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Girlhood is just like godhood:
A begging to be believed
- Kristin Chang
She’s born on the fifth anniversary of finding New Berk, give or take a few hours, and for the meantime it helps everyone forget the ache. They say she was an ‘easy birth’, coming right on time, and gentle when she passes from her mother to the open arms of her grandmother, wailing immediately but not too loud. Just enough to show she’s alive, with lungs that breathe and a heart that beats.
It sets a precedent for the rest of her life; Expected, on time, never difficult.
She’s born as the sun sets, when the trees shake and shudder against the homes, so they name her Zephyr, the West Wind, and within hours of her birth the disappointment chokes the island.
(After all, who’s ever heard of a girl for an heir?)
-
She’s around nine years old when she notices it for the first time.
The island prefers her brother.
Nuffink is seven years old and can’t read very well, claiming the characters on the parchment wobble and shake and his green eyes just can’t keep up while they leap from the page.
But that’s okay, to New Berk. Alright, for New Berk. Same way her shieldmaiden training is acceptable, normal. She’s the daughter of Astrid Hofferson the same way her brother is the son of Hiccup Haddock.
(Meaning he must be the Chief, and she must be the background, the auxiliary power her mother is, the foundation of the whole village, and they’ll slot into their roles of the valiant protector and he’ll be the awkward chief, like succession and tradition has shown.)
Nuffink is the prodigal son the village has wished for, small boned and hunched and dreamy, like their father was and is and will always be. Nuffink is an anomaly no one will see, and how he likes to fight and spar and run his sword against the spinning whetstone in the forge. Zephyr is is still better because she’s always better than him, because she’s the oldest and that’s how it works.
But Nuffink’s success is ‘chiefly’ ‘brilliant’ ‘incredible’.
Nuffink would bring their grandfather pride, if he hadn’t already reached Valhalla.
And Zephyr is just expected.
-
Children Zephyr and Nuffink’s age are the first generation without dragons, and the grief is palpable, something trapped in the wind, something Zephyr has grown up with all her life, even when she didn’t understand.
Answers to her childish questions get caught in her parents’ throats. The days when dad would sit on the cliff side for hours, sometimes watching the sunset turn into sunrise, and only her mother could bring him home again.
“Why is daddy so sad?” Zephyr whispers one night, tucked into her mother’s side as the night went on.
The times Zephyr follows him and sits with him are quiet, someber even, heavy against her shoulders in the strangest way, in ways she couldn’t explain.
“How did dad lose his leg?” Is another question, asked only when she’s older and stronger and her shoulders are pulled taut across her back. Her hands curl against her laces at night, falling into the soothing pattern while mom pulls and twists her hair out of the braids.
Zephyr is only barely eight, her only crime is her confusion, lack of understanding, seized in a generational rift no one addressed and no one spoke about.
The response is always the same. A soft sigh comes from behind her, laced with worry and concern but love, above all else.
“That’s for your dad to share.” Mom presses a quick kiss to her head, gaze lingering as she blows out the candle. “One day you’ll understand.”
Everyone experienced losing their dragons differently. For a world without dragons, the absence was everywhere in New Berk, in the harsh waves that crash against the tall stone and in the whispering wind.
Some were subtle, like the ache wasn’t even there.
(The dragon cards on the wall of the Ingerman home, rough and ripped from all the times they were taken down and nailed back up.)
Some were obvious, and the grief was visceral.
(Painfully obvious, like her cousins Hooklout and Fanglout.)
Her father is strange, somewhere right in the middle. He goes days and days and days then suddenly it’s breakfast, sitting at the window, smiling at the sky.
“Good day for flying.” He says sometimes, only for mom to hear. She nods back and touches his shoulder, to lead him back to the table, back into now and out of the past.
“Good day for flying.” Mom says back, like it's the greatest inside joke between them, but no one wants to laugh, and no one can bring themselves to laugh.
Sometimes, just to fill the emptiness, Zephyr lets her laughter bubble up behind her teeth until Nuffink spills his milk across the table, breaking the spell of longing.
-
Girlhood ends, when she reaches nine, and one of the elder midwives grabs her by the shoulder and drags her back into her home, to the sounds of her mother’s screams and the crowd of Berkian women in the door. Hadga’s brown eyes are bright, excited even, as the sun sets over New Berk and the nighttime impends.
