Chapter Text
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing, bud?” Hiccup asked, blinking down at an island that most definitely had not existed a couple of months ago, when he’d last been in the area. Toothless made a vague noise Hiccup chose to interpret as positive.
“Maybe Astrid was right about us needing a break, huh? Or maybe I shouldn’t have eaten Gobber’s special stew last night.”
Truth be told, Astrid had shoved a bag into his hands that morning and all but kicked him off the island of Berk, saying that if she saw him again in the next three days she would “send him straight to Valhalla.” Hiccup knew better than to disregard a threat like that, no matter how long he and Astrid had been friends.
So he’d headed southwest, more on a whim than anything else. Astrid was right. There was nothing like the freedom of the open sky with no one but Toothless for company to melt away all the stress of the past few months. The more chiefly duties Stoick foisted off on him, the stronger Hiccup’s desire to flee into the wilderness, never to be seen again. He didn’t necessarily hate all the responsibility, but sometimes he still got whiplash over how he’d gone from the perpetually ignored teenager he’d been back when he’d first met Toothless to someone whose opinion actually mattered. Astrid was usually pretty good at recognizing when Hiccup needed a break, though, and he did appreciate her affectionate bullying, no matter what he claimed to the contrary.
“So,” he said aloud, “What are the chances that we get eaten by trolls the second we land?”
Toothless huffed as though he were laughing at Hiccup. He probably was.
“Alright bud.” He patted Toothless’s neck. “Take us down.”
He switched the gear on Toothless’s tail fin and they entered into a wide, circling descent. He really couldn’t wrap his mind around how an island this big hadn’t already been on his maps. Especially this close to Berk. He’d only been flying for a few hours since Astrid’s threat that morning.
A huge mountain rose from the center of a land mass at least fifteen miles wide, its peak tall enough that it would have touched the clouds had it not been such a clear day. Thick forests spread down from its sides in a rolling green sea, all the way from the jagged gray crags to the low rocky beaches on the north side of the island. Several smaller peaks jutted up on the southern side of the central mountain, looking for all the world like the lower half of some massive dragon’s maw. They met the sea in dangerous cliffs. Hiccup knew immediately they wouldn’t be landing on the south side of the island. It would be all but impossible to find a stable place to camp for a night there.
Hiccup had never seen this island before. Either he wasn’t where he thought he was—in which case he needed a lot more than three days to decompress—or something really strange was going on.
Toothless’s talons sunk into the pebbles strewn along the beach as they landed. Hiccup leapt off and began looking around, but Toothless pawed the ground nervously, warily scanning the encroaching forest. Normally, Hiccup trusted Toothless’s instincts, but everything about the island was silent and still.
It only occurred to him later that that should have been a warning sign in and of itself.
“C’mon, there’s no harm in looking, right? We can always fly away if there’s trouble.”
Toothless made a noise that told Hiccup exactly what he thought about that plan. Hiccup was too busy making his way to the treeline to pay that much attention. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Toothless following him, head down and ear fins back.
“It’ll be fine.”
Toothless did not seem reassured, but Hiccup figured there wasn’t anything they could run into that they hadn’t dealt with before. Maybe this miraculous mirage island housed some heretofore unknown dragons?
As soon as he entered the shadows under the trees, something changed. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, exactly, but something about the atmosphere became oppressive. He took an unconscious step closer to Toothless. The dragon huffed something almost like an ‘I told you so’ at him. Hiccup didn’t let that stop him from delving deeper into the woods. He felt like he’d only taken a few steps beneath the trees, but the next time he turned back to look at Toothless, he couldn’t see the beach anymore.
“Well that’s a little concerning.”
Hiccup wondered if he should get on Toothless to get his bearings. Before he could make a decision, a handful of brightly blooming flowers basking in the dappled sunlight filtering through the trees caught his attention. He’d never seen flowers of that shape and color before. He reached into one of Toothless’s saddlebags and pulled out a half-full notebook and a piece of charcoal.
He got a little caught up in the local flora after that. Most of the islands in the archipelago had similar plant life, but now that Hiccup was paying attention, he could see flowers and vines and herbs that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Some of these might have medicinal properties, or even be attractive or repellent to certain species of dragons. Hiccup picked a few of the more interesting ones to press into the pages of his notebook to take back to Gothi. Even if there were no new dragons here, this island clearly had something to offer.
He took a step forward, and only Toothless suddenly reaching out and snatching him by the collar stopped him from sliding down a sharp embankment covered in creeping vines.
