1 The Greatest Day of your Life (not)

PROLOGUE BY HICCUP HORRENDOUS HADDOCK III THE LAST OF THE GREAT VIKING HEROES Now that I am an old, old man, the past seems very far away. But once there were dragons in the Archipelago. And once I was a boy, a boy who in the thirteenth year of my life made a terrible mistake. I released the Dragon Furious from the prison of Berserk. The dragon promised to fly into exile in the icy wastes of the north for one year only. One year's grace, and then he vowed that he would bring down a Dragon Rebellion whose only aim was the absolute and utter extinction of the entire human race. Over the next year the boy-that-once-was-me grew like a weed, at least three inches taller. My arms were sticking right out of my shirtsleeves, but the year came and went, with no sign of the Dragon Furious, or of his Rebellion. I heaved a sigh of relief, and began to hope that

启序嗝嗝可怕的黑线鳕最后一位伟大的维京英雄现在我老了，老了，过去似乎很遥远。 但群岛上曾经有过龙。 从前我是个男孩，一个在我13岁时犯了一个严重错误的男孩。 我把狂暴之龙从狂暴监狱里释放了出来。 龙答应放逐到北方冰封的荒原，只待一年。 一年的宽限期，然后他发誓，他将打败龙族叛乱唯一的目的是彻底灭绝整个人类。 在接下来的一年里，那个曾经是我的男孩像野草一样长得飞快，至少长高了三英寸。 我的手臂从衬衫袖子里伸出来，但一年又一年过去了，没有愤怒的龙，也没有他的叛乱的迹象。 我松了一口气，开始希望

perhaps the terrible hurts of a hundred years of imprisonment had been soothed by the chill of those innocent snows, and diving free and joyous through the pin-sharp cold waters, chasing the fleeting seals in that endless chilly wilderness, the dragon had returned to the happy carefree life of his ancestors. Perhaps he had remembered himself up there in his element, and what if he had forgotten his promise, and maybe he might not return after all? Perhaps. What if? Maybe. But in the quiet watches of the night, the words of the Dragon Furious came hissing and burning back into my brain, and they were not words that melted like water into snow-drops. They were words of flame, and they hissed and leapt into burning, terrible life in my dreams. 'We shall scourge this world with fire, and leave no wretched human being alive, not a single one. For over the last hundred years I have been looking into the past and into the future, and I tell you this, Boy… humans and dragons cannot live together…'

也许一百年的囚禁所带来的可怕的伤害，已经被那些无辜的雪的寒意所抚慰了，它自由而快乐地在冰冷刺骨的海水中潜水，在那无边无际的寒冷的荒野中追逐着转瞬即逝的海豹，又回到了它祖先无忧无虑的幸福生活中去了。 也许他记起了自己在那里的处境，如果他忘记了他的诺言，也许他根本就不会回来了呢？ 也许。如果什么?也许吧。但在夜深人静的时候，怒龙的话语嘶嘶作响，燃烧着重回我的脑海，它们不是像水融化成雪花莲那样的话语。 它们是火焰般的话语，嘶嘶作响，跃入我梦中燃烧着的可怕的生命。 “我们要用火折磨这个世界，不留一个可怜的人活着，一个也不留。 在过去的一百年里，我一直在研究过去和未来，我告诉你，孩子……人类和龙是不能共存的……”

The words spat through my brain like living, burning snakes: '…and so I will call the dragons from far and wide, from the depths of the ocean and the ends of the earth, and we shall fight the final battle before it is too late.' 'NO!' I shrieked in my dream. 'NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!' But time cannot tick backwards. The boy-that- once-was-me could not stop it. And the Dragon was coming.

这些话像活生生的、燃烧着的蛇一样在我的脑海里喷涌而出：“……因此，我将从遥远的地方，从海洋的深处和地球的尽头召唤龙，我们将在为时已晚之前进行最后的战斗。”“不!”我在梦中尖叫起来。 “不!不!不!不!“不!”但时间不能倒退。 那个曾经是我的男孩无法阻止它。 恶龙来了。

1. THE GREATEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE (NOT) One long-ago winter's midnight, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third awoke with a frightened start. Despite being the Hope and Heir to the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, Hiccup was a gangly, skinny, ordinary-looking boy, with the kind of face that was easy to overlook in a crowd. To tell the truth, he had not been sleeping very well. It is difficult to sleep well if one's bed is a hammock suspended three quarters of the way up the Hard Way of Angry Mountain. The Hard Way of Angry Mountain is a cliff so high that it takes two days and a night to climb it. It is so vertical that a climber has to hammer in a couple of nails and spend that night sleeping uneasily in a hammock hung precariously from the shiny rock. Hiccup's riding-dragon, the Windwalker, sleeping on a little shelf of rock a couple of feet away, was supposed to be looking out for danger. However it was still winter, the Windwalker's

1. 你生命中最伟大的一天（不是）很久以前的一个冬天的午夜，嗝嗝·可怕的黑线鳕三世被吓醒了。 尽管希卡普是毛流氓部落的希望和继承人，但他却是一个瘦长、瘦削、长相普通的男孩，长着一张在人群中很容易被忽视的脸。 说实话，他最近睡得不太好。 如果一个人的床是一个吊床，悬在愤怒山的艰难之路的四分之三的地方，那他很难睡得很好。 愤怒山的艰难之路是一个非常高的悬崖，攀登它需要两天一夜。 它是如此垂直，以至于登山者必须钉上几颗钉子，然后在摇摇晃晃地挂在闪闪发光的岩石上的吊床上度过一个不安的夜晚。 小嗝嗝的骑龙，风行者，睡在几英尺外的一个小岩石架子上，应该是警惕危险的。 然而，当时还是冬天，风行者的家