“We think it’ll be a morning wain.” Hadga’s fingers clench against her collarbone, taking the rocky hills to her house in a quick stride.
“Hadga, I don’t think this is something she needs to see.” Dad is in the front room, Nuffink sent away to their Uncle Eret’s until the babe is born. Dad removes her from the grip, his hands finding her’s and squeezing tightly. The faces of her father are scattered here, all the phases and fads he can transform into, like the Chief and her father and someone’s husband, omitted from the birthing room by tradition. They all meet somewhere here in the middle, and his green eyes are wide and scared.
(Dad has always worn his fear on his face, like a cloak and that trait passes over her and her brother the way water falls away from ducks’ backs.)
“If it’s not now, it’ll happen someday, Chief.” Hadga says, and pulls her back to her side. “This is women’s work, and she’ll be a woman soon.”
“No she won’t.” Dad says, but by then he’s being wrestled out of the room by his council, her uncles at each arm and laughing, their shadows stretched and wide and terrifying in the dying light.
“Dad!”
“You leave if you have to, okay!” He calls, voice barely above a lilt. “You don’t have to stay there.”
But she does.
(It’s expected, afterall.)
Zephyr sits at the side of the bed, keeping a wet cloth to her mother’s face and running back and forth with messages. She’s the fastest child her age and her feet carry off with the wind, skidding over the rocks and hills and sand. It’s true, that this is women’s work, and the grunts and screams and whines of her mother shake the island every few minutes, getting closer together and closer.
“Zeph,” Mom pants, face screwed up in pain, and instantly Zephyr knows something is wrong. It sends a rock straight to her stomach. “What’s happening?”
“What-”
“What’s going on?” Mom says between clenched teeth. “Why is this taking so long.” This time, she talks more to herself than to her daughter.
It’s a gruesome affair. She tiptoes to the end of the bed where her grandmothers and Hadga and Auntie Ruffnut are all gathered, worry and panic written over all of their faces. The soft, small head has already passed through, but the baby's face is red and pinched, and Zephyr can’t even ask what’s going on until Granny Valka spots her.
“The cord is wrapped around the wee one's neck.” Valka explains gently, running her hand over Zephyr’s face, tears winking in the waterline of her eyes. Hadga has snapped from her shocked haze, already yelling demands across the birthing room, asking for things like clamps and water and a knife. “It’s alright, but someone should get you home to your father.”
She sets her shoulders square, even when that urge to runrunrunrun away gets so big it feels like it’s filling her whole chest, but she doesn’t back down, and sets her blue eyes to her grandmother’s.
“I am home.” Zephyr says, like it’s the hardest thing to say. “I’m needed here.”
(She’s expected here.)
What feels like hours later, but only passes in small minutes, and her mother is still grunting and screaming and full on howling now, almost as if she’s one of the wolves that trail the perimeter of North New Berk, a baby’s cry rattles the house, loud and open and powerful, a babe that has fought to live and wants to be heard. Hadga slipped her finger between the throat and the cord and set him free, let him breath.
It’s hard, to love her brother, for the first few weeks of his life. Hard to hold him, when he hurt their mother so, and children aren’t supposed to do that. Zephyr has nightmares of ropes and blood and sometimes she can’t stay too long in her mother’s room. Stoick the Determined is a big baby, bigger than her and Nuffink were as kids, and his hair is thick and red like her’s, and Nuffink can’t help but wonder what colour eyes he’ll take and what way his smile will go. Left like her’s, or right like his.
"Oh!" Nuffink says, the first time he meets Little Stoick tucked into their father's arms, and his blue eyes open blearily. Nuffink smiles at her, big and toothy like their mother. "He has eyes like you!"
"All babies have blue eyes," Mom says softly, more tired than Zephyr has ever seen, and she won't be walking for a while. She tickles behind Nuffink's ear, his green eyes blown wide. "Even you did."
"Really! What happened-"
It’s hard to forgive him, even when he’s a baby and he’s crimeless, but that doesn’t make anything easier.