Hiccup blinked, “Thanks, bud.”
The vines were a new layer of interesting. They spread out along the forest floor and up the sides of several of the surrounding trees. Everywhere they touched, they seemed to leech the life out of the other plants. It was as if they'd drained the color itself from every tree they came into contact with. While the vines themselves were verdant, the trees surrounding them were wilted and grayed, all drooping leaves and flaking bark.
“Parasitic, huh?”
His gaze followed the vines up into the branches, where he was surprised to recognize large clumps of mistletoe in almost every tree.
There were…a lot of parasitic plants in this forest. Hiccup suddenly had a bad feeling.
“Okay, maybe we should find another island to camp on tonight.”
The bony edge of Toothless’s wing came up to smack Hiccup on the back of the head. He grumbled and rubbed at the spot.
“Alright! Alright. I see a clearing up ahead. Let’s head that way and we can take off from there.”
It would be easier than fighting through the canopy above them at least, as overgrown as it was with these unknown vines and mistletoe.
The aforementioned clearing turned out to be the most idyllic place Hiccup had ever laid eyes on. A small stream bubbled right through the center of it, at the foot of a gently rising hillside. More unknown wildflowers bloomed along its banks in vivid pinks and yellows and reds. Smaller white blossoms dotted the gently swaying grasses. It felt as if Hiccup had walked into Freya’s magical realm of perpetual summer. A perfect breeze blew through the trees. Fluffy clouds cast the perfect amount of shade. The sun created perfect patches of warmth in the spaces between. It all seemed utterly impossible.
A woman reclined on the hillside next to the stream, completely naked. Her long limbs stretched pale and languid over the grass, bare breasts and curved hips angled to face the sun.
The moment Hiccup saw her, he flushed from the base of his throat to the tips of his ears and began to back away, stammering.
“Oh, uh, sorry. I, uh, didn’t mean to intrude.”
The woman looked up, smiling coyly at him. “Why don’t you come a little closer, handsome?”
Hiccup backed up farther, until he smacked into Toothless, who in turn stepped around him, head down and teeth out, a low growl rumbling in his chest. Hiccup quickly put his hands on Toothless’s head and shoved.
“We’ll, uh, just be going now. Don’t—don’t mind us.”
Hiccup turned to flee back into the forest, forgetting he had a dragon right next to him and flying away was a real possibility in the face of a naked woman hitting on him. No sooner had he turned around, however, than he came face to face with her once again.
“How did you—?”
She stepped forward, one hand flat on Hiccup’s chest.
“Don’t tell me you’re leaving so soon?” she purred.
He turned his eyes skyward, trying to preserve her apparently nonexistent modesty. She was a little shorter than him, so she had to step up into his space to get her face dangerously close to his.
“Please stay? It gets so lonely out here on this island.”
Hiccup couldn’t help it. He looked down. At first, all he could see was too much milky white skin. Then he blinked and realized with some surprise that she had a tail like that of an ox. Warning bells went off in his head. Something about one of Gobber’s old stories.
He took a deliberate step back. Toothless’s wing came down between them, blocking her from touching Hiccup again. He was actively snarling now, a purple glow starting at the back of his throat as he readied a plasma blast. She stumbled backwards, looking a little put out but not as scared as Hiccup might have expected when faced with an angry dragon.
“She’s a little forward, huh?” he muttered under his breath. The words were meant for Toothless more than anything, indulging his habit of endlessly talking to the dragon, even if he wasn’t sure how much Toothless actually understood.
The woman’s expression morphed from a pout to an enraged snarl in an instant.
“You dare reject me?” she screeched.
Then her face melted off.
Hiccup yelled in surprise. He leapt towards Toothless, intending to get them both out of there, but before he could she molded up out of the ground in the scant space between them, like a doll being formed from clay. With inhuman speed, she reached out and grasped Hiccup by the forearm in a mockery of a Berkian greeting. The hand that grabbed him was old and wrinkled, her face now that of an ancient, ugly hag.
“I will feed on your bones, little boy,” she hissed.
Pain like nothing Hiccup had ever felt before speared through his arm where she grasped him. It radiated outward, up his shoulder, into his chest, around his throat. He choked and struggled away, but he didn’t make it far. His prosthetic caught in a tangle of parasitic vines just under the treeline, and he tumbled to the ground. He tried to push himself back to his feet, but he inadvertently used the arm she’d held moments before. The pain intensified until blackness crept at the edges of Hiccup’s vision.
