Chapter Text
Hiccup will joke about what a pain it is to groom Toothless, how he’ll spend hours finding scales in places he never knew he could find them, but in all honesty he likes the ritual. When he can find the time— which more often than not he can’t— he’ll spend ages brushing over Toothless, cleaning dirt from the grooves between his scales and scratching behind his ears. Toothless, of course, relishes in it, rolling onto his back, rumbling so much it feels as if the earth is shaking beneath Hiccup’s feet.
“We never seem to have time anymore, huh?” he asks, to which Toothless rolls over and rests his chin on Hiccup’s legs. “Dad’s handing over more responsibilities. You know I had to settle a domestic dispute the other day, right? ‘No Mr. Ljotsson, we can’t actually do anything if you stay out late and your wife sets all of your goats loose to find and bring you home.’”
Toothless lets out a low whine, bumping his head into Hiccup’s side.
“I know, I’m surprised enough that she could train them to do that,” he says, lying on his back beneath the sun as it arches high into the sky. Spring is softening Berk’s features, but the ground below him still feels solid with the grip of winter’s frost. “I know why dad’s doing it. I mean, I wish I didn’t, because honestly it—“
“Scares you?”
He jerks upwards, twisting around to see Astrid pushing branches out of her way, walking towards him through the brush. He sighs and collapses back down again, spreading his arms out beside him.
“You’ve really got to stop doing that,” he says as she comes close enough to look down at him, her hands on her hips.
“Maybe you need to be more observant. It’s not like I was quiet,” she tells him, but it’s not much of an admonishment. She sits down beside him, reaching a hand out to let Toothless sniff. “He’s trusting you with more responsibilities because he thinks you're ready for them. I mean, not that some of them aren’t stupid, but—“
“So stupid,” he mutters, even if it makes him feel guilty. He would never say the concerns of the people of Berk aren’t important, it’s just that sometimes they’re so… petty. There’s so much that could be solved with just a little self directed communication— is his future really going to be dedicated to squabbling disputes?
“— Consider that this is just the start. There’s so much more to being chief, and he’s just getting you prepared for the beginning of it. I mean, wow. What an honour,” she says, leaning back on her hands and looking to the sky. “It’s not like you’re doing badly either, you know? I know your dad has told you at least that much.”
He reaches a hand up and covers the sun with it, watches light try to break through his fingers.
“It just feels like there’s something weird going on. It’s not that I’m running from it, but I think something’s changed,” Hiccup says, squinting up to look at Astrid’s face. “With my dad, I mean. There’s something nervous about him. It just feels really sudden.”
“He did have a pretty quick turnaround from letting you have your freedom to training you,” she supposes. “But you’re almost twenty now. Kind of surprised it didn’t start earlier, to be honest.”
“You see it too though, right?” Hiccup asks her. “He seems worried.”
“Yeah,” she sighs, “I do. He’s got the guards running around all over like we need to strengthen our defenses. Not that we shouldn’t,” she says hurriedly, “but I can’t explain it.”
The branches of the trees above cast dappled light over the two of them. He can see it catch in Astrid’s hair, spinning it gold. They’re below the largest tree on Berk— his favourite place, long before he met Toothless.
A massive ash tree, its roots spread far and high enough to rest against. Even in devastating winter it always seems to retain a leaf or two— there’s a warmth around it that settles inside of him, calming.
“He’s why I’m out here, actually,” Astrid says, standing and stretching her arms out in front of her before dropping them to swing at her sides. “Your dad wants to see you, he got a letter by raven and asked me to come find you.”
“You’d never stoop to playing messenger,” Hiccup says with a smile, jostling Toothless off of his lap who complies with a whine.
“I wouldn’t have to if you stopped hiding out here,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “Come on, he looked pretty scary.”
They walk away from the ash grove, and as he looks back at the branches so close to brushing sky, he gets the feeling that something is going to change. With Toothless walking beside him, curious eyes watching, he looks forward once again, heading towards Berk.
—
His dad is in their house, eyes stormy as he looks at papers at his hands on the table. Hiccup and Astrid look at each other, the energy in the room heavy.
