Chapter Text
Zephyr Haddock was thirteen years old, and her brothers ten and five, when she made an announcement at the breakfast table.
“We need to go back to the Hidden World,” she said.
Until she spoke, her dad had been distracted, no doubt deep in thought about some Chief’s business—probably Snotlout’s recent assertions that he and the rest of the Jorgenson clan should start a new outpost farther along New Berk’s southern edge, if Zephyr had to guess.
Now Hiccup’s head snapped up, and he stared at her. “What?” He grinned, trying to make it a joke, but his alarm still showed through. “Did you forget something the last time we were there?”
Zephyr rolled her eyes. “No, Dad. But Stoick’s never seen a dragon, not properly, and Nuffink doesn’t remember them.”
“Is that true?” Hiccup asked Nuffink, who had been surreptitiously drawing under the table.
Nuffink looked up, blinking for a moment before seemingly catching up with the conversation. He shrugged. “I remember, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them again. Ow!” he exclaimed, glaring at Zephyr.
“Zephyr, don’t kick your brother,” Zephyr’s mother said, finally sitting down with her bowl of porridge. “And Nuffink, no drawing at the table. We’ve talked about this.”
“But Mom,” Nuffink protested, but fell quiet when Astrid raised her eyebrows at him. “Fine.” He shut his sketchbook and put it on the table next to his plate. A few seconds later, his leg started bouncing so hard that Zephyr could feel it from several inches away.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Hiccup said. “We live apart from the dragons for good reason”—Zephyr, privately, disagreed—“and last time we went there, it was only to properly introduce you after Toothless and the Light Fury visited over Snoggletog.”
“And the Night Lights,” Nuffink put in.
“And the Night Lights,” Hiccup allowed.
“But we’ve had a visit since then,” Zephyr said. “Skyfall.” It was what she’d named the Deadly Nadder that Hiccup had nursed back to health after it broke its wing several years previously.
“And we’ve returned that visit too. My mom took it back to the Hidden World, remember?”
“And that’s another reason for us to go,” Zephyr insisted. “Stoick’s never met Grandma. He was just a baby when she left.”
“What do you think, Astrid?” Hiccup asked. Zephyr knew he must be worried he was losing the argument; he only asked her mother to step in when he was desperate.
The look on Astrid’s face said she’d been planning to speak up anyway, though. “I agree, it’s a bad idea. We don’t know what kind of reception we’d get, and we can’t just leave the village for days on end so soon before winter sets in.”
Zephyr huffed a sigh. “Then what about next spring?”
“The timing’s not the issue, Zephyr,” her dad said. “Well, it’s kind of the issue, but the bigger problem is that we can’t just drop in on the dragons whenever we want.”
“But why not?” Zephyr demanded.
“Because they’re wild animals, and we don’t know how they’d react, and if I had to harm a dragon to keep it from hurting my kids, I’d never forgive myself.” He paused. “And because they don’t belong to us. We can’t treat them like pets.”
“Then why did we go last time?”
“Because I knew Toothless would be waiting for us, and I knew he’d be happy to see me,” Hiccup said. “And he was. Once he recognized me.”
“But how—” Zephyr was right on the edge of yelling now, and across the table, Stoick’s brow puckered in distress—he hated raised voices.
“Zephyr,” her father said, and the note of frustration in his voice was so unusual that it stopped her short. “I’m sorry, but I’m putting my foot down. We’re not going.”
Zephyr didn’t say anything, only looking mutinously down at her plate of eggs and yesterday’s bread, her jaw clenched in anger.
One way or another, she was taking her brothers to the Hidden World.
Hiccup woke several days later to a curiously quiet house. Astrid was snuggled into his side, warm and solid, her arm thrown across his chest.
Zephyr had somehow inherited her grandpa Stoick’s proclivity for getting up at the crack of dawn, so that she was almost always the first in the house to rise. Normally she and Astrid did their morning exercises out on the balcony while Hiccup and the boys were still asleep, but Astrid had apparently decided to sleep in this morning.
He looked down at her fondly. All he could see was the back of her head, wisps of her pale blonde hair escaping from the plain braid she slept in, and her hand, balled up in a fist directly above his heart.
