21 A Big Surprise for Alvin

21. A BIG SURPRISE FOR ALVIN If it hadn't been such a perilous moment, it might have been funny. It was such a bizarre sight. Twenty years without light had sucked all the colour out of the witch and she was white as bone all over. Her brilliant shock of chalk-dry hair blew five feet long behind her. Her faded eyes were still half- blind, but her other senses were so acute now that she could make her way around like a bat using radar. The Chickenpoxer was bucking madly, trying to get her off, but the witch was made of stern stuff, much sterner than Fishlegs, and she held firm, and rode him at the figures on the bridge. Alvin had now turned a ghastly green. Who can blame him? He hadn't seen his mother in twenty years. And she was pretty scary. 'Mother???' whispered Alvin the Treacherous querulously. 'Is it you, Mother?' 'Help him up, you FOOL!!' raged the old lady, wheeling around in the air above their heads on the Chickenpoxer. She didn't seem terribly pleased to see

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her son, considering they had been parted for such a long time. 'What's happened to you?' she scolded, taking in his missing leg, eye, hair, nose and arm. 'Look at the state of you! I leave you with ve-ry clear instructions on how to become the King of the Wilderwest, and you can't even hang on to your own limbs! Don't you see, you meddling MORON, you can't let that little rat fall into the fire, he's got the SWORD!' From a splendid, dreadful villain on the brink of a great and evil triumph, Alvin turned in one split- second into a small boy caught in the act of doing something stupid. 'No, I've got the sword…' said Alvin, holding up the Stormblade rather pathetically, as if it would impress her. 'IDIOT!!!' screamed Alvin's Mother, bringing the Chickenpoxer to a screeching halt above their heads. 'It's the OTHER SWORD! Help him up, help him up! And take the sword off him!' Alvin turned back to Hiccup, hissing, 'I can't believe it… you set her free… this is the worst thing you've ever done to me…' But it was too late. Hiccup had already hauled HIMSELF up by his

elbows, and the Windwalker had worked his wing free, and Hiccup now scrambled up on to his back and the Windwalker sprang into the air… …and the bridge burnt out at both ends, and fell into the abyss. Alvin screamed, and Alvin's Mother leant down from the Chickenpoxer and grabbed him by the hook as the bridge fell down from under him. But as the witch grabbed the hook she let out a horrible shriek. For Alvin had held the hook in the flames of the bridge only a few moments earlier. And that had turned the hook burning, scorching, frying hot. 'Aaaaaieeeeeeeeeeeeeee!' screamed Alvin's Mother. 'AAAAIEEEEEEE!' The touching reunion between mother and son lasted precisely one minute. There was a horrible, sulphurous smell of burning flesh, and Alvin's Mother let go of the hook. DOWN Alvin plunged, into the Inferno. And in one blink of an eye he was gone. The witch did not hesitate. She leapt from the Chickenpoxer's back and down into the fire herself. I don't know what she was hoping to do.

But the flames swallowed her too, in one greedy gulp. And I would have said surely even Alvin and his Mother could not have escaped this time, from an entire burning Forest? But I won't because I have been wrong before.