1 An Odd Way to Spend Your Birthday

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1. AN ODD WAY TO SPEND YOUR BIRTHDAY At exactly twelve o'clock a.m. on the morning of his twelfth birthday, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, the Hope and Heir to the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, was standing shakily on a windy, narrow window ledge three hundred feet up in the air. Hiccup was a rather ordinary looking boy for someone with such a long and impressive name; a small-ish, thin-ish, runner-bean of a boy with bright red hair that shot straight up as if it was surprised, and a face that nobody ever remembered. His knees were wobbling as he flattened himself against the wall. The window ledge that he was perching on belonged to a Castle of terrifying size and spookiness which sprawled like an ugly black monster on top of the gull-shrieking cliffs of the little Isle of Forget Me. Although this Castle was known as THE MEATHEAD PUBLIC LIBRARY, it was not, in fact, open to the general public. This was back in Viking times, when books were considered a highly dangerous civilising influence, so they were rounded up and kept

locked up in the Library, under heavy armed guard. Entry to the Library was strictly by invitation only. Hiccup had not been invited. Which was why he was three hundred feet up in the air, and about to sneak in through an upstairs window. What he was making here was definitely a surprise visit. He REALLY, REALLY, did not want anyone to know he was there. If Hiccup looked down (and he was trying very, very hard not to) he could see the tiny figures of hundreds of Meathead Warrior Guards moving in the courtyard below, the sun glinting wickedly off their metal-tipped Northbows,

their Driller-Dragons on long chains beside them. Hiccup knew that they only had to look up, and they would have no hesitation at all in shooting on sight. Hiccup swallowed hard. He was nerving himself up to climb through the broken window and into the Library–but he didn't really want to do this, either. Who knew WHAT could be hidden in that dark maze of rooms, a labyrinth so huge that you could be lost in there for weeks without a soul ever finding you? Whatever else was in there, Hiccup knew that somewhere in that terrifying book-warren there prowled the Hairy Scary Librarian himself, the half-blind, half-dumb Guardian of the Library. Master Swordsman, Mathematical Genius and an all-round scary individual, the Hairy Scary Librarian showed no mercy to Intruders. Hiccup had heard him at gatherings of the Tribes, boasting of how he finished off foolish Warriors who dared to try and find out the Library's secret with one slash of his swords, which he called his 'Heart-Slicers'. 'I croaks them with me Heart- Slicers,' he would whisper, with the

firelight flickering on his undead eyes. 'I unzips them from their goggle-screams to their grub-washers.' Then he would make a nasty swiping motion from his throat down to his belly button. 'Serves them right– NOBODY borrows books from MY Library and lives to tell the tale.' And if the Hairy Scary Librarian was scary even on a social occasion, when you were sitting down at a cosy campfire with the rest of the Tribe all comfortably settled around you, how much scarier still was he when he was doing his business, lurking like a spider round every corner of his spooky Library, his Heart-Slicers at the ready? Particularly when, like Hiccup, you had come to the Library not just to stroll about, but to actually STEAL one of the precious books and take it home with you. At that moment, a small wild dragon happened to fly past the spot where Hiccup was perching. Hiccup followed it automatically with his eyes. 'Lesser-Spotted Squirrelserpent,' Hiccup said to himself. And as the little dragon soared, free and careless, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, into the bright blue sky, Hiccup thought to himself: What AM I doing? This is my BIRTHDAY, for Thor's sake. I should be

sitting at home enjoying myself instead of risking my neck three hundred feet up a Library of Doom… What AM I DOING? HOW DID I GET MYSELF INTO THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE? NOTHING could possibly be worse than this. And at that moment, Hiccup was so busy with this thought and with watching the Lesser-Spotted Squirrelserpent wheeling through the air in a lazy arc, that he lost concentration, and his foot slipped on the crumbly edge of the window. And with a smothered shriek, he fell off the ledge. He fell off the ledge entirely, arms and legs scrabbling wildly, and one flailing hand just caught on to the window ledge as he fell… and held–leaving him hanging by one hand, with nothing between him and the hard ground but three hundred feet of pure clear air. Hiccup screamed again. Down below on the battlements, the heads of four hundred Meathead Guards tipped upwards to look. All four hundred reached for their Northbows. And, floating up to Hiccup as he swung from the ledge with one hand, came the ominous sound of the Driller-Dragons setting their drills a-whirring.