As though she could feel the weight of his gaze on her, she stirred, slowly waking up. She lifted her head, smiling sleepily up at him. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Hiccup said, and kissed her.
“Why are you up so early?”
“I’m not,” he said. “You slept in.”
“What?” Astrid said, sitting up. “That can’t be right. I usually get up when I hear Zephyr starting to move around…”
“Do you think she’s sick?” Hiccup asked. “Why’s she still in bed?”
“She didn’t say anything last night,” Astrid said dubiously. “I’ll go check on her.” She climbed out of bed, straightening her nightgown on the way out of their bedroom. She left the door a little ajar, so that the sound filtered in from the landing. “Zephyr…?” she said, and a door creaked open. Then it slammed shut, and two more doors opened and shut with increasing franticness.
Hiccup sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He was just putting on his prosthetic as Astrid burst back into the room.
“They’re gone!” she said.
“What?” Hiccup exclaimed, standing.
“All three of them, beds empty.” Astrid ran her hands through her hair, dislodging more of the loose braid.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, and together they rushed downstairs into the kitchen. There, in the center of the table, lay a note written in Zephyr’s hand.
Astrid snatched it up, but it was only three words: Be back soon.
“Hiccup, you know what this means,” Astrid said, turning to him. “Zephyr was talking about it the other day.”
“There has to be another explanation,” Hiccup said. “Maybe she took the boys camping. They do it all the time.”
“But without telling us?” she asked, shaking her head. “That’s not like her.”
At that moment, a knock sounded on the door. They looked at each other for a moment, and the person knocked again.
“Chief?” called Eret’s voice.
Hiccup opened the door. “Good morning, Eret son of Eret.”
Eret stood there on the stoop, solid and stalwart as ever, though strands of silver streaked his dark hair.
“Morning,” Eret said. He looked over both of them. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No, you didn’t,” Hiccup said. Under Eret’s gaze, he was becoming aware of just how rumpled he was in his nightshirt. At least this wasn’t the first time Eret had seen him in this state.
“What’s going on?” Astrid asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“There’s a boat missing,” Eret said. “And something strange is going on with one of the winches that goes down to the sea.”
Hiccup swore violently, turning to stomp back upstairs. “Give me a minute, I just need to put on some pants and I’ll be right there.”
“What’s that about?” he heard Eret ask behind him.
Astrid caught up as Hiccup was yanking on his right boot. “Still think she took them camping?” she asked, dragging a heavy wool robe on over her nightgown.
“Obviously not,” Hiccup said, sighing in frustration. He didn’t bother changing into a tunic, just tucking his nightshirt into his pants and pulling a vest on over that. He stood, heading for the door.
“Will you wait for me?” Astrid asked, in the process of tugging on her boots.
Already in the doorway, Hiccup nodded. Another minute couldn’t hurt. Probably.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said to Eret when they were back downstairs.
“Not a problem, Chief,” Eret said. “Astrid, are you coming?” Obviously, she was coming, but his tone made it evident that he was asking Why are you coming?
“The kids are gone,” Astrid said by way of explanation.
“Oh,” Eret said, concerned. Then, as he put the pieces together, “Oh no.”
He led them to the winch farthest from the Chief’s house, where two men were standing, examining the mechanism.
“What’s going on, Ivar?” Hiccup asked the younger of the two, a youth only about three years older than Zephyr.
The boy gulped, slightly nervous at being asked to report to his Chief. The older man, who had been on the Guard for many years, gave a slight smile. “We found this when we were patrolling,” Ivar said, pointing to a device planted on the post in front of him, just above the crank handle used to control the winch. “There must have been one on that crank too, but it fell off by the time we got here.”
Hiccup walked over to the other side of the winch and crouched down to pick up the device lying in the grass. It was made of wood and leather, identical to the one still attached to the other post. He looked at the rope in front of Ivar. As he’d expected, the markers painted on the rope showed that less of that rope had been unspooled than the one in front of him.
“They must have used these to control their descent,” he said. “Just to slow it down enough so that it wouldn’t be a freefall. They planted them, and then they released the winches. Zephyr and Nuffink must have done one each. And then… and then they jumped.”
Astrid drew her breath in sharply.
“Ivar, is there anything on that line?”
Ivar gave the crank a few turns. “No, Chief.”
