Lightning and Death Itself Chapter 21
The word spread through Berk quickly when someone saw distant sails approaching. All the people who were left in town – the young, the old, and those who weren't allowed to be warriors for various reasons – were desperately hoping that this most recent expedition wasn't going to result in many lost ships and lost lives like all the others. They began lining the cliffs and the docks to see who was coming home.
Gunnarr and Edda Hofferson were among those who watched. He had been exempted from the raid because he was a valued tradesman (he was both the town's livestock veterinarian and the town butcher), and his wife stayed home to care for their two boys who were too young for war. Being excused from the raid brought them no joy, though. All joy had left their home on the day their Astrid disappeared.
The message she'd sent via her friends didn't help. It made no sense; why would she run away from home? She was happy, she loved her family, she was popular, and she was doing well in Dragon Training. The idea that she'd run off with the chief's spindly, accident-prone son was ludicrous, but it was either that, or no reason at all.
They always left an empty place at the table for her, hoping each day that this would be the day she'd come home. They'd forgive her for running, they'd forgive her for whatever wrong she'd done, they'd forgive her for the heartache, if she would just come home!
The initial sighting of the town's ships wasn't very encouraging. Twenty-one ships had sailed away; only two were coming back. Those two were tightly packed with Vikings, so the village's able-bodied population hadn't been completely wiped out. No one would give up hope for their loved ones until the chief looked them in the eye and said, "I'm sorry." That was assuming the chief was among the survivors, of course. Viking chiefs usually didn't survive losing battles. It was an occupational hazard.
The depressed silence was broken by a startled female voice. "What are those?" The two ships were being followed by two black flying... things. If they were dragons, they were an unknown type. But if they were dragons, why were they peacefully following the ships, and why weren't the Vikings in the ships throwing spears and axes at them? The people were used to bad news; they had learned to handle that. The strange and the unknown – that, they didn't like so well.
The two ships glided silently into the docks of the harbor. Both had burnt timbers and frames, and the burn marks didn't line up from board to board. One of the ships had obviously been spliced together in the field from two different halves. The villagers didn't know what to make of that. Further speculation ended the moment Stoick opened his mouth.
"Make way! Make way for the wounded!" About a dozen walking wounded left the ships, with help from their shipmates, and made their way up the ramps toward Gothi's house. Most of them showed burn wounds, although one had apparently fallen a goodly distance. As each one passed the crowd gathered on the cliffs, some loved ones would leave the group and rush to greet their returning hero. No one wanted to see their family member wounded, no matter how honorable the scar, but in these circumstances, seeing them at all was a wonderful relief.
The chief led the other warriors up to the cliffs, followed by everyone who had waited on the docks for them. A handful of sailors greeted their families with joy, then went back to the docks, turned the ships around, and headed back out to sea. The rest stood beside Stoick as he braced himself for one of the hardest speeches he'd ever have to give to his tribe. The fact that it was nearly all good news didn't make it easier.
"Friends! Citizens of Berk! Let me tell you what happened out there. You are all going to find this hard to believe, very hard. I assure you, it's hard for me, too, and I've been trying to come to terms with this for days. I am not crazy, I am not delirious, and I am not lying. These Vikings beside me are all witnesses, and they'll confirm that I'm speaking the truth.
"The first good news is that we did not lose a single warrior on this voyage!"
The cheer that went up was loud, but short-lived. An older man asked the question that was on everyone's mind – "Then where is everybody?"
"Our ships were badly beaten up by a dragon; we lost the whole fleet. Those two ships were pieced together from the remnants. They'll have to make several trips to get all our people home. But they are all coming home!" Now the cheer was whole-hearted. Stoick waited for it to end.
"The next good news is that the war with the dragons is over!"
That brought stunned silence, with murmured overtones. That wasn't quite the reaction Stoick had hoped for.
"You heard me! The dragons are never going to raid us again!"
The buzz in the crowd began to grow. Someone shouted, "Does that mean you finally found the dragons' nest and took it?"
"That's what it means," Stoick grinned. "But that's not the reason why the war is over." His grin vanished. "This is the part that is going to be hard for you to believe. I know that, because I'm still having a hard time believing it. That's why I've brought all these witnesses to stand with me and testify that this is the truth.
"The war is over because the dragons are not our enemies any more."
If he said anything after that, it was drowned out in a sea of angry shouts and curses. Every soul in that crowd had lost a family member or a friend to the thieving, murderous dragons. How could they suddenly stop being enemies? Had he made some kind of peace with them, dishonoring the memory of their lost loved ones? Stoick realized that the witnesses beside him might serve another useful function as well – bodyguards. He waited until the verbal storm subsided. There were still plenty of angry glares, but he could deal with those.
"Inside the nest, we found a giant dragon that ruled over all the others. The dragons did all their raiding to feed this giant. If they didn't feed it, it ate them instead."
"Was it bigger than a Monstrous Nightmare?" a child wanted to know.
"It was as long as six Monstrous Nightmares," Gobber answered. "Four legs, six eyes, spikes on its back, a club for a tail... ye never saw such a monster! It burned all our ships with one fire shot!" That brought the crowd to silence, even though Gobber was known to exaggerate the strengths of the dragons he faced.