Dad’s relief is the only thing to shake him out of her fear. He holds her close and cries, hard and heavy tears that make him sound like he’s drowning. Babes aren't born every day on New Berk, the sons of chief's aren't born every day on New Berk, her mother doesn't almost die every day on New Berk.
It’s a gamble. A risk, even, to dare ask. But she does it anyway, because Hadga was right; her brother is a morning baby, and as she squints against the rising sun, she decides to ask him when her eyes start to sting.
“Why are you sad?” It comes out weak.
“I’m not sad, Zephyr.” His voice trembles. “I’m just so happy to have you, and your- gosh your brothers! There’s two now! And your mother, of course, always, always grateful for your mother.” He pushes his forehead to her’s, the way her earliest memories are of his eyes and his auburn hair. “You guys are all I have and all I love.”
She says it before she can stop herself, and childhood ignorance can’t save her, not when she’s done woman’s work and helped her mother bring life into this world.
“And Toothless.” Zephyr says quietly, very tentatively, and that sadness in her father returns, briefly, bittersweet and subtle but still hard to watch.
Dad nods, almost seeing how old she’s become in the night. “And Toothless, of course.”
Still, once mom is well enough to stand and walk without wincing in pain, they pack up the boat and all the supplies, say goodbye to the smooth sand of Berk and head to the end of the world, where the dragons lie in wait, and Zephyr feels like something has shifted within her.
Her brothers are lucky, she thinks bitterly, that they’re forgiven for painful births and being born, when Zephyr has always felt like she’s apologizing for her’s ever since. They have a few more years, more than her, to be children and be young and careless and confused, and Zephyr doesn’t.
And her parents’ know that, in their wide eyes, and how mom braids her hair differently and takes her to more birthing beds.
(“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Mom rocks her, just by the cliffside, and dad has shooed Nuffink and still-pudgy Stoick away back to their grandmother. It's the only thing mom will say to her after leaving the house, leaving the screams behind and the quietness that engulfed them all.
Zephyr is ten and tired and scared. She doesn’t understand, even when everyone thinks she should.
She can still count the number of births she’s seen, the number of times she’s pressed a cold cloth to a grunting woman, and that number has always matched the number of babies breathing and screaming afterward.
Except for this time.
“Sometimes things like this happens. We don’t know why but they do.” Dad says, smooths her head over, and it’s a few months before Hadga comes to their door again, despite all of new babes all over New Berk.)
-
Zephyr is twelve, the first time she’s referred to her father’s heir, and the laughter in the hall still burns and leaves her with shaking fists.
She runs to the dense woods with her axe and chucks it against the yielding trees and suppresses the urge to scream and shout.
Nuffink finds her, as always, this time with another sword tied to his waist. His own sword, Helbringer, has an emerald buried in the hilt that Zephyr found for him, dug into the alcoves of the east island, as a tenth birthday present, and the one he’s brought with him is the one Gobber made for her when she turned ten herself, silver and shiny and hardly used.
“Wanna spar?” He asks, giddy as the sun shines against his blond hair. Little Stoick has toddled after them, of course, somehow simultaneously the shadow of both Zephyr and Nuffink.
She catches the sword when he tosses it to her, drags the blade in an arc against the ground, the dirt flying up to her. “You wanna loose?”
Nuffink laughs, loud and bright, and it eases the anger in her chest, almost relieves it. “I always loose. But that’s okay!”
The sun sets below the trees when they call it quits, Little Stoick curled up on his sister’s lap as the stars become clearer and clearer. Soon, or possibly already, the village will start their search for them, but their parents will stay right at home and wait, and not push or come and drag them home.
“Y’know, ignore what everyone says, I don’t want to be the chief.” Nuffink nudges her, weirdly wise for his ten years. “I can’t even read! What good chief can’t read!?”
She laughs gently, careful of the toddler on her lap, but there’s no heart in it.
(“Well Chief, you’ve got two fine sons to pick as a successor, better start the competition now!” Some old fart had jabbed, his name ending in something disgusting like Cough or Mould or Slug.
Her father’s brow deepened, voice low in the rowdy energy of the morning village meeting. Zephyr had been going for as long as she could remember, even when Nuffink and Stoick didn’t and she always sat on the left side of her father, never speaking, never contributing, but listening intently.