“You’re here,” Stoick states. “Astrid, leave us please. I need to speak with my son.”
The look she gives him as she heads for the door is unreadable, so he shrugs his shoulders at her and hopes for the best. Astrid gives him half a smile, an unspoken good luck on her face.
As soon as she leaves his dad sits himself heavily into the chair below him, his hands on the table. “We have something important to discuss.”
“Great, I actually have something to tell you too,” Hiccup begins. “See, I know what you’re doing, with the increase of responsibilities— I just think we could be moving a little bit slower, you know?” He continues, “I mean, this is really the first time that we’ve talked about it, that you’re preparing for me to become—“
“Your betrothed is coming to Berk.”
Hiccup feels like all of the air has been knocked from his body.
“My what?”
“That’s what this letter says,” Stoick says, his hand on top of the papers like he wishes he could crumple them. “I’m sorry.”
“Why did— how did… Why did you never tell me?” he asks, when he can find the room in his lungs to breathe again. He sits across from his dad at the table, itching to tear the papers from his hands and read their contents. “For how long?”
It takes a moment for his father to speak.
“The plague, eight years ago. You remember it?” Stoick says, his voice low.
He looks at his father, tries to keep his eyes focused, but he only feels aware of how serious the air is.
How could he forget? It was one of the worst disasters Berk had ever had, and it lasted only nine days. Only, he thinks.
For nine days people woke from their sleep caught by night terrors, fear wracking chills through their bodies, sweat freezing on their skin. They tried and failed to bring warmth to the afflicted, heavy furs and warm fires doing nothing to ease them.
Elder Gothi tried everything she knew of and everything she’d never tried before in the hopes of remedy, but every person who awoke sick in the night was dead by morning. He remembered how his father agonized over this, the long nights he spent with Gothi and anyone else who had even the slightest knowledge of healing, all in vain.
Most of all, he remembers the night he woke up cold.
He had never had a dream like that, not before and not since.
He felt already awake, moonlight casting blue across his ceiling. Hiccup felt the presence before he saw it, seated at the edge of his bed with its back towards him. He knew, somehow, that this was the mother he couldn’t remember— her long hair draped in a plait down her back, the freckles on her neck he knows he must have seen while held at her shoulder.
When she turned to him, her face was like a wraith— pale and drawn back, eyes empty in their sockets. She drew closer but he was unable to move, frozen in terror, his limbs not working.
She didn’t speak at all, only a creaking groan, and though he closed his eyes he could feel her in front of him, her freezing fingers on his face. The touch drew everything from him— he felt as carved out and hollowed as her eyes.
He still felt her hands when he woke gasping, the air frozen in his lungs and his sheets cold around him. Shivers wracked his body so hard he thought he could hear his own bones— he could definitely hear the way his teeth chattered. He worried he’d break apart.
Hiccup couldn’t lift his head enough to look at the door, so he didn’t see his father until he was in front of him, lifting him into his arms like he weighed nothing at all. He hardly remembered what followed— he knew his father carried him all the way to Gothi’s, but all he knew after was the shape of his father’s back as he left through the elder’s door. He had just enough consciousness to wonder what he had done to make his father leave him.
He looks to his father now, sitting in front of him, older than he was then. His face has always been heavily lined, the duties of a chief carved into him. They’re heavier around the eyes now, the weight of his grief carried there.
“What happened that night? You’ve never told me,” he asks. Knowing his dad, he’s likely never told anyone at all. Stoick lets out a sigh with his whole body.
“I asked Gothi if there was one last thing we could try— anything at all. She told me there was: a seidkona.”
Hiccup’s eyes widen in surprise. A seidkona, a magic woman. But—
“— You hate magic. You always told me it was underhanded, and—“
“No warrior has a use for magic with a sharp enough axe at hand. Aye, I know what I’ve said. This was the only choice left before me, and when the elder told me of her I knew what needed to be done. It was this, or your life.
“I spent nearly all the night looking for her, and it was no easy task. Before dragons, it was hard enough to navigate, but in the night with time of the essence… Well, I expect I would never have found her if she hadn’t wanted me to.”
