Did Anybody See That? Chapter 3
The town met the news of Hiccup's escape with a collective shrug. One of the guards summed it up best when he said, "No one will miss that old nuisance." Maybe he'd gone into the wilderness, or maybe he was hiding in a storage shed somewhere. Maybe he'd starve, or freeze, or maybe some wild animal would maul him, or maybe he'd give up and accept his punishment.
No one really cared.
Hiccup walked slowly through the woods. He'd eaten the last of his bread crumbs for breakfast. He had nowhere to go; no one was waiting for him or looking for him. No one would be concerned if he was out late. If he got into trouble, he could expect no help. "Nothing has changed, except now it's official," he said out loud. He knew no one was listening to him. That part hadn't changed, either.
Food and shelter would be his first priorities. His father had taught him how to fish, and he could improvise some fishing gear easily; all he needed was a place where the fish were. Lighting a fire could be a problem. For shelter, maybe he could find a cave somewhere.
It would be like camping out! Like an adventure of some kind. Yeah, that's it. He was this close to convincing himself it wasn't so bad.
Then the thought hit him between the eyes. Not one person in the world cares if I live or die.
The tears started streaming down his cheeks, and he made no attempt to hold them back. All the pain and hurt and abuse he'd silently endured for all those years, all the rejections and the cruel comments, all the clever attempts that ended in disaster, all the times he'd tried to please his father and failed... he let them all out. It took a while. For a few minutes, he was actually glad to be all alone.
At last, he started moving again. It was mid-morning; he didn't have all day to get his new life started. The woods were quiet except for the occasional bird and the far-distant rumble of ocean waves on the shoreline. He rambled, not going in any particular direction, just following the path of least resistance.
Around noon, he thought he heard the sound of flowing water. That could be a good thing. He let his ears lead him through a maze of rocks and stepped into a hidden cove.
"This is perfect!" he said out loud. No one would ever find it by accident, the water looked like a good fishing spot, and the many rocks suggested there might be a cave or two nearby. He stepped into the cove, stretched, and took a deep breath of the fresh air.
A low growl warned him that he was not alone.
He looked slowly to his left. Something big, black, and very scary-looking was sitting on top of a large rock, watching him. Bat-like wings were furled on its back; its two-finned tail waved back and forth. It wasn't even close to the size of the Monstrous Nightmare, yet it conveyed a much greater sense of power and menace.
It's a Night Fury. I am about to become very, very dead.
It rose, climbed down the face of the rock – and stumbled at the bottom and plowed its chin into the ground. How could such a graceful-looking creature make such a clumsy error? He stared at it. It stared back, or it tried to. Its two eyes wouldn't focus in the same direction; the right eye seemed to wander inward. It turned its head from side to side so each eye was on him for a few seconds.
Is it injured? Hiccup wondered. If it can't see straight, how can it fly? How can it hunt for food? It might be on its way to starving to death. Just like me. That last part popped into his head unbidden. He shook his head, wishing he hadn't thought it. It's not like he had much in common with dragons.
Or did he?
He had no problem understanding the fear that the Monstrous Nightmare had shown. This dragon seemed more curious than anything else, and Hiccup certainly understood curiosity. And it was all by itself, just like him. It was sniffing in his general direction.
He smells the fish in my pocket. He's hungry. He might do anything. This could get really bad, really fast. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out the first fish he found. It was rank and slimy, but it was all he had. He held it out by the tail at arm's length. The dragon was immediately interested. It hesitantly stepped toward him, mouth open, showing a curious lack of –
CHOMP!
...teeth.
At the end of that day, Hiccup decided that this was the day he'd look back on as one of the high points of his life. Somehow, he had worked out a truce with the most feared destroyer the Vikings had ever known. It wasn't merely an end to hostilities. When he got his jury-rigged fishing line into the water, Toothless (as he was calling the dragon) sat beside him like a fishing buddy, peering intently into the water, and accepting most of the fish as though they rightfully belonged to him. In exchange, Hiccup was able to broil his own fish on a burnt patch of ground that Toothless had flamed for him.
Hiccup found a small cave, where he spent the night. The dragon hung from a nearby tree branch.
The next few days went pretty much like the first. Hiccup realized that he wasn't going to starve to death, and that the Night Fury wasn't going to kill him either. The dragon was initially reluctant to let Hiccup touch him, but he finally got over that, after what could only be called a magical moment of understanding. Toothless had a hearty appetite, but there were plenty of fish in the cove, and Hiccup had nothing else to do.
So what should he do next?
Hiccup's nature was to be curious about things, and to find solutions to problems. It was only a matter of time before he started puzzling over Toothless' eye problem. Those eyes were beautiful and very expressive; it seemed a shame that they couldn't focus in the same direction. From watching Toothless' reactions to various objects as Hiccup held them up, he decided the dragon was seeing two of everything. That would definitely make it hard for him to fly, fight, or do much of anything.
The simple solution would be to cover one of his eyes. It would ruin his depth perception, but that seemed like the lesser of two evils. Hiccup wasn't sure what kind of depth perception he had now, with two eyes that weren't working together. But coming up with the answer was one thing. Making it happen was another thing entirely.
He tried covering an eye with one of his hands. No good; his hand was too small to cover that huge pale-green eye. He tried it with two hands. That worked, but with both hands occupied, he couldn't do anything else. He decided that Toothless needed some kind of rig on his head, with a flap that would fold down and cover the eye without touching it. He roughed out a design in his notebook, using a charred tree branch for a pencil. His leather-working skills were up to a task like that. All he needed was the leather and the tools, both of which he had exactly none of.
He was sure he could find enough scraps of unwanted leather outside the tanner's shack in town. He knew he could find the tools he needed in Gobber's smithy. He also knew that, if he were caught, he'd be summarily shipped off to Outcast Island, with no chance of escape this time, and he would never get another chance at freedom. That seemed like too much of a risk to take for a dragon.
He looked into those great green eyes... What is it with dragons and their eyes? They're ruining my life!
He chose an overcast night with a new moon, so he'd be as hard to see as possible. He waited until the watchman had passed, searched the area around the tanner for the scraps he needed, then sneaked into the smithy. He'd spent so much time there, he knew his way blindfolded. His little back room hadn't been touched; he wondered why for a moment. But it didn't matter. By the light of one small candle, he worked for hours until he was satisfied with his work. He had to wait in the dark for another half hour until the watchman passed by again; then he crept out of town and found his way back to the cove.
His device was simple; it looked like a huge retractable eye patch. A leather belt wrapped around the top of Toothless' head and buckled underneath. Attached to it was a concave leather disc that would flip down and cover the right eye without touching it; when it wasn't down, it lay back flat against the dragon's head. It was controlled by a thin metal rod and handle which Hiccup would hold in flight. Without that rod, the wind of Toothless' forward motion would flip the eye cover back and render it useless.
The first hard part was getting Toothless to wear it; the dragon turned that process into an hour-long game of keep-away before he finally let Hiccup buckle it on. The Night Fury quickly realized what it was for, and eagerly leaped into the air. But the wind pushed the eye cover back, his vision went double, and he thudded to the ground in confusion. The only way it would work was if Hiccup rode him in the air and actively held the eye cover in place.
Getting a dragon to allow a rider. That was going to be the really hard part.
It might be hard for the rider, too, he thought.