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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.

Chapter Text

Finding the Hidden World wasn’t the problem.

No, that part had been almost easy, what with the chart and compass Zephyr had squirreled out of her father’s workshop. That she’d stolen, if she was being honest with herself, though that was hardly the most egregious of her recent offenses. They’d only gotten lost twice. Both times, Zephyr had been able to figure out where they were after a few minutes of sitting cross-legged on the deck, scribbling numbers and diagrams in her sketchbook. It had been the morning of the tenth day out of New Berk when Stoick had stood and pointed southwest with a high, wordless cry, and Zephyr and Nuffink had rushed over to join him at the rail of the boat. It had taken a moment, but then, at the same time, they’d spotted it: a plume of white mist on the horizon, steadier than the waves around them.

In a rare moment of unspoken accord, they’d given twin gasps of excitement and rushed to their tasks. Zephyr had darted to the tiller and Nuffink to the mast where, after more than a week, he’d adjusted the sail with practiced ease.

And so, after more than half a decade, they’d returned to the Hidden World.

The problem was, they’d been here for two days and nothing had happened.

They were all getting bored. Well, Nuffink had been bored—Zephyr didn’t think he was ever not bored—but it was getting bad. He’d carved a dozen little creatures so far, all of which had been dutifully assimilated into Stoick’s little troupe of toys. At least three were recognizable as sheep, and there was one that Zephyr thought was supposed to be a dragon. It was hard enough to guess the specific species, though, that Zephyr didn’t do so out loud for fear of hurting Nuffink’s feelings. He’d thrown one half-formed piece of wood off the boat already when it hadn’t turned into what he wanted it to be, and Zephyr was fond enough of the little four-winged dragon, whatever it was, that she didn’t want it to meet the same fate. Now, though, his supply of scrap wood was beginning to dwindle, and when it was gone, he was going to either lose his composure completely or start whittling the boat. Or both. Quite possibly both.

Stoick, for his part, was doing his best. The toys that Nuffink had been carving for him were augmenting his categorization game significantly. Rather than just make a new category for the carvings Nuffink had given him that defied identification, as Zephyr might have done, he was stubbornly trying to make them fit into the same groupings as his toys made by their father and the other adults of New Berk. She did notice, though, that several of them changed groups each time they were sorted. Even so, there were only so many iterations of this that he could do before he too fell to boredom.

And Zephyr—well, Zephyr had spent the days immersing herself in dragons, in a way she’d never had time to on New Berk. She’d found a handful of small sheepskin-bound books while she was in her father’s workshop st—borrowing the compass and chart she’d used to find their way there, scooping them into an oilskin bag without really looking at them. Once she’d started reading, though, she’d quickly realized what a wealth of knowledge she’d stumbled across.

They were notebooks, not quite diaries, filled with pages and pages of notes and sketches and diagrams all about the dragons and places and people her parents had encountered in the years between when they first befriended dragons and when they came to New Berk. Most of it was in her father’s handwriting—the small, neat writing he used for things meant for other people to be able to read, not his natural handwriting—but her mother’s was certainly present too. So was her uncle Fishlegs’ and, to a smaller extent, her other uncles’ and her aunt Ruffnut’s. A new writer popped up in the second-to-last volume. It was out of practice and almost… dragonlike, somehow, and Zephyr realized with a jolt, more from the fact that the person was writing about Stormcutters than anything else, that the handwriting was her grandmother’s. This must have been written when she first came back—and Zephyr realized, a lump forming in her throat, that she hadn’t seen her grandmother since before she’d found out that Valka had been gone at all, that she’d vanished for twenty years among the dragons.

The journals began—at least the ones she’d grabbed, though she thought she’d seen others that must have come before—with the death of a man called Viggo. It was only discussed obliquely, although it had clearly affected her father. Viggo had sacrificed himself for Hiccup, after all, despite evidently being his enemy, and while Hiccup didn’t speculate on Viggo’s feelings or motives or unpack his own in any detail—and Zephyr was suddenly, intensely curious about what those feelings might have been, on both sides—it was obvious that at least part of him was deeply conflicted.

There was more: the battle for something called the King of Dragons, inferred mostly through a table of seemingly unrelated details and observations; a carefully folded map, obviously incomplete; and a description, gut-punchingly brief, of her grandfather’s death that was the only thing in any of the journals written in her father’s normal handwriting.

Zephyr devoured it all.

It was obvious that Hiccup hadn’t expected the journals to end when they did. The last one stopped halfway through the book, like he’d intended, when he bound it, for the entries to go on much longer than they had. There were a couple more half-hearted entries from right after the dragons left, but then the writing stopped, leaving the rest of the pages blank.

