Cruelty/Frailty

Part three in my Hidden Depths trilogy, before I get started on my intended doorstopper. Thanks for all the reviews I've gotten so far, they are very much appreciated.

BTW: Someone was wondering how Ruffnut got Barf's gas into the egg in Summit Quest. There was a technique African tribespeople used to conserve water that I got the idea from, they made a small hole about the size of a straw in an ostrich egg, sucked out the inside and filled it with water, then buried the egg. So Ruffnut siphoned off the gas with a straw and blew it into the hollow egg then sealed it until it needed to be used. Hope that makes sense.

Note: Toryanse, the song for this story, is a traditional Japanese children's song about making an offering to the gods as thanks for letting the child survive up to their seventh birthday. They play the melody at the road crossings too, possibly to subliminally remind drivers to slow down because there are children crossing.

watch?v=2NmnbEqs_3Y

...

"Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be."

-Temple Grandin

The tradition of giving a Viking a fearsome name to scare away trolls was slightly more complicated than one might think. For one thing, it usually only applied to boys. Trolls apparently found girls too much trouble to deal with. With the exception of Ruffnut (who was rhyme-named with her brother so the trolls wouldn't know which was which) a Friggson girl named Pukestain (who now icily insisted on being called by her chosen name, Polina)and a toddler named Rumblebutt (which would probably be changed when she got older and grew out of the habit) girls were given names that were meant to inspire hope for the future. Named after flowers to nurture beauty and fruitfulness, or deities to keep them safe, or even given the same syllables as a family they hoped to marry into one day.

The symbolic naming gained momentum during the dark years, when the dragons stole so much of their food and the yellow plague swept the village taking whole families with it, and winters came so harsh and cold that mothers risked suffocating their children by sleeping on top of them to keep them warm. Every second girl was named Freya in the hopes that Freya herself would bless the child and keep her alive. The boys were named after vile acts of evil and legendary monsters. None of it worked, the Gods took who they wanted when they wanted and so many funeral pyres were built that the island was wreathed in black smoke for weeks at a time. It became the custom for children not to be named at all until they had survived their second year.

As a natural consequence of this, married couples had as many children as they could regardless of whether they could feed them or not. It was half-expected that you would lose most of your children before they came of age, but the only thing worse than losing a child was facing down the idea of your old age with no one left to care for you.

There were, of course, only six teenagers of note in Berk. The chief's son, his deputy's son, the Ingerman boy, the twins, and the Hofferson girl. The nearest to them in age was a smattering of ten to twelve year olds floating around who had managed to survive the yellow plague. Nobody really paid attention to the gap until Hiccup had a reason to.

...

"Did he just smack that kid? That little kid?"

There he was, having a nice romantic picnic with his girlfriend (sort of; she was sharpening her ax and pretty much ignoring him) when he'd seen Tuffnut emerge from the forest a few yards away, keep pace with a little kid and deal him a hard smack across the back of the head. The kid stumbled and fell over in the tall grass.

"Seriously? Did you see that?" he said to Astrid, incredulous.

"Hm? What?"

"He just smacked that kid! The kid fell over!"

"Oh. Right," Astrid made vague agreeable sounds. "Probably."

"Pro...mmph!"

Even by twin standards, smacking a little kid was pretty bad. Hiccup was trying to get to know the team, and by that extension the twins, better than he had and it had lead to some surprise revelations about them all. However, it seemed like some things were just too good to be true.

And now that he'd seen it happen once, he noticed it more and more. Sometimes it was the same little kid he'd seen Tuffnut knock over in the forest that day, sometimes it was one of two other little kids. They looked to be between ten and five years old and were clearly related, having the same head of springy dark curls and turned-up noses. And every time he saw them, Hiccup bore witness to Tuffnut knocking their bundles out of their arms, pushing them into the dirt or tripping them.

And though he didn't have the nerve to tackle Tuffnut on it directly, it became his new favourite topic of conversation until Astrid was ready to hack off either her ears or his mouth.

"Well, if you're too chicken to stop him picking on them, why don't you tell their sister?"

Hiccup stopped mid-rant. "They have a sister?"

"Yes, they're Minka Sterneman's brothers."

...

Minka was twelve, slightly built and possessed of a tangled mane of curls ill-hidden under a colourful cloth cap. When Hiccup found her, she was carrying an immense basket of grain on her hip and being trailed by another small child of indeterminate gender.

"Uh, Minka?" he called to her.

She looked surly when she turned around to face him, but dropped the expression into careful neutrality when she saw who she was talking to. With the exception of his friends, most of the village had a healthy respect for the chiefs' son. These days, anyway.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asked him quietly.

"Well, actually, I'm trying to help you. Well, not help as such, I'm trying to..." he stumbled over his words as she looked more and more confused. "I'm trying to inform you of something."

"Is this about the loan? Because I was told I had three months."

"What? Loan? No!" he sputtered. "It's about your brothers."

She sighed, and brought her fingers to her temple.

"What did they do?" she asked wearily.