"I'm sure you're wondering, how could we fight something like that and not lose a man?" Stoick continued. "The answer – and this is the really hard part – is, we didn't fight it. We couldn't fight it. The dragons fought it for us." As the crowd began to protest again, he turned to the Vikings beside him. "Is this the truth?" he demanded. They all nodded and voiced their agreement. The crowd settled down.
"Now that the giant dragon is dead, the other dragons will leave us alone. They like fresh, raw fish better than anything else, so they'll never steal our livestock again."
"How could you possibly know if that's true or not?" an older man demanded.
"This is the really, really hard part," Stoick said. "The dragons told us so."
He'd expected silence. He'd expected disbelief. He'd expected anger. What he didn't expect was the whole town laughing at him. That was hard to bear.
"Do you want me to prove it?" he bellowed. Even his mighty voice was hard to hear over the howls and catcalls of his people. "Because I will. Right now!" He turned away from them, stepped to the edge of the cliffs, and waved his hands over his head.
The two black flying things, which had been tracing circles in the sky half a mile away, turned and flew toward the village. They landed on the cliffs, one on either side of Stoick, showing themselves to be black dragons of an unknown but fearful-looking type. The laughter stopped instantly. One of them snarled viciously on landing, causing the group to draw back in alarm. A few of the villagers noticed that one of its legs was badly injured, and wondered if the snarl might have been from pain and not anger.
"Yes, if you were wondering, these are Night Furies," Stoick said. "They fought bravely to protect us; they're the ones who killed the giant dragon. They told me these things about dragons because they know how to write, and they can understand us when we speak to them."
"Do they understand when we say, 'Dragons go home'?" an old woman yelled. Several other people shouted encouragement.
"They are home," Stoick said firmly. That brought silence.
"There is some kind of magic at work here. I don't understand it, and I don't like to think about some parts of it. But these dragons have proven, beyond any possible doubt, that they are telling the truth." He rested a hand on the injured dragon's head. That drew a gasp from the crowd.
"This one... is my son, Hiccup. He's been turned into a dragon. But it's still him on the inside."
The only sound was the breaking of waves on the rocks far below them. No one could think of any possible reply. They just stared. If their chief wasn't surrounded by witnesses whom they all knew and trusted, they would have condemned him as a madman on the spot. But the witnesses all nodded. Their chief, who hated dragons with a passion few could match, was standing next to the most feared dragon in their history, with one hand on its head and no weapon in his hand, and the dragon wasn't biting his hand off. What possible reply could they give? They stared and waited to see what would happen next.
The other dragon slowly walked toward the group. All eyes were on it. The people in the front tried to give ground, but the ones behind them got in the way and kept them from going anywhere. The dragon stopped about three feet from Mrs. Hofferson. It reached out with its foreleg and scratched one small word on the rocks.
MAMA
Edda stared at the word, then at the dragon. If the chief was right, then this was her daughter. The dragon was her daughter. Her daughter had come home. Her daughter was a dragon who had come home. Daughter... dragon... daughter dragon daughterdragondaughterdragon...
The human mind has limits to what it can handle, and it has defenses if those limits are breached. Edda Hofferson fainted dead away. Gunnarr and an older woman caught her as she fell, and lowered her to the ground gently. The woman tended to her as Gunnarr turned back to face the dragon.
Its bat-like wings and black color certainly made it look frightening. But its eyes were not the eyes of evil or murder. It moved to take a step toward the group.
"Stay back, Night Fury!" Gunnarr ordered shakily. "Leave us alone! Haven't you done enough to us, you... you monster?"
Those eyes actually looked hurt. It backed off a step and scratched another message on the rock.
PLEASE DON'T BE MAD, PAPA
Gunnarr Hofferson suddenly knew how it felt for a sword to pierce a man's heart.
He felt a flood of unhappy memories from his past, from the many times he would come home angry after a bad day in the butcher shop, shouting and looking for things to throw, and his tiny daughter would cling to his leg and beg him, "Please don't be mad, Papa!" Her words usually drew the sting from his rage. He couldn't be angry when she clung to him like that.
No one outside his own immediate household could possibly know those words, or their effect on him.
Now those words had been carved in stone, right in front of him and everyone else in the village, by the hand of a... a... a dragon? How could he believe such a thing?
Some things are simply unbelievable. Aren't they?
Slowly, he reached out a shaking hand. Just as slowly, the dragon stepped forward. It stopped and lowered its head, making a low burbling sound that wasn't threatening at all. He stretched his hand the remaining three inches and laid it on the dragon's nose. It blinked and looked back at him. He tried to speak, but his throat tightened and his voice completely failed him. He barely whispered one word.
"Astrid...?"
The great eyes blinked wetly. It slowly bobbed its head up and down, without breaking contact with his hand. Gunnarr's eyes became quite moist as well. Then they overflowed.
His choked sob was the only sound to be heard. No one else moved or made a sound. Everyone was staring at the impossible scene playing out in front of them. Some were unwilling to believe. Others desperately wanted to believe.
Some things are simply unbelievable. Yet they cannot be denied.
The village of Berk began to change that day. Some of the changes were small, some were huge. But of all the mental images Stoick would remember from those first few days of the homecoming, that picture of a tearful Gunnarr Hofferson on one knee, with one hand on the shoulder of his unconscious wife, and the other hand on the nose of the dragon that was his daughter, was the one he would never, ever forget.
How could he? He knew exactly how the poor man felt.