如何夺取龙之宝石——后记(6)

witches, and monsters with no hearts. You see, it was not only Hiccup who was growing up, it was the entire world around him – and when whole worlds grow up, that can be painful and difficult. Was it all worth the Archipelago in flames? I do not know, you decide. But Hiccup could not be anything other than the boy he was, and so his footsteps do not stop; they walk on. With every step he is a little older than he was before, walking slowly towards me and into Tomorrow. The chapter in my life that Hiccup has just walked through has been a story of three mothers: Valhallarama, Bear-mama and Termagant. Of how even when they are not there, when we cannot see them, when they are parted from us by quests, or by slavery, or even by death itself, they are still watching over us, yearning for us, loving us, though they lurk in the clouds as invisible to our eyes as the Deadly Shadow. Far away by cold campfires they are thinking of us, dreaming of us, loving us long-distance. Fishlegs’s mother could not come back to hold him. She had gone behind that glass wall of death. But