"Nothing! Nothing at all, it's not them, it's just about them!"

Minka was giving him that old familiar 'why is this crazy guy talking to me' look. He'd almost missed that look.

"Thing is, Tuffnut Thorston is picking on them for some reason, and I thought you should know."

Her reaction was not at all what he expected. She visibly relaxed and even smiled.

"Well, thank you for telling me. I have to be on my way now," she told him, taking the small child's hand and leading him/her away.

...

"Thank you for telling me, I have to be on my way now," he parroted for Astrid later. "I mean, that's it? That's all she has to say?"

Astrid was staring longingly at the fire, wondering if he would stop talking if she threw herself in.

"I don't know, I don't have siblings. Is this normal?"

"Why are you asking me? I don't have siblings either," Astrid groaned.

"Yeah, but...you're a girl! Is it normal?"

"It may not have occurred to you, but I'm not exactly a normal girl. Look, why does this bother you so much?"

"I..." She had him there. Why did it bother him so much?

Because he considered Tuffnut a friend, and he wanted to think he was better than this. He'd thought badly of his age-mates for so long and was just getting to know them now and finding out they were better people than he'd taken them for. It was unbearable to think of going back to how it was before.

But to say that to Astrid was too hard.

"...beeecause I'm the son of the chief! And I'll probably be chief some day! And as chief I'd have to stamp out injustice, and what better place to start?"

"Good idea! So you'll go over there and have it out with Tuffnut right now, won't you?"

Inwardly, he groaned. He walked right into that one.

...

Before he left, he put on an extra fur to make himself look bigger. It didn't work, but as a backup plan it would probably cushion the blow a little when Tuffnut beat the crap out of him. Steeling himself, he knocked on the door of the twins' house and tried to adopt a stern, somewhat scary face.

Minka opened the door.

She looked actively worried now, and the small child that had been trailing her before was now clinging to her skirts, hiding from the strange man.

"Minka, hi," he tried to say in a casual way, but it came out sort of passive-aggressive. "I came to see Tuffnut..."

"He's out," she told him flatly.

"Okay, could I come in and wait?"

She didn't say anything, just opened the door wider to let him in to the Thorstons' sparsely furnished kitchen. The basket he'd seen her carrying earlier was on their table and as he placed himself near the fire, she gathered some grain from it and started grinding it in a bowl. The small child toddled over to the well-groomed stuffed yak and played with its hair.

An awful thought occurred to Hiccup now. Not only was Tuffnut picking on Minka's brothers, but he had some sort of hold over her that was keeping her here, working for him. And she was probably too intimidated by him to ask for help. Well, that was going to change. He would see to that.

"Minka," he began, "what are you doing here?"

Her back went ramrod straight.

"Frankly, chiefs' son or not, I don't see how it's any of your business."

She was defending him. Tuffnut had her trapped good and proper.

"Look, I know he's kind of scary, but you said it, I'm the son of the chief! Whatever sort of hold he has over you and your brothers, I can help you!" he told her.

"What are you talking about?" She looked genuinely confused now.

And that was when Tuffnut chose to make his entrance, with two of the three brothers in tow.

"Urgh, I'm freezing my nuts off out there..." he said by way of an introduction. "Huh? Hiccup? What're you doing here?"

"I have no idea," Minka said dismissively as she helped her brothers take off their furs.

The brothers chattered at her excitedly, jostling each other trying to be first to show her what was in their travel bags.

"I came here to talk to you, actually," Hiccup said, trying to adopt his stern-Viking chief stance again and failing. With the kids and Minka here, it would be impossible to bring the subject up.

"Okay, cool," Tuffnut said. "You staying for dinner then?"

"Uh, sure?" he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Minka frown.

One of the little boys bounded up to Tuffnut with his bag.

"Dinner! Can we have my rabbit for dinner?" he asked, tugging on Tuffnut's arm in a way that seemed a lot more affectionate than one would normally expect to act towards one's tormentor.

"No!" the other boy shouted as he struggled half-in and half-out of his furs. "We're having my bird!"

The boys looked like they were going to come to blows, but Tuffnut intervened with a casualness that suggested he'd done it before.

"Ruffnut's bringing back fish for tonight, and then she'll help you skin your rabbit and pluck your bird. You can have them tomorrow."

"Okay," the boys agreed, and that was that.

Ruffnut arrived back just then, with the third boy trailing behind her.

"Sorry we're late," she said breathlessly. "This dingus fell in the creek, then I fell in the creek trying to get him out..."

"We caught this fish!" the little boy bundled up in a colossal amount of furs told the room. "A really big one."

"I had to hold it down so he could hit it with a rock," she told them.

"A really big rock."

The really big fish was handed to Minka, who gutted it, buried it in rock salt and a half dozen herbs and started baking it over a fire. If this little boy was in any way put out by being called a dingus by Ruffnut, he was very good at hiding it because he was looking at her with nothing short of hero worship.

"Leif caught a rabbit, a pretty big one," Tuffnut told her. "And Rork caught a full-grown pheasant."