“So at least the boat’s unhooked,” Hiccup said. He held up the device. “This must have broken when they were just above the water, and this end of the boat dropped down to hit the water first.”
“But how do you know it didn’t just overturn and dump them?” Astrid demanded.
“There’s not enough difference in the ropes to have tipped it completely. They would have hit the water at an angle, but it wouldn’t have dumped them.”
“Hiccup—”
“Pull up the hooks,” he said. “We’ll take a boat down and search for them.”
“That won’t be necessary, Chief,” Eret said, pointing at the horizon and shading his eyes with the other hand. “They’re there.”
Hiccup squinted, but he couldn’t see anything from this distance. “How—” He pulled his spyglass from his vest pocket and trained it on the spot Eret was pointing to, finding the small shape after a few moments. It was one of New Berk’s boats, all right, and he could see three small forms, two red-headed and one blonde. He couldn’t see much detail, but he could have sworn one of the redheads raised their hand to wave at him. Her hand.
“It’s them,” he said. “They’re almost a day’s journey away.”
Now it was Astrid’s turn to swear, and she did so, loudly and colorfully. “We have to go after them,” she said, her eyes boring into Hiccup’s. The eyes of the other men were on her, Ivar’s wide with what Hiccup thought must be wonder. The young man had been born in the years after Astrid’s tongue lost a little of its sharpness.
Slowly, hating himself for it, Hiccup shook his head. “No. They’re too far to catch today, and they won’t be stopping before dark. And we can’t spare another boat of that size, or the people we’d need to crew it. We can barely spare that one. We need every single day between now and winter to get the village ready.” Her eyes were blazing. “I’m sorry, Astrid. We have to trust her to get them home.”
“Hiccup, they are sailing to the ancestral home of all dragons,” she said, too quietly, stalking toward him.
“And if they don’t do anything aggressive, the dragons won’t respond in kind,” he whispered.
Eret approached tentatively. “I don’t mean to intrude,” he said. “But I’ve been out at sea with Zephyr, and I know she can handle herself.”
“Those were day trips,” Astrid said. “With grown men on board. Not a week-long round trip with a crew of three children!”
“I know,” Eret said. “But the winter storms aren’t here yet, and she’s good on a ship.”
“She must have gotten it from you,” Hiccup said, nudging Astrid in the ribs. Her answering glare told him that buttering her up wasn’t going to work.
“She can do it,” Eret said.
Astrid glared at them both for a moment longer, then turned on her heel and stormed off back toward the house.
“Thank you,” Hiccup said to Eret and the others. “I’d better—”
“Yeah, you should go,” Eret said. “Good luck.”
As the village began to wake up, Hiccup rushed through in pursuit of his wife. He caught up with her on the front steps of the house. “Astrid—”
“Inside,” she snapped. As the door shut behind him, she wheeled on him.
“I’m sorry,” he said before she could start. “I can’t do anything different than I would for anyone else, just because they’re my kids. This wasn’t an accident; she stole a boat.”
“I know,” she said, slumping, and Hiccup reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. “How could this have happened?”
“They must have snuck out in the middle of the night,” he said. “And that’s why you didn’t wake up; she wasn’t moving around, so you didn’t hear her.”
“I figured that out myself,” Astrid said, a little acidly. “What I mean is how could she have stolen a boat and run away?”
“Well, she probably got the stubbornness and recklessness from me,” he said. “And the whole obsessed-with-dragons thing.”
“I’m stubborn and reckless too,” Astrid pointed out ruefully.
“I guess she really is our kid.”
“Did you ever have any doubt about that?” Astrid asked, and finally a smile started to tug at the corners of her lips.
“Not remotely. But Astrid… I’m sorry. You know I’d be going after them myself if the timing weren’t so bad. But Zephyr can do this. She’s… amazing, and she reminds me so much of you at that age.”
“But what if she gets lost?” Astrid asked.
“She’s been to the Hidden World before,” Hiccup said. She can find it again. And I haven’t checked yet, but I’m sure there’ll be a compass missing from my workshop when I do. If they don’t find it, they’ll find their way home.”
Astrid sighed. “You know, it’s a pity Toothless isn’t here.”
“Why? Because he can’t help me find them and get them back here?”
“Well, that. And also, he might have reminded you never to put your foot down.”