Stoick has a pained, far away look in his eyes, the fear from that night coming to the surface. Hiccup’s nervous hands itch to move, so he focuses on the feel of the wood grain below his fingers.
“It was an island to the north of Berk— it was late enough into the autumn for the cold to start, but this island was something unnatural. A frozen wasteland, that place. It was all I could do to keep my feet from getting stuck to the ground. The only thing for miles was a single house, its lights still on.” He looks at Hiccup, maybe too in his own thoughts to notice his anticipation.
“I did the only thing there was to do: knocked on the door.”
—
The woman looks him up and down like she isn’t surprised to see him darken her doorway. This is quite a feat on her part— he knows he must be something of an intimidating figure.
“You are the witch?” he asks, voice gruffer than usual with both the bite of the cold outside and his distaste for the word. She narrows her eyes at him.
“Of a sort. What business have you here?” she asks, unmoving. There’s something impressive about that— she isn’t cowed by him, not his stature or obvious dislike of her profession. With his mission well in mind, he tries to soften himself.
“My name is Stoick the Vast, Chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe of Berk. I need… I need your help.”
She runs her eyes over his face. He’s not sure what she searches for— or, what she’s hoping not to find— but she moves from the door in a silent invitation.
He isn’t sure what he expected to see once inside. Well, in a sense he had some expectations— more animal skulls for one. Instead, it doesn’t look much different from any other healer’s home that he’s seen. Herbs line the walls, save for one, covered in a large tapestry of the night sky, running itself into gold as it nears the floor. The hearth at the centre of the room has something fragrant burning that he doesn’t recognize— were he a different man, he might have. The witch stands before a loom, running her fingers over the threads, back carefully not to him, not letting him see her weak.
“What help do you need that you’d come to someone like me?” she asks, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. The firelight paints them almost amber, a warm brown the same colour as her hair, stitched through with braids as complicated a weaving as her tapestry.
“There is a plague. It ravages my people. One infected is doomed to pass by morning,” he tells her, and then hesitates. “Just this night, my son…”
Her fingers still. Nothing obviously changes about her demeanour, but there’s a softening around her eyes.
“Your son,” she says, quietly. It almost blends with the crackling of the fire.
“Hiccup,” he tells her, “the only thing I have left of my wife. She passed just over ten years ago, when he was but a babe. He’s barely fit to hold an axe, but he’s my boy all the same.” He looks at her, beseeching, voice rough with both old and new grief. “He’s a bright mind, a good lad. I can’t lose him too.”
She nods, once, twice, looking between him and her tapestry. She doesn’t speak, only crosses the room and kneels at the foot of it, picking at threads. “This plague— how long has it festered?”
“This is the ninth day,” he tells her. She hums, and pulls at a thread until the end of the tapestry begins to unravel. She pulls until the thread has been torn back nine times, when a wisp of smoke unfurls from a black spot, revealing a rotted circle that was not there before.
The witch kneels closer to it, running a nail over the blackened threads, which fall to the stone floor at her touch, crumbling into ash.
“Not a plague,” she says, standing. “Your people are cursed. This is powerful seidr. This magic is dark. But not something I cannot fix.”
“If you do this, I will owe you a debt,” he says, both to her and to himself. He will be in debt to a witch— not a position he wants to be in.
“You will,” she says, “I do not work for— Jack!”
Stoick turns at her interruption to see what she looks at, finding a young boy in the doorway behind him. He can’t imagine how he could have snuck up on him like that, but he’s so small he must be light on his feet.
He can see the resemblance between the boy and the witch immediately in the set of their faces— far set eyes and heavy brows, thin lips and a fae shape to their cheekbones. It stops at their colouring, however: where she is warm browns, his eyes are a cold blue, and his hair so white as to make him seem ancient.
The boy looks up at him warily, but with more guts than Stoick would have thought to ascribe to him. He looks back to his mother, who looks at him sternly.
“You should be asleep. To bed with you, and take Emma with you.”