The last thing he saw before he passed out was Toothless standing over him, firing off blast after blast at an invisible enemy.
* * *
Hiccup woke up to the taste of greenery in his mouth and Toothless licking his face. He spluttered, spitting out excess vines and blinking up at his dark, blurry head. It wasn’t until he went to wipe all the dragon saliva off his face that he even realized anything was wrong.
His right arm throbbed, as though it were being bashed over and over again by a mace-happy Viking. He’d fractured his arm once as a kid, running through the woods around Berk hunting for gnomes, but that had nothing compared to pulsing heartbeat of pain, pain, pain that expanded from the place where the woman—the huldra—had grasped him.
Or had she been a huldra? Hiccup wracked his brain—trying to shake out the details of Gobber’s old stories—while cradling his injured arm close to his chest. Huldra were women with ox tails who enticed men and then ate them. She’d certainly looked like one. But she hadn’t eaten Hiccup, and as far as he knew they didn’t normally turn into hags when angered.
He decided to gloss over the fact that Gobber’s stories were apparently real. He would have to work through the implications of that later.
With a grunt, he pushed himself into a sitting position. Toothless sank back on his haunches to give Hiccup room. He looked down at his arm, but he couldn’t see any injury. Whatever she’d done to him hadn’t disrupted his armor at all. With a trembling hand, Hiccup undid the buckles of his bracer and pulled it off. He was strangely relieved she’d grabbed him on the right. It left his dominant hand uninjured. Still, memories of waking up without a leg kept flashing in his mind’s eye. He wouldn’t be able to put them to rest until he could see the damage.
Hiccup took a deep breath and pushed up his shirt sleeve. What he saw underneath made him gasp in surprise.
It was as though the huldra had planted a seed underneath his skin, with no visible external injury. He could see dark roots spreading from a point in the center of his forearm, working towards his shoulder, following the lines of his own veins. Hiccup touched it with the fingertips of his left hand, as lightly as if he were touching an open wound, but no additional pain accompanied the sensation. Rather, he could feel something warm and alive beating just under his skin.
It felt…it felt like he imagined these trees felt, drowning in parasitic vines and mistletoe. Life and energy and vital nutrients drained under the suffocating weight of foreign bodies. Whatever this was, it was eating him from the inside.
And it was most definitely magic.
Toothless leaned over and sniffed the mark, an unhappy trill rumbling from his throat. Hiccup reached up with his good arm and scratched him behind his ear fins.
“I’m okay, bud,” he said, even though he wasn’t entirely certain of that, “We’ll figure this out.”
Step 1: Get off the island.
Hiccup rolled his sleeve down and buckled his bracer back over the mark. He kept the arm tucked close to his chest as he stood. Toothless hunkered down to give Hiccup easier access to his saddle, so Hiccup didn’t have to jump to settle himself on the leather. Together, they leapt into the air, catching an updraft to shoot high above the island in the span of seconds. Riding one-handed wasn’t ideal, but Hiccup and Toothless had been partners for years, and Hiccup knew how to move with him in the air. Long gone were the days when the wind and sky were enemies to be conquered, doing everything in their power to keep both Hiccup and Toothless on the ground. Now, they welcomed the two of them as friends. Hiccup felt more at home in the air than he did on the ground some days.
Getting into the air now was a comfort he wouldn’t have traded for the world.
They circled the island again while Hiccup contemplated his options. Something told him this wouldn’t be as simple as cutting the offending roots out, although that did occur to him as a possible solution. But while it might look like a physical thing sitting beneath his skin, he didn’t think any mundane remedy would be the answer here. If anyone would know, it would be Gothi, even though Astrid would skin him alive for managing to find trouble in the span of only a few hours when all she’d wanted was for him to take a break.
Unfortunately, it appeared Hiccup had been unconscious for longer than he’d thought. The sun was already setting, painting the sky with oranges and pinks that would have been beautiful in any other situation. Right now, the colors looked like a nightmare to Hiccup, because he knew that they meant he and Toothless had no time to get to another island to camp on. Not in Hiccup’s current condition.
They were going to have to camp here tonight.
On the beach, Hiccup decided, as far from that accursed forest as he could get.
He was turning Toothless to the north, towards their original landing point on the island, when he spotted the curl of smoke from a fire near the foot of the mountain.
Do huldra build huts? He wondered.
He knew even before he changed Toothless’s trajectory that he was about to do something very, very stupid. Astrid would murder him if she ever found out about this. But a lot of Gobber’s stories said that magical creatures appreciated humility and hospitality. Maybe if he thought before he spoke for once in his life, he could convince her to undo whatever it was she had done to him.
