12 The Lost Kingdom of the Wilderwest

12. THE LOST KINGDOM OF THE WILDERWEST He was a very ancient dragon indeed. Dried up and brown, like an old prune, barely able to open his eyes, wrinkles so deep and folded he was like a crumpled map. Hiccup had never seen such an old dragon. For a split second, Hiccup was convinced the dragon was going to kill him. He had brought back his head like dragons do, like a rattlesnake about to strike. And Hiccup tried to move his sword, but it was as if his arm were turned to stone. Dragon-eye met boy-eye, the golden cat's eye meeting Hiccup's blue,

there in the middle of that circle of fire. Hiccup's head began to spin. He closed his eyes. 'Who are you?' asked the dragon– but he already knew the answer. 'I am Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third. And I want to take this Crown, please,' said Hiccup politely. 'Who are you?' 'Well, Hiccup the Third, I am the Wodensfang and I am supposed to kill whoever tries to take this Crown…' His voice was a barely-there hiss, the faraway whisper of a skeletonleaf. 'Please don't,' said Hiccup, still with his eyes closed. There was a long silence. 'Because humans and dragons cannot live together,' said the dragon. 'You sound like the Dragon Furious,' said Hiccup, opening his eyes. 'I don't believe that that is true.' 'Once I believed as you did,' said the dragon very, very wearily, 'but I have changed my mind.' 'Of course they can live together!' said Hiccup fiercely. 'Some of my best friends are dragons! It's just that things have gone wrong somehow…

'The dragons have become enslaved, when they ought to be free. But you HAVE to believe that people and dragons can be better. You HAVE to believe in a better world…' 'And is this what you would do, Hiccup the Third, if you were the King of the Wilderwest? You would free all the dragons?' asked the ancient dragon. 'You would work to make sure that humans and dragons live together in peace?' Hiccup did not want to be the King of the Wilderwest. But sometimes we all have to grow up. 'Yes,' said Hiccup. 'I promise.' The dragon sighed again. 'The problem is,' said the dragon, 'I am an old, old dragon, and you are not the first to make me that promise. And history has a way of repeating itself.'

'Maybe it doesn't have to,' said Hiccup. 'Hear my story,' said the dragon, 'and perhaps you will change your mind…' 'I'm in a bit of a hurry,' said Hiccup. The Wodensfang looked at him with his hypnotic eyes. There was a distinct edge to his ancient voice. 'We have all the time in the world,' said the Wodensfang. 'We have all the time in the world,' repeated Hiccup. Hiccup sat down cross-legged, laid his sword on his knees and listened to the story, inside the circle of fire, in the icy heart of Angry Mountain. 'You see,' said the Wodensfang, 'you are not the first human to have the name of Hiccup. You are not the first human to carry that sword.' Oh dear. Oh dear. Hiccup was getting that black-beetles-on-his-scalp feeling again. 'The first human who made me that promise was called… Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the First…'

'Five or six centuries ago,' said the dragon, 'when I was young, it was a very Dark Age, and the dragons and humans were at war. The leader of the dragon army, a great Sea Dragon known as Merciless, had looked into the future and seen that he would be killed by a human by the name of Hiccup. 'He had learnt that a human of this name was living on an island in the Archipelago, and I was sent on a mission to kill all humans on this one particular island. 'Unfortunately, I flew so low over the little island that I became caught in the branches of a tree. I hung there for two days, terribly wounded in my chest, and tangling myself round and round like a fish on a line, growing weaker and weaker.

'I was rescued by a small boy, about nine years old. 'Ironically, he was the very same boy I had been sent there to kill… The boy called Hiccup the First. 'Hiccup the First climbed the tree where I was captured, and untangled me. You have to realize, that was an extraordinary act of bravery, for in those days, dragons and humans were mortal enemies. I had never even SEEN a human up close before. Just killed them from a distance. I could have incinerated the child with one single breath of flame, taken him out with one slash of my dying talons. 'But the boy freed me, and then he nursed me back to health. With his clever human fingers, he sewed up the wound in my chest, put on herbs that healed it. Look, you can see the scar even now!' Hiccup looked. There it was. A scar over his wrinkled brown heart. A faint line, the tiny jagged marks of sewing hundreds of years old. A boy's sewing, uneven and crooked. A scar in the exact same place that Toothless had a scar. And the Dragon Furious had a scar.