The boy— Jack— gapes. “How did you know she was here!”
Stoick examines the area around Jack a little more closely, and from his vantage point closer to the doorway he can look beside the boy and see a little girl, no older than a toddler, hidden in the darkness. She, too, looks like her mother, down to the colours that Jack lacks. Emma looks up at him with more unguarded curiosity than Jack did, and he finds himself smiling something small in spite of himself when she waves a pudgy hand at him.
“A mother always knows,” the witch says. “Now away you go.”
Jack lifts his sister into his arms and leaves with one last look behind him. Stoick can feel an old pain in his chest when he looks at their retreating backs— had Valka lived, would they have had more children? A brother or sister for Hiccup, someone for him to protect and love? He closes his eyes for just a moment at the thought of it, before looking once again at the witch. Her face is pensive as she looks at where her children once stood.
“You have a son,” she says, something she already knows. Stoick nods.
“Must be about the same age as yours,” he supposes— Jack might be a little bit taller than Hiccup, but they’re both small things. She nods and crosses her arms across her stomach, the black feathers that line her cloak closing in on her.
“I have my price,” she says, but the odd tone of her voice puts Stoick on edge. “I would have us join our families.”
He balks.
“Your girl is not yet out of nappies— I could not do that to either of them,” he tells her. She doesn’t smile, but looks like she wants to as she looks down to the floor and back up at him.
“No. I would have our sons marry.”
Anger runs through him— such an obvious insult— she intends to make a fool of him?
“You joke. You would make my tribe a laughingstock for, what, a game you play?” Only desperation keeps him from turning and walking out the door. She holds her head high all the same.
“No. Do you think we live out here this way because we want to? Because we enjoy the solitude? No, we have no choice,” she says. “My son was born with seidr.”
He nearly draws back, and looks to the doorway where the two children once stood. Magic— something anyone can learn, but few are touched with at birth. A boy no less— a great taboo. He is a stranger in any place he would settle.
“Keep him from practicing,” he tells her, “he can still be a normal child. Train him to fight, and he can still be a great viking yet, without those—“ tricks. He stops himself. The witch’s face is sorrow filled.
“I can’t. I could not keep him from his magic no sooner than I could keep the moon from shining. I will never keep him from being himself,” she says, and then hesitates. “But I would not have him be alone. A powerful outcast is dangerous.”
“You bring my son and my people into this farce,” he growls, but there’s a resignation in him.
“If I must. What would a parent not do for their child?” she asks, and he knows the answer. It’s why he’s standing here at all.
“A chief must have children,” he tries to reason. Surely, there must be anything else she could ask for.
“The concerns of a chief are no concerns of mine,” she says, examining the back of her hand. “And a chief must be alive to have children, is that not right?”
He could nearly shake with his anger— but he’s running out of time. He is hours away from sunrise, and Hiccup has only that much life left. Stoick clenches his fists.
“Don’t forget,” she says, quietly, “I have touched the threads of fate. You may not like this outcome, but there are far worse ones if you say no.”
He takes a deep breath. He releases his hands.
“I accept.”
As soon as she hears the words she lets go of the tension in her shoulders, dropping the anxiety like a puppet with cut strings. She wastes no time moving to her desk to collect papers and ink, as well as a knife from the belt at her waist.
“Your word will be writ in contract,” she says, a black quill in hand scratching its way across a page. She stops and looks up at him. “I will not try to trick you. All in this contract will be as I have said: in nine years time my family will come to Berk, where the agreement will be honoured.
“My son, Jackson, will be wed to your son, Hiccup. The chief of Berk will care for my son as if he were one of their own. He will not be outcast— he will have a place among you. In exchange, I break your curse, and save the lives of your people and son. Is this to your satisfaction?” she asks him. Stoick closes his eyes for a moment before nodding.
“Aye, it will be done.”
She nods and the contract is scribed. She removes her knife from its sheath and runs it smoothly across her hand, drawing a line of blood. She uses this to write her name, sealing it in script of red.
Signy Overland.
He does the same.
“Overland is not a name from around these parts,” he comments. She shrugs and looks away, already wrapping her hand.