What was the worst she could do? Kill him?
She hadn’t done it before. Surely there had to be a reason for that. Maybe all he needed to do was talk to her to rectify the situation. He could apologize for his prior words. Maybe even explain that it wasn’t about her, he just wasn’t typically interested in women as a general rule. It was why he and Astrid had never worked out as anything more than friends, despite dating for a few months when they’d been fifteen. She’d helped him figure a few things out about himself, namely that women really didn’t do it for him, and that it was actually completely possible to crush on someone in a purely platonic way.
Well, maybe he wouldn’t tell the huldra all of that.
He was still working out the exact phrasing he should use in his apology when Toothless landed in a small, overgrown clearing nestled at the base of the mountain. The grass here easily reached to Hiccup’s thighs, making him feel like he was wading through an ocean of greenery. Strangely, it seemed to grasp at his legs, almost as if it were warning him away.
Toothless grumbled uneasily and swung his long tail through the grass, knocking it away from him, but he followed Hiccup as he gathered his courage and approached the ramshackle hut on the other side of the clearing. Smoke curled from a lopsided stone chimney above a patchwork wooden frame. The entire thing seemed to be lifted above the grass, but it wasn’t until Hiccup got closer that he realized why.
Four scaly chicken legs, worryingly similar to those of the twins’ beloved pet, were positioned at each corner of the hut, supporting it as though the entire thing were standing on stilts. They looked odd though. Drained of color, as if they were slowly turning to stone. Hiccup wondered if the hut would get up and walk away. Or even could, any more.
Was it possible the magic was fading?
He didn’t have time to contemplate the idea further, as he’d reached the set of stairs leading to the hut’s entry. They were lifted off the ground—the same as the rest of the hut—far enough that Toothless had to give Hiccup a leg up so that he could reach them. He took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.
For a long minute, nothing happened.
Creeeaaakkkk.
Hiccup winced and covered his ears unthinkingly.
The hag stooped in the entryway, nothing of the beautiful woman who’d tried to seduce Hiccup visible in her stance or appearance. She looked Hiccup up and down and offered him a wide grin.
She only had three teeth.
Hiccup launched into his prepared speech, “I would like to offer my sincerest apologies for my behavior earlier. I meant you no disrespect.” Here, he reached up to rub at the back of his neck, bashful. It was only half an act. “I’m, uh, actually not attracted to women. So please don’t take my response as a rejection. It was not meant to be.”
He waited, breath caught in his throat, and hoped she didn’t decide to murder him for his audacity anyways. Astrid would figure out how to resurrect him so she could kill him again if that happened.
The hag looked Hiccup up and down. Her murky brown eyes managed to give Hiccup the sensation that she was looking right through him.
“A fancy speech, boy,” she croaked, “But I will need more than words to remove the curse I placed upon you.”
Curse. Well that didn’t bode well.
“What can I do to help you change your mind?”
The old woman tilted her head, as though considering. “Nine days, Odin hung from the branches of Yggdrasil to bring the sacred knowledge of runes to humanity. So too shall you complete nine tasks for me, each more difficult than the last, and if you succeed in these tasks, I will free you from this curse.”
Not promising, but Hiccup had survived a lot more than most people in his eighteen years of life. He could handle some tasks, even if they were likely to be magical in nature. It seemed like he wouldn’t have a choice. A heavy sense of foreboding settled in Hiccup’s stomach.
“I accept.”
The witch’s grin widened, becoming almost predatory. Hiccup suspected he had done exactly what she hoped he would.
“You may call me Amma Viðr,” she said.
Amma, like a young Viking child might call their own grandmother. Hiccup kept himself from making a face at that only through sheer force of will.
“You can call me Hiccup,” he answered. Gobber’s stories had always said to be careful how you gave out your name.
Amma seemed unbothered by his careful phrasing. “Far to the north, you’ll find an island covered by a glacier. There, you will find your first task. It should only take you a day or so, flying on that beast of yours.”
Somewhere below and behind him, Toothless growled.
“What do I do once I get there?”
“Oh, you will know when the time comes. Now begone, boy. Before I change my mind.”
With that, she shut the door in Hiccup’s face.
Hiccup decided that he’d done enough tempting fate for one day, so he climbed back down onto Toothless. They would camp on the beach tonight, and make for the glacier in the morning.
“Let’s go, bud. Sounds like we’re in for some trouble tomorrow.”