“Zephyr is my heir.” He said quietly, ignoring the shock that had consumed those within an earshot. Then he stood, to his full height, looking every once of the chief he was, with the thick beard and the broad shoulders and the wide eyes. “It's my daughter, Zephyr, that will be the next chief, not either of my sons.”)
(Zephyr left when things got so heated that every old man’s face had turned bright red. She had to push down the anger and the spite and the urge to scream at every last one of them, until their respect was her’s and her future was as set in stone if she had been born a boy.)
“What if they want Little Stoick to be the chief? Humm?” She says. Zephyr has of course, forgiven him, for his birth and how awkward he arrived into this world, when mom explained gently all babies were like that, and even though all births are different, and every woman is different, childbirth still hurts and there is always risks and complications.
(“You were the easiest, y’know.” Mom smiled, tugged on the end of her braid, and the stray pieces that fell out. “And thank Odin for that, or else I don’t think your brothers would be here if you weren’t.”)
But Stoick is the one named after the grandfather they’ve never met, and the whole Island is practically in love with his little legs and round, chubby cheeks. His hair is brighter and hot to the touch when the sun comes out, and even his eyes are blue like her’s but they’re impossibly light, almost grey.
“Sto' is just a baby, duh, no one wants a baby to be chief.” Nuffink grins, and almost for emphasis pinches their baby brother’s cheek. “See, all he does is sleep all the time.”
“Well if you don’t want to be the chief, what do you want to do?” Zephyr prods, biting her lip to keep the grin down.
“Easy,” He says, cocking his head. “I wanna be an explorer, like the way dad was. Imma’ stick to the seas though, Uncle Eret says I’m a great captain! And then when mom and dad get old and all that I can take them out to the Hidden World to see Toothless and Stormfly and the nightlights!”
She ruffles his hair, remarking at the sudden length. It’s easy to see how much he looks like their father, and Zephyr wonders when she started looking at the two years between them like a chasm, a barrier, almost.
“Well,” She huffs, gently rising to her feet. “As long as you don’t wanna be like Uncle Tuffnut, I don’t mind what you do.”
“Really?” He beams, catching up with her in a few quick strides. Nuffink takes their mother’s height, awkward and still a bit short and she hopes there never comes a time when he’s taller.
“Yeah, I’ll be the chief afterall.” Zephyr throws back, and they walk all the way home under the bright, twinkling stars.
-
Fourteen is a horrible age. Everything about it is awkward and strange and one day she wakes up to blood and a sharp pain in her stomach, and mom just sighs and tells her this was expected.
Expected, always expected, as if Zephyr is the only one that’s surprised.
(Of course she knows about moonflows, but there was something disconnected between her and that and everything in between, because future chiefs just don’t bleed.)
“Don’t make that face.” Mom sighs, handing her some of the sweet berries the traders bring.
“My life is over.” Zephyr sulks, and knows she looks foolish doing it.
“Well, rest assured we won’t marry you off or anything like that.”
(That helps, both the berries and the reassurance, but only marginally.)
Fourteen is also the first legitimate questions to her position as the heir. Zephyr is now able to talk in council meetings, voice her opinions and speak openly, and proudly for that matter, the way her mother always does, but there’s a difference between having women involved in positions of power and giving women the power.
It sends her stewing to the woods again, unrelenting and ruthless on the splintering trees.
“They tried to have me removed as heir when I was thirteen.” Dad says, after almost an hour of sitting silently, braiding and taking out the same portions of his hair over and over again. He’s just turned forty but you wouldn’t think it, with the way his hair is still dark and shiny and not even a hint of grey in it, unlike Uncle Eret and Uncle Snotlout who are greying and balding respectfully. “They wanted to make Snotlout the heir, can you imagine ?”
Zephyr acknowledges him with a huff, grunting when she pulls the axe free from the tree, almost falling over with the strain.
“Took Gobber, Odin bless him, to convince my dad to wait until I was eighteen before thinking about changing his heir. Then the whole, dragons thing happened,” He waves his hand airily. “And they never brought it up again.”
“Great, so I gotta wait until dragons come back to be respected as your heir?” She snarks back, hurling the axe so fiercely at the tree the blade cracks right down the middle.