“I came by it through marriage to a man from far away,” Signy tells him quietly, before turning to face him fully. “Your curse. I cannot accompany you to Berk— your time is short and I would slow you down. Do you have an object of your son’s on your person?”
Stoick places his hand over his pocket. There’s an amulet there, many years old now, from Hiccup’s first attempt at crafting in the forge. It’s hardly pretty— a roughly shaped dragon wrapped around itself, hung from a leather cord. When he received it he felt ashamed that he wished Hiccup had instead tried his hand at a knife, something with which to fight, but the joy on his son’s face kept it on him ever since.
Now, he’s reaching into that pocket, handing over the amulet.
“Be careful, please,” he asks.
When the metal touches her hand she inhales sharply, holding it to her face to better examine it. “Oh, that’s quite powerful.”
He frowns, eyebrows lowering heavily, “What do you mean?”
She looks away from it only briefly, glancing at his face. “There is love in this, a lot of it. You should be proud of your son, he has an amazing depth of feeling,” she says, holding it in both palms and closing her fingers around it. “I’m going to enchant it— there is power in love, strong enough to drive away fear. This already packs quite the punch, I’m merely going to amplify it.”
Before he can voice any hesitation, Signy begins to hum. A green light creeps out from between her fingers, slipping through like sunbeams. He tries to listen to the melody of her hum, but it reaches his ears and breaks apart, turning to a buzz he can’t focus on.
It’s when the green light can be seen from underneath her eyelids that the hum becomes a song.
Galdr, he thinks, a witch’s spellsong. The power to bring storms and sink ships, turn the tides of battle and the minds of men mad. And break curses, he continues. Although how that works in practice remains to be seen.
He knows somehow that the language she sings in is nordic, but when he tries to focus on the words they escape his reach. Maybe some things aren’t meant for men like him.
The light disperses as her song ends, the firelight creeping back into place, but the light of it feels duller in comparison to what was there. She raises the amulet by its cord, holding it out for his hands to take. When he touches the metal he nearly drops it, the heat of it burning his skin.
“Do not forget this: bury the amulet at the base of an ash tree on the island of Berk. Below the earth the magic will break the curse, and feed the tree to protect you for years to come. Do not dig up the amulet,” she says, her eyes deadly in their seriousness.
“The base of an ash tree,” he repeats. “If this fails…”
“The magic will turn on me threefold,” she tells him, “and there is no fate you could give me worse than that.”
He wonders what that would mean for him, were he to betray her.
Better to get through this night first, he thinks, gathering his furs around him. He nods at her from the door, and she does the same, no words left for them to say.
It’s when he’s some ways from the house that he looks once more at the frozen waste behind him— to see two pinpricks of blue from the window.
—
Hiccup tries and fails several times to think of something to say. Stoick won’t look at him, eyes not budging from a whorl of wood on the table.
“I’m sorry,” Stoick says. “You must hate me for what I’ve done.”
Hiccup looks up in surprise. “Dad, no, of course not. You saved my life. You saved all of our lives. I mean, sure, the situation isn’t… well, ideal. But that isn’t your fault.”
“I tried to think of how I would tell you, but I always failed. I regret that,” Stoick confesses. “I wanted you to have the freedom to grow up. We’re out of time now.”
Hiccup narrows his eyes. “You said… she said—“ he leans across the table to grab the papers, running his eyes over them. He was right— one of them is the contract itself, no age on it— it looks as if it were written yesterday. “Nine years. She said they would come to Berk in nine years,” he looks up at his dad. “The plague was eight years ago. They’re early. Why?”
“The letter gives no mention of that. We’ll—“
There’s a knock at the door.
“Chief,” Astrid says, “sorry to interrupt. There are some odd strangers at the docks asking to speak with you. Only you. I have the guard on them, if you want to—“
“Send them to the Great Hall,” Stoick says, rising from his chair. “No other audience. Hiccup, with me.”
Astrid’s parting glance is concerned, as she must see the grim set to Hiccup’s eyes. She nods sharply, leaving.