And even though Zephyr knew it was just because he’d switched to doing the Chief’s logs he still did, and that she was starting to contribute to as well, it felt like a wound.

She could see the development of the log he kept now in these pages, just as she could see how he’d grown into the father and husband and Chief he was now. But something essential was missing too, or someone was, and Zephyr felt the same certainty rise up in her that she’d had as a child—that Hiccup had been wrong to let the dragons leave.

She’d read the journals, and then read them again, and then she’d sketched her brothers, the boat, the concentration written across Nuffink’s face as he whittled, Stoick sitting in front of his rows of wooden toys. She drew the horizon over and over until she wanted to scream, and then she did it once or twice more.

Much as she hated to admit it, Zephyr was getting bored too.

Just for something to do, they sailed around the great hole in the sea that was the entrance to the Hidden World once every day. It took several hours, so that by the time they were once more aligned with the great rock on the edge where Toothless and his family had once waited for their family, the sun was well on its way to the edge of the horizon, the sun and sky both lighting up in reds and oranges that stretched toward the gate—and the boat.

That night, after their third such little voyage, Zephyr dropped the anchor and then sank down onto the deck, folding her legs underneath her as she leaned over and pulled out the canvas bag that contained their food. Nuffink knelt down across from her, a look of uncharacteristic solemnity spreading across his face.

“Zephyr,” he said, and then paused, glancing over her shoulder. She twisted to look and saw Stoick climbing up onto the seat she’d been using for the journey so as to get a better view of the sunset. When she turned back to Nuffink, he met her gaze, his eyes intent.

“Listen,” he said, keeping his voice very soft. “I think we should go back.”

Zephyr drew her breath in sharply, but mindful of Stoick, managed not to shout. “What?” she whispered sharply.

“I—look, I can’t believe you’re making me be the responsible one,” Nuffink said. “Zephyr, after tonight’s dinner, we’re going to be more than halfway through our food. If we don’t leave soon, we’re going to run out on our way back. Even if we don’t get lost again.”

“We—we can catch fish,” Zephyr said, and Nuffink raised a single, skeptical eyebrow, a gesture he’d only recently picked up from their mother. “And if we get lost, I can find the way.”

“Okay, fine. You can find the way.” Quiet as it was, Nuffink’s voice was biting. He gestured expansively across the seemingly endless sea all around them. “Now go catch a fish.”

“You know what, you little—”

Raising both eyebrows now, Nuffink nodded toward Stoick.

Zephyr glared. “It’s not like he’s going to repeat it.”

“Mom still doesn’t like it.”

“I know.” Zephyr gave a gusty sigh. “Nuffink, don’t you want to see the dragons again?”

“Of course I do.” Nuffink glanced toward Stoick again. “And I want him to see them too. But Zeph—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“—we don’t even know if they’re going to come out,” Nuffink said as though she hadn’t spoken. “I mean, what if they’re busy? Don’t they all go somewhere together so they can f—”

“Nuffink.”

Nuffink rolled his eyes. “So they can flap around and lay eggs,” he said mockingly.

“That’s at Snoggletog,” Zephyr said.

“It used to be,” he said. “What if it’s changed?”

Zephyr sighed again. She looked at the bag of food, which really was starting to get low. She looked at Nuffink’s dwindling supply of whittling scraps, and then past him up at Stoick, curled up in a little ball in her seat.

This whole thing had been foolish, and reckless besides. She knew that, and she’d known it even as they were planning everything out and setting up those mutton-headed devices on the winch and sailing all the way out here. With Nuffink’s support, though, it had been fun—no less foolish or reckless, but worth it for the fun of it. Now, though…

She let her gaze fall onto the deck in front of her.

A moment later, a hand appeared in her vision, the long fingers they’d both inherited from their father wrapped around the little four-winged dragon he’d been carving earlier, and that she’d thought he’d given up on. He set it down in front of her, and she let her gaze drift up to meet his again.

His eyes were earnest as he looked into her face. “Zeph,” he said again, and she didn’t snap back this time. “You have done such an amazing job guiding us and keeping us safe, and I am so proud to have you as my sister. But I just think, before it’s too late, we should—” He shrugged.

Slowly, Zephyr nodded. “Okay. Yeah, I—I think… I think you’re right. I guess, if nothing happens by tomorrow midday, we’ll head back.”

Nuffink smiled crookedly. “All right.” He pushed the little dragon closer to her. “This is for you. I saw you looking at it earlier.”

Picking it up, Zephyr judged that it was finally safe to ask, “So what’s it supposed to be?”

Nuffink scoffed, more resigned than annoyed. “Come on. Don’t ruin it, we were being so nice to each other.”