Dad gets to the blunt stone first, bending down to pick it up. “I can fix it for you.”
“I can fix it myself, I know how to use the forge.” Zephyr knows, and Nuffink doesn’t really care about metalwork, but Little Stoick is always dodging and dashing in and out, still big and round and full of giggles.
It’s hilarious, that Berkians are more willing to accept dragons into their life, than their first woman chief.
“You know how I know you’re gonna be a brilliant chief?” Dad says suddenly, eyes warm and kind, like always.
Zephyr doesn’t understand, but she’s gotten better at asking for explanations when she doesn’t get things or gets confused. “Why?” She asks, the curiosity killing her, practically.
Dad smiles, his full smile, that isn’t exactly rare but it’s a sight she loves to see. “Because you’re like your mother, and if anyone is capable of it it’s you. I think you’re more able for it than I was, more able than I am now, even.”
His eyes glaze over, thin lips tightening for a second, something Zephyr hasn’t seen for a long time, even as their visits to the Hidden World get more few and far between. She knows, clearly, that he’s thinking about his father, and the unfortunate way he ascended to chiefdom. Zephyr is older now and knows more things, like how dad lost his leg and how Granda Stoick died and where Granny Valka was for the first twenty years of Dad’s life.
Zephyr hugs him tightly, face buried in the fur cloak he wears and the nightfury broach. He hugs back, as always, and anxieties about becoming chief and all that stress gets left outside of them.
It’s a silent plea, more to Asgard than it is to him. “Please don’t die and make me the chief.”
His laugh rumbles through his chest, strong and sturdy. “Don’t worry, you’re stuck with me for a while.” Dad’s voice sounds rough, thick with emotion, something weird to hear from him.
Zephyr understands why the dragons had to leave, the dangers they brought and the threats they collected. For so much of her childhood, and the eleven years since she first met Toothless and Stormfly, she wished she was just a few years older, to see Berk in all its glory, the watersheds and the feeding huts and the dragon racing, all of the ways her father’s stories told her.
But then there’s times like this, when she’s grateful her dad doesn’t risk his life and remaining limbs scrambling for peace that can’t be attained, or kept, or held inside to their corner of the world.
-
It’s years, years later, when the chief cloak passes to her, and she manages to prove herself as a competent, resourceful chief and avoids a famine and diseased crop when she starts harvesting grain and wheat to lock away for safekeeping, years before there’s any signs of an issue with the food supply. That, combined with the connections and contracts with new, neighboring tribes and islands, all kept neatly together by Nuffink’s handiwork as her external affairs man, New Berk continues through a few poor harvests and is back to blooming in no time.
When things have settled down, and then dad steps down and Chief (not chieftess--something just sounds too awkward in her mouth) Zephyr the Resilient rises, she tells Nuffink to get his boat ready; she has an idea. Zephyr drags Stoick out of the forge, a sight to see after he’s inherited all the weight and brawn and muscle of their grandfather, almost like a ghost walking among the living.
There’s just a touch of grey at their father’s temples when she knocks, asking if a quick trip to the Hidden World is on the agenda, if two seasoned dragon riders would take a spin with a few rookies.
“I wouldn’t call the chief of the village, a senior navigator and a master smith rookies.” Dad says, and the pride is clear in his eyes, in his smile, in how his children have made a grieving village one of the most vibrant and lively areas in their known world.
As their ship flirts closer and closer to the edge of the world, dad sits in anticipation, leaning against the seaspray. The dark figures emerge between the rocks, and two pairs of green eyes and blue eyes mirror one another.
“A new alpha.” Dad says, mesmerized as they come closer and closer.
“Looks like you guys retired at the same time, huh?” Mom winds her arm around dad. Her smile is soft, if not misty at the sight, and Toothless’ eyes soften in recognition at them, older now.
Toothless and his heir stare forward, and Zephyr meets bright blue eyes, her hand raised and head turned, like it’s always been. The nightlight with him is the one Zephyr remembers being the runt of the three of them, smaller and needing more help than the other’s. It fills her heart to see someone else, a kindred spirit, overcome the same adversity
The nightlight rises to greet her, and it’s clear, quickly, that the dragon world and Berk have bright, promising futures, brought in by the West Winds.