#middleless beginning

[ks-caster]

A Girl Called Magnus

Prologue”

This is Berk. The climate is toughening—which can be more accurately read as cold, nasty and generally uncomfortable. The parents have a tradition of giving their children horrible names to frighten off ogres—because everyone knows you introduce yourself to every mythical monster you meet before it eats you. The food is rough, bland, and designed to last for a long time, through any trial. The people are about the same as the food and the weather put together, except with less variety. However, we do have the one fantastically original thing here on Berk—one thing that is so incredible that it makes all the other stuff worth dealing with. While other islands in this area are known for horseraces or sailing or a lot of smelly, unfriendly outcasts, we’re known for something a little more… unorthodox.

Berk is known for its dragons.

Eleven years ago, Vikings and dragons fought claw to sword like, well, Vikings and dragons. Things here were exactly as you’d expect them to be—houses constantly burning down, livestock carried off by the flock, and dragon bones and scales used for armor and home décor. Our young people were trained to hunt and kill dragons, and the dragons, for their part, grew up to know us as the enemy as well. It was a blood feud that lasted generations, and the only end either side could imagine was if one eventually destroyed the other.

But then, a boy named Hiccup, who couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet and carrying an axe twice his size, showed the Vikings of Berk that there was another way. Along with his best friend, the dragon Toothless, Hiccup brought peace to the Vikings and the dragons—a peace that has lasted to this day.

I grew up with this peace as a part of my reality. My mother was pregnant with me when Hiccup first met Toothless, and by the time I was born, the people of Berk were beginning—hesitantly, and not without the obligatory kicking and screaming—to get used to having dragons living in their village. The young folks had it easier. They hadn’t spent decades as mortal enemies with the dragons, and thanks to the extreme circumstances involving the Viking armada and the Red Death, they were able to adjust much more quickly. That is why, even though there were plenty of able-bodied adults on Berk, it tended to be the teenagers who were most involved with protecting the island. Having a bond with a three-ton, fire-breathing, flight-capable deadly reptile certainly gave one an advantage in a fight.

Of course, the able-bodied adults had some reservations about letting their kids do so much of the fighting. Riding dragons at breakneck speed so high in the sky it’s hard for a human to breathe is dangerous enough. Riding dragons into battle—now that’s where a lot of parents tried to put their feet down. The “First Six,” Hiccup, Astrid, Snotlout, Fishlegs, Ruffnut and Tuffnut, couldn’t be separated from their dragons or kept out of the action no matter what anyone did to deter them. However, the other residents of Berk were determined to prevent their kids from riding dragons too young. It became an era of unusual strictness as far as curfews and boundaries. 

However, despite people’s best intentions, sometimes fate has something else in mind.

My name is Magnus Lindgren.

This is my story.

Chapter 1:

If you’ve been following the adventures and misadventures of the Riders and Defenders of Berk, you may remember me. Of course, when all the interesting stuff happened, I was hardly bigger than a loaf of bread, but still, I’m in there, if you pay really, really close attention. Here’s a hint: I was a dreadfully ugly baby. So ugly, in fact, that Gobber refused to name me Helga, as my parents requested, and instead named me Magnus, claiming that it suited me better. 

By sundown the next day, Stoic had turned up and rechristened me as Helga, much to the relief of my father, but by then, my mother had complained about it to every living soul on Berk, and sent her own mother—who lived with the Bog-Burglars—a long, detailed letter about the whole debacle. My grandmother of course found the entire affair incredibly entertaining, and shared my mother’s letter with my whole maternal extended family. 

My father, for his part, had known that the thing would get fixed somehow, but was so stressed by my mother’s extreme and prolonged reaction that he complained to his friends about it, and of course then had to explain why she was so hopping mad in the first place. He also wrote a letter to his father, who was a Berserker, telling him that he had a new member in his family line. (My grandfather had a mosaic covering his whole west wall that showed our family tree on Yggdrasil’s branches. The men get oak leaves and the women get maple leaves. It spans sixteen generations—the thing’s quite impressive, actually.) He added a postscript that my name probably wouldn’t be Magnus by the end of the week, so my grandfather should leave my leaf of the tree blank, for now. However, my grandfather was a very traditional man, and if the chief—or acting chief, whoever—said my name was Magnus, then Magnus my name was, from my date of birth to the blank line where one of his descendants would someday chisel my date of death.

The upshot of it all was, even though I was officially renamed Helga, absolutely everyone who knew me called me Magnus, except for my mother, Stoic, and the very embarrassed Gobber. Personally, I rather liked having a boy’s name. It made me feel original. It was loads better than Hiccup or Fishlegs or Snotlout, anyway—but don’t tell them I said that. Fishlegs will cry, Snotlout will take a swing at me, and Hiccup will try to calm everyone down while feeling dreadfully awkward himself. Best to keep that on the down-low… 

Setting my name aside, I was a pretty normal child. I learned to fish and gather eggs and use an axe without chopping off my foot. My mother taught me which plants were okay to eat and which ones could be used to make dye, and which ones were poisonous and should be avoided at all costs. She also taught me how to tie a knot that would hold for longer than my lifetime, and how to sew a shirt that could withstand a Viking’s lifestyle. My father taught me how to throw a punch without breaking my fingers, and how to tell if someone’s cheating me at cards or in a trading deal. My older brother, Soren, made sure I was learned it the art of picking both locks and pockets—skills which my parents swore they’d be proud of me for later, but for now I was threatened with dire consequences if I were to use them improperly. And, like most of the parents on Berk, mine did everything they could to prevent me from getting too familiar with the dragons. 

So, naturally, I spent every waking moment trying to get close to them.