Chapter 4
"Hiccup!" Astrid called into the hole in the earth. She was on her hands and knees, muddy and completely soaked. The pit was completely blocked with mud and rocks, so she was unable to enter.
She jumped to her feet and raced to Stormfly. She had to get the chief, he would know what to do.
She had to look all over the island for him. At sunrise she found him. The chief was helping reconstruct the fence that enclosed the village's yaks. It had partially been blown over in last night's storm. He must have left early in the morning, not knowing Hiccup was not present in the house.
"Chief!" Astrid dashed across the field toward Hiccup's father.
"Astrid? What is it?" Stoick frowned his great eyebrows.
"H-Hiccup... he fell... into..." She panted. "The pit..."
"W-what? Up north?"
Astrid nodded and a look of panic crossed Stoick's face for a split second. She had only ever seen it once, when Hiccup almost his life. Instead he lost a leg. Surely he wasn't the only one who had given a leg for a life...
Astrid pushed the thought out of her mind. Focus on Hiccup, how were they going to find him?
"Rally the others, tell them to meet at the pit," The chief instructed, climbing on to the back of his dragon. "I'll meet you there."
Astrid nodded and raced back to Stormfly. Vaulting on to her back, they took off toward the dragon training arena. At top speed they were there in a minute flat.
"Hiccup is in trouble," Astrid landed, but remained on her dragon.
"When he is not?" Snotlout snorted. He was sitting on his dragon Hookfang, relaxing as always.
Astrid's eye twitched in annoyance. She fired spikes from Stormfly's tail at Snotlout.
"Hiccup is in trouble and I don't care if you help or not. I'll go by myself!" She exploded at the others. She turned quickly to leave.
"Wait!" Fishlegs called. "I'm coming with you. Hiccup's my friend just as much as he is yours."
He followed Astrid out of the arena.
Ruffnut and Tuffnut shrugged and mounted their dragon, charging out of the arena. Snotlout was left alone to pull spikes out of his boots.
"Hmph, go ahead," He mumbled to himself. "See if I care."
"When did he fall in exactly?" Fishlegs paced back and forth beside the pit.
When they had first got there, they had attempted to dig the tunnel out to no avail.
"Last night, a few hours after dark," Astrid sighed again. "I saw him just fly off on Toothless in the dead of night."
"But what would push him to do something so... irrational?" Fishlegs stopped to think.
"Irrat-what?" Tuffnut raised an eyebrow.
"Irrational," Fishlegs corrected. "Not consistent with or using reason."
"Argh! This entire thing is irrational!" Astrid exploded.
"How so?" Stoick asked.
"The dreams, his new found fear of holes, flying to it in the middle of the night," Astrid ranted. "It just doesn't make any sense!"
"Hmm..."
"What?"
"It's just... Nothing, never mind." Stoick looked down at his feet. There was something he wasn't telling them...
The earth began slaking violently and something rumbled from deep beneath the soil.
A Whispering Death shot up from the pit, clearing the hole completely, then arched down and dove head first back into the tunnel from which it came. A cloud of dust rose up and lingered in the air.
Astrid being the closest to the pit, stood still and gazed at it.
A single hand sprung from the earth and searched around to find a solid handhold.
Clutching a nearby rock, Hiccup emerged pulling something up with him. A girl with long, matted, crimson hair and fresh cuts on either side of her face. She was all skin, bone and muscle, wrapped in very little, yet somewhat familiar cloth.
Astrid rushed over and moved the unknown girl forward to help Hiccup, when the Whispering Death returned.
It snatched up Hiccup using its lethal and poisonous teeth. Hold him by the shoulder, the dragon flew away. It stayed close to the ground as it made a break for the shade of the forest.
Toothless shot out of the tunnel, pursuing the other dragon closely. He tackled the Whispering Death, causing it to release Hiccup from its jaws. He fell to the ground.
Toothless stood over his master, protecting him from the other dragon. The other dragon charged at him, but was met was a fire ball to the face.
Snotlout hovered above Toothless on Hookfang.
"Beat it, stink breath!" He sneered at the opposing creature.
Admitting defeat, the Whispering Death shrieked and bolted for the trees, disappearing in to the forest.
Hiccup lay motionless on the ground in front of his dragon. Toothless softly whined, gently nudging him.
Hiccup's shoulder was mauled and bleeding dark scarlet blood. A single tooth impaled his arm, bite marks surrounding it.
"Hiccup!" The chief bellowed, rush towards his son. He knelt beside him. "He's still breathing."
The girl Hiccup drug from the pit crawled over to him and sat next to him, eyes wide in worry.
"We have to take him to a doctor," Astrid said firmly.
"What a doctor know about a bite from a Whispering Death?" Snotlout landed his dragon. "They are really rare, there's not much they could do."
The girl's gazed shifted from Hiccup's face to his shoulder and back again, as if she were thinking very hard. She turned toward the forest and bolted in to the trees. Astrid dashed after her.
"Hey! Come back!"
The girl scampered one all fours between the trees, dodging roots and turning sharply often. Then she slid to a stop. Astrid caught her breath and looked around.
They were in a clearing filled with grass and flowers of many colors. A pond surrounded by rocks flowed into a small stream. A large tree stood beside the stream, branches cover with bright green leaves and small plants grew at it's base.
The girl knelt close to a blue flower below the tree. She sniffed it and picked it. Plucking a few more plants, she moved to the water's edge, picking up a stone. Reaching a hand into the stream, she filled a rock that was hollow in the center, like a cup.
Clutching the water in one hand, plants in the other, the girl sprinted back to the hole, not spilled a single drop on the way.
When she returned, the girl quickly shredded the few plants in her fist and dropped them into cup. She gently separating the petals from the rest of the flower and placed them on the surface of the water. Where they touched, the water turned pale violet.
Gently placing a hand on Hiccup's chest, the girl grabbed the dragon tooth with the other. She yanked it out of his shoulder and promptly poured the purple mixture on his open wound.
The black poison in his blood seemed to disappear with the violet liquid, leaving only crimson blood.
Stoick looked astonished for a moment, then he picked Hiccup and strode off to his dragon.
"Astrid," Stoick said abruptly. "Take the girl back to my home and wait there for me."
Astrid nodded and gestured for the girl to follow her, and helped her on to Stormfly.
Who was this girl? Why was she with Hiccup? How did she heal him like that? What was she doing in the pit in the first place? Why do she seem so...
Familiar...