Zephyr couldn't help but huff a laugh. She slipped the still-unidentified dragon carving into her belt pouch.

Suddenly, skinny arms were wrapping themselves around Zephyr’s shoulders. Nuffink hugged her for a moment, and then, just as she was bringing up a hand to awkwardly pat him on the back, settled onto his heels again, looking unsure of what to do next.

Zephyr snorted. “Come on. Let’s get dinner.”

“Yeah, okay.”

They supped on smoked herring, waybread, and knobbly apples—which, Zephyr had to admit, was in itself getting boring. After they finished eating, Nuffink pulled the Book of Dragons out of its carefully and securely wrapped oilskin bag.

“Come learn about dragons, Stoick, while we’ve still got some light,” he said, sitting cross-legged on the deck, and Stoick crawled eagerly into his brother’s lap.

Zephyr resumed her seat by the tiller and hardly moved as the sun vanished beneath the sea and Nuffink read to Stoick, showing him the pictures drawn by their father and generations of their ancestors. He’d somehow figured out in the last few days how to intuit what Stoick was trying to ask, even without the little boy speaking, and so Stoick would point to a drawing of a dragon or a phrase and Nuffink would explain. After a moment Stoick would nod, his face set in solemn understanding with a little wrinkle forming between his eyes, and Nuffink would carry on.

Somehow, Zephyr managed to get her sketchbook out without either of them noticing. She surreptitiously scribbled down the image of the two of them sitting together and reading, knowing her parents wouldn’t believe that this had happened without some kind of proof.

It was nearly midnight by the time it happened.

Zephyr’s brothers were stretched out on the deck, their deep, slow breathing just audible over the sound of the ocean, and a bank of clouds was rolling over the sky, obscuring the stars from her vision—the first of the winter storms, she was certain.

Then Zephyr caught a spark of movement in the plume of white mist just out of the corner of her eye, and her gaze snapped toward the gate to the Hidden World.

Her breath stopped.

It was a dragon.

A tiny one, maybe the size of a cat—her father’s voice in the back of her head told her it was a Terrible Terror—and moving so quickly that it vanished into the darkness in the space between heartbeats—but still. A dragon, a real true live dragon, and she’d seen it. She stared into the sky, long after the tiny black speck had disappeared, her mouth hanging slightly open and a strange sense of wonder and joy sinking through her, lighting up her heart until she was sure it was glowing inside her.

She must have fallen asleep at some point because she woke up to the sound of wings, jerking upright in her seat from where she’d slumped as she dozed. She stared around at the night, trying to see anything, but the clouds had covered the sky completely. It wasn’t raining, not yet, but the darkness was absolute.

All at once Zephyr was terrified, the dread sinking through her just as the joy had done so recently. She registered that this wasn’t the Terror making its return—no, the dragon approaching them was very large, its wingbeats heavy and powerful.

She hit the deck next to Nuffink just as he was starting to sit up, pushing him back onto the wooden planks. “Zephyr, what—“ he started, before she covered his mouth with her hand.

“Shh!” she hissed, trying to cover his body and Stoick’s with her own. “Stay still.” Stoick didn’t make any noise, but she knew he was awake by the petrified edge to his breathing and the clench of his little hand around her wrist.

The wings reached them, circled—and departed. For a second, Zephyr started to breathe a sigh of relief, before a thud sounded on the deck behind her.

“And just what,” a wry, musical voice said in the darkness, “are three young Vikings doing all alone, and all the way out here?”

To say that Astrid was in no mood for this nonsense would be an understatement.

She’d just gotten home, and was starting the process of decompressing—which, these days, was a slow, delicate sequence of stages as she let the walls inside of her come down, walls that had kept her a functional member of society and leader of the New Berk Guard all day but now, here, were unnecessary.

Even now, she loved this part of the day, loved reconnecting with Hiccup and finding out what his day had been like, what new nuisances and trials had arisen. She’d just gotten to a part of the routine that hadn’t been there until the last couple weeks—the part where she leaned into Hiccup, her face in her shoulder as his arms wrapped around her, supporting her, though he’d never presume to say he was holding her up. The unspoken stress of their missing children hung between them with all the weight of the three empty beds upstairs. For now, though, it was enough just to rest in Hiccup’s arms, supporting her as she supported him and relaxed, slowly, by degrees.

Then the knock came on the door, and she pulled away, sighing as the walls all came back up in one resigned instant.

“I can send them away,” Hiccup said, his voice low. “Whoever it is, I can tell them to leave us alone and—“

Despite herself, Astrid smiled a little, rising up to kiss him. “No, this is what we signed up for.”

