23 EPILOGUE by Hiccup

So that is the story of how I went to the New World. I crossed thousands and thousands of miles of ocean, starving and baking on the deck of the ship, slew monsters and fought battles with my life hanging on the thinnest of threads… I cheated death so many times on that journey… and then finally, FINALLY, I saw with my very own eyes, the dream land, the imaginary place, that was no dream after all… it WAS true! Despite what it may look like, the world is not really as flat as a pancake. There is no waterfall at the corners. There are no edges to the globe on which we live and struggle and laugh and die. The world is a circle that has no end. I know that, I have been out to the West and seen with my very own eyes the white beaches and lush green trees of America… and yet I never quite landed. I was so CLOSE to landing, that if I swam just a few hundred metres more, I could have put my foot on American sand. But I did not. What Glory it would have been to have discovered America! To have founded an empire there!

To have your name live for ever in the history books… to have little schoolchildren chant your name, saying 'America was discovered by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third…' But within touching distance of the Ultimate Quest, I turned back. I went home. I took the quiet way, back into the shadows, to be forgotten by future generations. It may seem to you, perhaps, dear reader, that my Quest was not a success. To have travelled so far… such a very long, long, long way… and at the last minute, within sniffing distance of the prize… to have not discovered America after all. What a failure! But this is not how it seems to me. Again and again I have been on Quests that I thought were for one thing, and turned out to be something quite different. For it was on that Quest that I first truly discovered MYSELF, and my destiny. We were not ready to build a New World. How can you make a fresh start in a New World when you are carrying with you on your boat all the same problems, the same frustrations and inequalities

of the Old World? Let's face it, any country ruled by Norbert called 'The Land of the Nutjobs' would have turned out to have the same problems as the Barbaric Archipelago quicker than you can say the words 'half crazed lunatic carrying a double-headed axe'. What that trip taught me was just how very many things were wrong with that Old World of ours. And I returned the long, long, way back to the Inner Isles with a new determination. The boy that went into the Atlantic Ocean that day was a very different boy than the one who came out three months, five days and six hours later. I had been immersed in the waters of the Western Seas, and came out a different person. I had always known that I had, one day, to take over my father's job. I had always felt reluctant, even cross, about this. Always felt that it was something I didn't really want to do. Now, for the first time in my life I really wanted to be a Chief. And not just a Chief, but a KING. I knew for the first time that I was Grimbeard the Ghastly's True Heir… and I would be such an Heir that he had never dreamed of. I wanted to be a King who would found a New World, not in some misty country far across the seas,

but right here, right now, at home. I would make the Barbaric Archipelago a place in which Might was no longer Right. Where the weaker Tribes could have their say and their vote at the Thing. Where small children would not live in daily fear of death by wolves, by dragons roaming wild, by starvation and by war. Where the rule of Law would apply to bully boys like Snotlout and Nutjob himself. And, the first thing I would do as a King, would be to abolish slavery for ever from the Viking Lands… The Slavemark has been a great burden to bear, and made my task so much the harder. But Thor was right to give me the Slavemark. I could never rub it away, never forget the promise that I made, because there it was, in indelible purple on the side of my head. Maybe all Kings should bear the Slavemark, to remind them that they should be slaves to their people, rather than the other way around. And to help them never to forget what it feels to be a child… to be small and weak and helpless. Perhaps my vision does not seem so revolutionary to readers of the Future. But you have to remember the savage wildness of the world in which I grew up. It is quite extraordinary for one small boy with red hair and nothing very remarkable about him to think that

he can change the world to that extent. I did not realise at that time what a gigantic task I was setting myself, what a huge enterprise, so much larger than merely crossing the Western Ocean and back again… How much easier it would have been to have rubbed along as my father had, shrugging at the injustices, closing an eye to the Bad Things… But that way is not my way. My story is all about being a Hero the Hard Way. We are all not so very different from Norbert the Nutjob. We need a vision of a New World to help us carry on. And in all that I have done, I have been dreaming of those white beaches. All my life I have struggled to found a New World, a better world, for us to live in. I have struggled to make us ready, to make us good enough, to return once again to that country that I saw, long ago, across the sea. We are still not ready. Maybe we will never be ready. But we are a bit closer now than when I was young. Now I am an old, old man, the world that I created has no need for dragons. They have retreated from the civilisation that I brought, along with the wolves, and the Berserks, and the monsters of my childhood.

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