"By Thor, you're right!" said Stoick.

"And it's not just your averageToothless Daydream either." Fishlegs was getting carried away now. "This particular dragon is of ROYAL BLOOD."

"No!" said Stoick, very impressed. Stoick was a terrific snob.

""Yes," said Fishlegs solemnly. "Your son has only gone and burgled the offspring of King Daggerfangs himself, the reptilian ruler of Wild Dragon Cliff. The Royal Daydreams tend to start out small but they grow into creatures of IMPRESSIVE -- even

GARGANTUAN --size."

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"Just like you, eh, Hiccup," said Stoick, giving a great laugh and ruffling his son's hair.

Stoick's tummy gave out a plaintive rumble like a distant underground explosion. "Time for a little supper, I think. Clear up this mess, will you, boys?"

Stoick strode off, relieved to have had his faith in his son restored.

"Thanks, Fishlegs," said Hiccup. "You were inspired."

"Not at all," said Fishlegs. "I owed you one after setting you up for that fight with Snotlout."

"Father's going to find out at some point anyway, though," said Hiccup gloomily.

"Not necessarily," said Fishlegs. "Look at all that talking you were doing with the Toothless Daydream here. That was INCREDIBLE. UNBELIEVABLE. I've never seen anything like it. You'll be training him in next to no time."

"I was talking to him, all right," said Hiccup, "but he didn't listen to a word I said."

When he was going to bed that night, Hiccup didn't want to leave Toothless in front of the fire with Newtsbreath and Hookfang.

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"Can I take him to bed with me?" he asked Stoick.

"A dragon is a working animal," said Stoick the Vast. "Too much hugging and kissing will make him lose his vicious streak."

"But Newtsbreath will kill him if I leave him alone with them."

Newtsbreath gave an appreciative growl. "It would. be m y pleasure," he hissed.

"Nonsense," boomed Stoick, unaware of Newts-breath's last remark, as he didn't speak Dragonese. Hegave Newtsbreath a friendly cuff round the horns. "Newtsbreath just wants to play. That sort of rough-and-tumble is good for a young dragon. Makes him learn to stick up for himself." Hookfang extended his claws like switchblades and drummed them on the hearth.

say goodnight to Toothless by the fire, but smuggled him into the bedroom under his tunic.

"You mu stbe absolutely quiet," he told Toothless sternly as they climbed into bed, and the dragon nodded eagerly. In fact, he snored loudly the entire claws like switchblades and

Hiccup pretended to

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night, but Hiccup didn't care. Hiccup spent the whole of the winter on Berk in various states of "very cold," ranging from "fairly chilly" to "absolutely freezing." At night, too many layers were considered sissy, so Hiccup generally lay awake for a couple of hours until he had shivered himself into a light sleep.

Now, though, as Hiccup stretched his feet out against Toothless's back, he felt waves of heat coming off the little dragon, gradually creeping up his legs and warming his freezing cold stomach and heart, even traveling right up to his head, which hadn't been trulywarm for almost six months. Even his ears burned contentedly. It would have taken the snoring of six strong dragons to have woken Hiccup, so deeply did he sleep that night.

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Chapter 8 TRAINING YOUR DRAGON THE HARD WAY

Hiccup was still pretty certain, knowing dragons as he did, that yelling was the easiest method of training them. So, over the next couple of weeks, he tried yelling at Toothless to see if he could make it work. He tried yelling loudly, firmly, strictly. He looked as cross as he could. But Toothless wouldn't take him seriously.

Hiccup finally gave up on the yelling when Toothless stole a kipper off his plate one morning at breakfast. Hiccup let out his most fierce and frightening yell and Toothless just gave him a wicked look and knocked everything else on to the floor with one swipe of his tail.

That was it with the yelling, as far as Hiccup was concerned.

"Okay, then," said Hiccup, "I'll try going to the other extreme."

So he was as nice to Toothless as he possibly could be. He gave Toothless the comfiest bit of the bed and lay dangerously balanced on the edge of it himself.

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He fed him as much kipper and lobster as he wanted. He only did this once, though, as the little dragon just went on eating until he had made himself thoroughly sick.

He played games with him for hours and hours. He told him jokes, he brought him mice to eat, he scratched the bit that Toothless couldn't quite reach in between the spokes on his back.

He made that dragon's life as close to Dragon Heaven as he possibly could.

By mid February, the winter was coming to an end on Berk, and the snowy season had turned into the rainy season. It was the kind of weather where your clothes never got dry, no matter what. Hiccup would hang up his sodden tunic on a chair in front of the fire before going to bed at night, and in the morning it would stillbe wet -- warm and wet rather than cold and wet, but WET nonetheless.

The ground all around the Village had turned into knee-deep mud.

"What, in Woden's name, are you doing?" asked Fishlegs when he came across Hiccup digging a large hole just outside the house.

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"Building a mud wallow for Toothless," panted Hiccup.

"You spoil that dragon, you really do," said Fish-legs, shaking his head.

"It's psychology, you see," said Hiccup. "It's clever and it's subtle, not like that caveman yelling you're doing with Horrorcow."

Fishlegs had named his dragon Horrorcow. The "horror" bit was to make the poor creature at least sound a bit frightening. The "cow" bit was because for a dragon she really wasremarkably like a cow. She was a large, peaceful, brown creature, with an easygoing nature. Fishlegs suspected she might even be vegetarian.

"I'm always catching her nibbling at the woodwork," he complained. "BLOOD, Horrorcow, BLOOD -- that's what you should want!"

Nonetheless, maybe Fishlegs wasa better yeller than Hiccup, or maybe Horrorcow was a lazier and more obliging character than Toothless, but Horrorcow was proving very easy to train by the yelling method.

"Okay, Toothless, it's read y,"said Hiccup. "Getyourself a good. wallow."

Toothless stopped trying to catch voles and

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leaped into the mud. He rolled over and over in the oozy muck, spreading out his wings and squirming happily.

"I'm bonding with him," said Hiccup, "so he'll want to do what I say."

"Hiccup," said Fishlegs, as Toothless sucked up a good mouthful of the mud and spat it out straight into Hiccup's face, "I may not know much about dragons, but I doknow that they are the most selfish creatures on Earth. No dragon is ever going to do what you want out of gratitude. Dragons do not know what gratitude is. Give up. This will NEVER WORK."

"Tie tiling about us it-h-hragons," said Toothless, helpfully, "is we're s-s-survivors. We're not like s-s-sappy cats or it-it-huijib itogs, failing in l-l-love with their Masters and yocky things like that.

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Only reason we ever do what a what a m-m-man wants is because he's b-b-bigger than us and. gives us food."

"What's he saying?" asked Fishlegs.