The boys swelled with pride as they took out their catches to show to Ruffnut, who was admiring but not condescending. While the smell of the baking fish filled the house, Ruffnut carefully skinned the rabbit with the boys watching intently. Although she wasn't giving them any instructions, Hiccup recognized a lesson being taught. Then she did the same with the bird, plucking it with utmost care to avoid damaging the feathers or the skin of the bird.

Dinner was an odd affair. The kids were routinely teased, mostly by Tuffnut, but they lapped it up as if he was complimenting them. Ruffnut practically pretended they weren't there and made small talk with Minka, who was almost silent otherwise. Hiccup just kept his mouth shut. Sometimes, when the small kids weren't looking, one of the twins poured a heavy scoop of their own food onto the kids' plates. Minka saw and said nothing.

After the dishes had been cleared away and the children were nodding on their feet, the toddler already slumped across the back of the stuffed yak snoring contently, Hiccup overheard Tuffnut and Minka talking.

"I only got half of it ground today, I'll just drop them off to the house and come back..." she began.

"Leave it, you've done enough today."

Hiccup had only heard that soft tone come into Tuffnut's voice under certain circumstances; when he was being nice to or about his sister, or his dragon, or the rare times he mentioned his mother or father.

"Okay, I'll be here early tomorrow to do the rest," Minka said, and then she was bustling the children out the door, carrying the sleeping toddler over her shoulder. Tuffnut closed the door and turned to Hiccup.

"So, you wanted to talk to me?"

"Uh... I just...wanted to ask you how you get your hair so shiny," Hiccup said.

...

"I don't get it."

He had been repeating that same sentence all morning, and once again Astrid was contemplating either suicide or murder.

"What's there to get? Sounds like they help the twins out with the bread and the foraging and stuff. What's wrong with that?" she said.

"That part I get, it's the meanness. Why do they put up with it?"

"Well, didn't Minka's parents die recently?"

He stopped. He hadn't thought to ask where their parents were in all of this.

"Okay, look," Astrid began. "I have a theory, but it might be a bit hard for you to hear."

"Why would it be hard for me to hear? Tell me," he insisted.

"Remember back when the twins were starving? And I don't mean like 'really, really hungry, I mean back when they nearly died."

"What? When did that happen?" he asked incredulously.

"After their Mom died. You weren't hanging out with us then so you must not have noticed. But we did."

"Who's we?"

"Me, Fishlegs, even Snotlout picked up on it. We were working on the fire extinguishing detail by then, they could barely lift a bucket between them they were so weak. She trembled a little at the memory. "It was pretty awful."

"I'll bet," said Hiccup, trying to imagine either twin as weak and failing.

"We tried to help them. We all used to bring extra food around with us and try to give it to them but they wouldn't take it. Snotlout made this huge ridiculous sandwich and had to drag it around with him all day because they wouldn't take a single bite."

Hiccup stared at her.

"Like, this one time I had Ruff over for the night and we were braiding each other's hair and other stupid girly crap, and I was brushing her hair and it just started falling out. In clumps. And even after that, she still wouldn't take any food from me," she finished, sounding almost teary.

"Why?" he asked.

"Pride," she answered. "They were ashamed that they couldn't take care of themselves. Stupid Viking pride."

"And... you think that's what's happening here?"

"Sure. Minka's the same age they were when it happened, they know how to survive what she's going through. But they're trying to help her in a way that doesn't hurt her pride.

He had to admit, it made sense.

...

The next day, while catching the fleeting rays of the sun on the roof with Toothless, Hiccup saw Tuffnut and one of the little boys leaving the brewery with three enormous packages. The little boy stumbled under the weight of his and looked set to teeter into the dirt, but Tuffnut's foot shot out and steadied him before he could fall. Then Tuffnut called him a name and strode on ahead of him.

Hiccup smiled to himself. It was nice when your friends proved themselves to be even better people than you thought they were.

...

And in the darkest days, after they'd returned to find Ruffnut missing and probably lost forever, and the group so splintered they could barely look at each other, and Tuffnut holed himself up in his house and nothing could convince him to come out, Minka was the only person who saw him.

She went there every day, cooked three meals whether he ate them or not, kept the house clean (including Ruffnut's room, because deep down she was sure she'd be back) and left again to look after her family.

When Tuffnut started talking again, he talked to her.

...

toryanse toryanse
koko wa doko no hosomichi ja?
tenjin-sama no hosomichi ja?
chotto toshite kudashanse
goyou no nai mono toshasenu
kono ko no nanatsu no oiwai ni
ofuda wo osame ni mairimasu
iki wa yoiyoi kaeri wa kowai
kowai nagaramo toryanse
toryanse

Let me pass Let me pass
What is this narrow path here?
The narrow path of the Tenjin?
Please just let me pass
Those without good reason shall not pass
I shall come to give my offerings
for this child's seventh birthday
Going is fun but returning is scary
Even in my fear let me pass
Let me pass