When they reached the top of the cliff, the ground kept on rising up to Mount Hysteria, on which was perched the shadowy outline of the Hysterical Village, all in darkness.
One Eye dragged them right up to the bottom of the village walls, where Camicazi got out her ropes.
She threw up the rope with the metal hook attached, and on the first attempt it caught hold of the top of the wooden wall. She squirmed up it like a little blond monkey and disappeared over the top. One Eye spread wide his wings and flew after her.
Hiccup took a deep breath, grabbed hold of the rope, and climbed up, trying to ignore the skulls grinning at him from the top of the battlements.
They were the only visitors to the Hysterical Village in fifteen years.
The village seemed at first to be deserted.
There was no one in the streets, no light in the windows.
But the Great Hall was blazing with light. Smoke 129 billowed out of several chimneys, music and chatter and laughing poured out of the windows.
Weirdly, beside the Great Hall, lying on great tree trunks, there stood the largest Viking ship Hiccup had ever seen. It did seem a trifle strange to keep a ship so far from the sea, but Hiccup supposed the Hysterics hadn't been doing any sailing at all for the last fifteen years, so perhaps the center of town was as good a place to keep a boat as any.
And what a ship it was ...
It was more the depth and length of a Roman galleon, and it was the only Viking longboat Hiccup had ever seen with not one but three masts. On its prow the figurehead dragon was a snarling Monstrous Nightmare, and Hiccup's heart beat a little faster with excitement as he read the name painted on its side in big flowing letters: The American Dream. Perhaps the story Old Wrinkly told him really WAS true...
In stark contrast to the ships Hiccup had seen in the harbor, this boat was in tip-top condition. The rest of the village was two meters deep in snow, but The American 130 131 Dream was spotless, her decks entirely snow-free. She was freshly painted, the Hysterical flag flew cheerily from her central mast and her oars were all out, just as if she were about to set sail for distant shores at a moment's notice.
"We'll climb up onto the roof of the Great Hall and see if we can overhear what's going on," whispered Camicazi. Camicazi didn't even bother to use a rope this time. She just shimmied up the sheer wall, appearing to cling to it with invisible suction like a frog. Once she reached the roof, she let down a rope for Hiccup, and One Eye hauled him up with it.
The roof was thigh deep in snow, and Hiccup had to crawl through it, following the path made by Camicazi. She wriggled through to the central chimney, which had no smoke coming out of it, and she and Hiccup peered down into the room below.
A blast of heat so strong Hiccup had to close his eyes poured out of the chimney. Hiccup's hands burned as they began to warm up. Eventually his watering eyes adjusted to the heat and the light.
Down below, the Hysterics were enjoying a 132 truly magnificent banquet. The long central table was loaded high with fish, flesh, and fowl cooked in every possible manner, whole stags, entire pigs, and brimming cups of beer and wine. A big drunken guy was dancing a jig on the table at one end, and the Hysterics were laughing and throwing bits of food and napkins at him.
Fires blazed in six huge fireplaces. Enormous white rugs made out of the skin of polar bears were strewn about the floor. Hanging on the walls were the heads of dragons of every possible size, color, and description. And also the heads of a couple of animals Hiccup had never seen before, one that looked like an enormous, depressed deer, and another that resembled a gigantic bull with black, curly hair.
A map of the Barbaric World drawn on deerskin was hanging in a 133 [Image: Fire.] 134 135 great curtain against the north wall. On the west of the map, someone had scribbled out the great tumbling waterfall which on most Viking maps was marked "End of the World," and replaced it with a crude charcoal drawing of an island it called AMERICA.
With a sinking of the heart, Hiccup recognized a big blond bearded guy sitting on a throne as the Chief, Norbert the Nutjob. It was definitely the Big Brute who Hiccup had shot with an arrow in the bottom the day before. His throne had a couple of plump cushions on it, but he was shifting from buttock to buttock as if in some pain.
In one hand he held a very unusual, enormous, double-headed axe. The axe was different in that one blade was a bright and shiny copper gold, but the other blade was rusted and blackened, and deeply scarred.
There was no sign of the potato.
Suddenly Hiccup felt a bit foolish. He had somehow expected it to be displayed somewhere obvious, preferably with a big sign underneath it labeling it clearly as THE POTATO.
Because, of course, he did not have any idea what a potato looked like, whether it was orange, or 136 137 green, or large, or small. Hiccup had somehow imagined it as RED with little black spots, and kind of oblong, or triangular, just because it sounded so exotic. Purple, perhaps? Really, he hadn't a clue. "OK," whispered Camicazi, "I'm going to have to go down there to try and find out WHERE they keep the potato.... It could be absolutely anywhere."
She unwound one of the ropes from around her waist, and Hiccup suggested that they should tie it around One Eye's leg. "That way, if you get into any trouble, you can yank on it three times, and One Eye can haul you up quickly."
One Eye objected strongly to having anything tied around his leg, and only agreed when Hiccup reminded him what a HERO he was going to be in the Dragon World when they returned to Berk with the antidote to Vorpentitis.
The little girl then lowered herself down through the hole in the roof.
138 It was completely dark and very quiet on top of the Great Hall.
Waiting by the hole, Hiccup felt rather like he had as a small boy going ice fishing with his father, when Stoick cut a hole in the ice, and let down the line, and then all there was to do was wait... and wait... and wait.
Toothless scratched behind his ears. One Eye picked at his teeth. And Hiccup shivered with anxiety.
"Hurry up, Camicazi..."
At any moment Hiccup expected a great crack to appear in that huge flat expanse of frozen sea, and then they would never get home ... and Fishlegs would be lost.
Or perhaps Camicazi had gotten into trouble down there?
Hiccup peered down through the hole. Camicazi was clinging to her rope like a spider, two meters below them. Hiccup 139 leaned down a little farther to try and see what was happening ...
... And then, to his absolute horror, the edge of the chimney, already buckling under the weight of the snow, gave way beneath him, and with a shriek, Hiccup FELL into the Hall.
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