She went to the kitchen door just as whoever was outside knocked again, and pulled it open to see Ivar, the boy who’d been one of the ones to discover the missing boat, standing on the step. His hand froze in midair at the look on her face.

“What is it, Ivar?” she asked, trying to sound merely brusque rather than angry.

Ivar swallowed. “I—Mulch sent me,” he said apologetically. “He said to tell you that Eret hasn’t shown up yet for his watch shift, and he thought you ought to know.”

“What?” Astrid exclaimed. “Eret hasn’t—“ Seeing the look on his face, she stopped herself with a sigh. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll look into it. You can get back to work.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, turning to go.

“Ivar,” she said, and he stopped, turning to look at her over his shoulder just within the circle of light radiating from the kitchen door. “Thank you,” Astrid said again. “You’ve been doing an amazing job, especially these last few weeks, and I appreciate all your hard work.”

A small grin split his face. “Thank you, ma’am.” He walked off, and this time Astrid didn’t stop him; his step was lighter than it had been, as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Closing the door, Astrid turned back to Hiccup. “I hope I didn’t lay it on too thick,” she said. “He’s been looking at me like I’m going to fly off the handle again, and respect is one thing, but I don’t actually want him to be scared of me.”

Hiccup gave a rueful, crooked smile. “I don’t think he’s scared of you, Astrid.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s in awe of you.” His arms settled around her shoulders. “As he should be.” He kissed her forehead. “As I am.”

Astrid snorted.

“Want me to come check on Eret with you?” he asked, his lips still warm against her skin.

“No,” Astrid said. “I can do it, and you’re needed here. I’m starving. Can you have dinner ready when I get back? I’ll bring Eret unless something’s really wrong.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, just as Ivar had, and she grinned at him before disappearing out the kitchen door.

The night air held the chill that was typical of New Berk and had been growing slowly but steadily more pronounced in the days since her children had disappeared. A cold breeze coming off the ocean cut into her, threatening the depths of winter yet to come, and she shivered against it. For a moment, she wished she’d worn something more substantial than her largely symbolic fur cape—but no matter, Eret’s house wasn’t that far, and she’d seen worse.

Something felt off, though, as Astrid approached the little hut on the edge of town. It took her until she was almost to the front steps to realize, and to see it in the dark: not only were there no lights burning inside, but the door itself was slightly ajar. She rushed up the steps, her hand going to the place on her hip where her battle-axe ought to be, and hit the door shoulder first so that it banged open.

The door opened onto the kitchen, which was empty. There was still a bowl sitting on the wooden table with a spoon sticking haphazardly out of it, and one of the chairs was pushed back. The fire was banked low, the warm orange light radiating from the hearth just enough to see by so she wouldn’t trip over anything.

Slowly, making as little noise as possible, Astrid crept across the kitchen to the doorway into the sitting room. It was harder to see anything in here without even the scant light of the kitchen fire, but the dark shapes of furniture didn’t seem any different than how Astrid remembered them—nothing broken or overturned.

Crucially, there was no sign of a struggle.

Eret had clearly left in a hurry, but wherever he was, it seemed he’d gone willingly.

Turning back to the kitchen, she finally spotted it—the note, stuck to the door frame with a kitchen knife. She’d blazed past too quickly to register it before, but now she crossed the room in brisk strides and tore it free.

Be back soon. Cloudjumper says hello.

Astrid’s heart was suddenly in her throat. The words of Zephyr’s note had been burned into her mind, and their use in Eret’s note told her exactly where he’d gone. The mention of Cloudjumper told her how. It was more strange that he’d remembered the words so precisely—but then, she thought, maybe not so strange after all.

Now in a new frame of mind, Astrid turned back to re-examine the kitchen. Now that she was looking for them, she could see the signs of a hasty but methodical departure: the larder had been raided, with gaps where food had recently been sitting; the fire had been hastily extinguished, with a smudged footprint of soot on the hearth rug; and, of course, there was the chair and bowl she’d noticed when she first came in.

It would be difficult to make a mess of Eret’s home, with how habitually he kept it organized, but he certainly seemed to have given it his best shot.

Astrid stared at the empty gap on the hearth; her eyes went to the empty little hook off to one side of the mantle that normally held a potholder. After a long moment she came to the conclusion that Eret must have simply lifted the pot full of stew that had been simmering by the fire off of its hook and taken it with him.

She left the house, shutting the door securely behind her. Pausing on the stoop, she glanced down at the note still clutched in her hand. There was a moment where she wasn’t sure if her heart was swelling or cracking, but she let it out with a rushing exhale and, pulling her cape around herself, set off to tell Hiccup the news.