sigh. "So I took a bite."
"Ew," Astrid gave her a revolted look. "You ate fish covered in dragon slobber?"
"Raw fish covered in dragon slobber. It seemed to make him happy, though, but when I tried to pet him he ran away. I gave it a couple more tries before it became clear I was starting to annoy him, so I gave up and just sat across the cove drawing in the dirt. Toothless eventually came over and took an interest. He uprooted a sapling and tried his . . . claw, I guess? — at drawing. I have no clue what it was supposed to be, but he drew this giant scrawling line all around me, and when I tried to leave to get a better view, he growled at me when I stepped on the line. But if I stepped over the line, he didn't. So I sort of danced my way out of the drawing, carefully avoiding the line, until I backed into him. He still wouldn't let me pet him. For some reason I decided to look away and put my hand out. My heart was pounding, until his nose pressed into my palm. We bonded."
"So you broke bread, shared a meal, accepted his boundaries, and showed your trust." He ticked off each on his fingers. "Very diplomatic. A good start to dragon training. How did your village react to it?"
"Well . . ." She scratched her head and looked away. Her eyes naturally crossed over the rest of the Hairy Hooligans enjoying the feast. She could remember them as they were, their prejudice and hatred. She could remember looking up at them surrounding the arena, the betrayal and desire to kill when Toothless was found out. How different they were from the joyous, laughing faces surrounding her now.
She turned back to Kiefer but couldn't look at him. "I kept it a secret. I continued training to fight, kept up appearances, but as soon as I had free time I went right back to the cove. I made Toothless his prosthetic — several of them. Like I said, it took a while to get it right. But as I did so, I learned more about him, about dragons, than I had ever learned in the Book of Dragons. I learned about dragonnip, toxic eels, distracting them with light. . . . And I applied all of that to dragon training."
She met his eyes with a smile. "I was suddenly the best in class. Dragons fled before me when I hid eels in my vest, I could direct them into enclosures with the light, I could defeat them unarmed just by scratching under their jaw! Everyone was shocked — and Astrid was not happy."
"Well it was embarrassing!" Astrid shot her a glare, but Hiccup just smirked at her. "I couldn't believe my milk-sister had changed so radically. You had to be cheating, and you were going to cheat me out of best-of-class rights. I was frustrated."
Hiccup looked back at Kiefer. "The best-in-class got to kill a Monstrous Nightmare in front of everyone. It was supposed to be our first kill, our induction into adulthood. But it wasn't an honor I wanted anymore. I just wanted to make it through training without hurting any of them, and without getting killed.
"So on our final day of training, the day our elder would choose the winner, I had every intention of letting Astrid win. She even warned me not to get in the way. But Meatlug — the dragon we were testing ourselves against — flew right up to me. I think she wanted some dragonnip. I couldn't just stand there so I gave her a scratch and she just plopped over. Astrid gave me this murderous look." Hiccup laughed, but her face quickly fell into a frown and she leaned forward and used her fork to pick at what was left of her food. "But it wasn't funny then. The elder decided I won; Gobber was elated; Astrid was about ready to use her axe; and I knew I couldn't do it, I couldn't kill the Monstrous Nightmare. I could have knocked out Hookfang, again, but they'd want me to finish the job.
"So I ran away." She dropped her fork and sat back. "I packed some things, food and waterskins, a necklace that belonged to Mom, and ran for the cove. I was planning on hopping on Toothless's back and heading south. I wonder if I would have found you?"
She smirked at Kiefer, who gave her a little shrug.
"But that's not what happened. When I got to the cove, I was surprised and a bit — well — terrified to find Astrid waiting there. She looked . . . cross as she sharpened her axe."