“I hate working on a witch’s time,” Stoick mutters, and Hiccup attempts a smile.
“No time like the present though, right?”
He tries to act like he means it.
—
The Great Hall echoes their footsteps loudly when it’s this empty, no people running around with food or grievances. The torches cast shadows on his father’s face, drawn and resigned.
“I’m sure they can be reasoned with,” Hiccup says, “if we just talk to them we can definitely—“
“That contract was signed in blood, son,” Stoick says, not looking away from the door. “What happens when we go back on our word? The curse returns? You—“ he cuts himself off, unable to say the words. “I don’t want this for you, but I won’t lose you either.”
“You’re not going to,” Hiccup tells him, squaring his shoulders. “It’s going to work out.”
The door is pushed open, their guests escorted by Astrid and two other members of the guard. Astrid is a portrait of seriousness, professional in every line of her body. She doesn’t look at Hiccup from her place behind the three she escorts.
“Leave us,” Stoick directs to the guards, who do as they’re told. “Signy,” he continues, “and young Emma. Jack.”
Signy is a slight woman, inches shorter than her son, who stands at her right arm, hood pulled over his head. Grey runs through her hair like threads, pulled into braids like his father said. At her son’s side clutching his cloak must be his little sister, Emma. Her lips are pursed, looking up at his father like she finds him familiar. She must have been only a few years old when they met so long ago.
“Stoick,” Signy starts. “I hear some years have been hard, and others better. I’m glad to see you well.” She looks over to Hiccup, lightly lined face soft with a fondness he’s surprised to be given. “Hiccup. I’ve heard stories about you.”
He laughs nervously, “If they were bad they’re exaggerated, and if they were good they’re definitely true.”
Jack gives a startled cough from beneath his hood. Signy smiles, but Hiccup can’t really decipher the feeling behind it.
“A dragon tamer, hm? You’ve brought great change to the archipelago. I’ve woven through the threads of your fate a few times over the years— your choices always make things interesting.”
He can’t even begin to parse what that means.
“You’re early, Signy,” his father says. “It hasn’t yet been nine years.”
Signy nods, her face grim. “You’re correct. Circumstances have changed.”
“Changed how?” Hiccup asks. It might not be his place to speak here, but if he’s going to be chief— Hel, if he’s going to be married to the boy across the room from him, he’s not going to be quiet.
“Some years ago, I found the caster of your curse. Perhaps to put it more accurately, he found us,” she says, her hands in the folds of her skirts. “We have evaded him for some time, but with the protection I cast on this island, and the contract nearing its date, this is the safest place for us to be.
“I know it is much to ask of you. This is not in our contract: you are free to turn us away. But if you are able to house us, I ask that you would, and we will protect you in kind, as is our way.”
“Would your presence bring danger to my people?” Stoick asks. Signy shakes her head.
“So long as the amulet is in place, he cannot harm you here. I give no guarantees for outside of Berk.”
Hiccup and his father look at each other.
It isn’t without its costs, but at the same time could be worked to their advantage. Were they to offer protection for the year prior to the contract’s start, they may be able to convince them to negotiate.
“I—“ Stoick starts, but is cut off by Jack, pulling his dark hood back angrily.
Immediately, Hiccup is struck by him— his father described his odd features, but seeing it in person feels like something else entirely. He isn’t sure if it’s the magic inside him that gives him an air like the fae or simply a natural beauty, but even the hardened steel look in his eyes doesn’t detract from it. Hiccup reminds himself to breathe again.
“This is ridiculous,” Jack says with venom. “We can take care of ourselves. We have for years, we don’t need them.”
“Jack, it would be safer if—“ his mother starts, but he cuts her off too.
“No, I won’t have any part in this. You and Emma can stay, I don’t need anyone’s protection.”
Jack directs a glare to Hiccup alone, and he’s never felt so trapped in a look— like a butterfly pinned to a board.
Hiccup isn’t sure what he’s done to deserve a look like that, but he’s the last thing Jack looks at before he takes his white knuckled grip on his staff and leaves through the massive doors with a whirl of his cloak.