This wasn’t going well.
Zephyr sat shivering in the back of the boat, her hand on the tiller, as her brothers played on the deck.
She was still damp from the water that had come rushing over the rail when the front of the boat had fallen into the water. She’d scrabbled up the boat from the stern, using ropes, the rail, anything she could grab as handholds as she half-climbed the length of the deck. Her legs dangling, she’d lain on her stomach over the front rail of the boat, now some fifteen feet above the water, and desperately worked to free the iron ring on the front of the boat from the hook on the winch line. Fortunately the line had just a little bit of slack from the imbalance, and so the hook had slipped out after two or three good yanks.
The front of the boat had toppled forward, and Zephyr had lost her grip. She would have fallen beneath the boat had Nuffink’s fingers not closed tight around her ankle, his grip hard as iron.
All the same, she’d hit the water face-first as it rushed up to meet her, and she’d been soaked to the skin. For a second, she’d thought the boat had been swamped and started to panic, but then it had slowly rocked itself to stillness.
She’d slowly unwrapped herself from the rail and turned to see Nuffink lying, splayed out, just behind her on the deck. He’d looked up at her, grinning, as she dripped seawater onto the deck.
Now, hours later, he was well and truly bored. As it was only a couple hours past dawn, this didn’t bode well for the coming days.
Zephyr found herself gazing back in the direction of New Berk, toward home. It probably wasn’t too late to go back. They’d be there by nightfall, and their parents probably wouldn’t be too angry if they turned around now.
Then she saw it: the flash of light reflecting off a lens as someone trained a spyglass on them. It was just a tiny flash, and she wouldnt’ have been able to see it if she hadn’t already been staring, and if the island’s height hadn’t kept it on the horizon.
It was the same reason their dad could see them.
All thought of going back vanished from her head, replaced by defiance and stubborn resolve.
Zephyr waved.
Nuffink stared at her for a moment before turning to look back at New Berk.
“They know we’re gone,” she said by way of explanation.
“Was that Dad?”
She nodded. “I assume it was him. They had a spyglass.”
“So how much farther?” Nuffink asked.
“Well, if we keep going until nightfall… another week?”
“A WEEK?” Nuffink’s voice echoed over the water. Stoick looked around at him, alarmed and upset, an unhappy whine rising in his throat. He didn’t say anything, but then, Zephyr didn’t think she’d ever heard him say anything.
“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Zephyr said, keeping her voice level. “You’ve done the trip before.”
“Yeah, years ago,” Nuffink said. With a glance at Stoick, he took a deep breath and then went on, a little more calmly. “What am I supposed to do for a week?”
“Read? Teach yourself to whittle? Play with Stoick?”
Nuffink looked down at Stoick and then back at Zephyr, his nose crinkling in barely-reined anger. “What are you going to be doing?”
“Steering the boat,” she said. “And hopefully doing some drawing.”
“Can I help with the boat?” Nuffink said at once, though she suspected it had more to do with wanting to avoid boredom than actually wanting to be helpful.
Nevertheless, she nodded. “I’ll show you how to raise the sail when we stop tonight.”
“Great,” Nuffink said, sarcasm evident in his tone. “What do I do until then?”
Zephyr sighed. “There’s some wood in that sack,” she said, pointing. “You can start carving with it.”
“But what happens if I cut myself?”
“Just don’t cut yourself.” She sighed at the bemused look on his face. “Cut away from yourself, don’t push too hard, and keep your fingers out of the way.”
Nuffink looked past her, toward New Berk, for a long moment.
“Remember, we’re going to see the dragons,” Zephyr said softly.
His eyes flicked back to hers, and then, slowly, he smiled. Zephyr watched as the memories of dragon-flight stole across his face. Although her little brother was quick to anger sometimes, he was just as quick to forget his anger. Sometimes she envied him that.
“We can do this, Nuffink,” Zephyr said. “I know we can.” She reached out and squeezed his shoulder.
Still smiling, he nodded. “I know. I believe in you.”
He sat down on the deck a few feet from her, pulling a piece of scrap wood from the bag she’d pointed out to him, and started to work. Stoick watched for a moment before he started playing again, arranging his toys in a neat row in front of him.
And in her spot by the tiller, Zephyr shivered.