Book 6 - Mystery of Shadow Mountain - Chapter 1: Starting with a Storm

Mystery of Shadow Mountain

Chapter 1

Starting with a Storm

         “Ugg.  I thought we were going to be doing mystery stuff with our dragons,” declared Hannah Olson.

         Her younger sister, Abbie, added, “Not that I want to agree with her, as I rarely should, but I was expecting a little bit more than just a boat ride.”

         Abbie folded her arms as my father, Sigvald Mollerson, stepped down from the bow and corrected Abbie, “Really, it should be called a ship.  The boat is the scouting boat on the side.  Row boat… sail boat…”

         Hannah quipped, “Sail boat?  Well, what are we doing with the wind now?  The wind is just happening to run into our sail and push our bo… ship along?”

         My father chuckled, “Technically, you are right.  But look at it this way.  A boat can fit in or on a ship.  A ship cannot fit in or on a boat.  Unless we are talking about shipping a couple, that is another story.”

         I could only facepalm, “That’s what I was thinking of saying, but when you say… Nah, it does not come across the same way.”

         “Oh, Jarl,” my mother, Svana, interrupted.  “You don’t know Sigvald like I do.  He will do that as much as he can, especially if you guys are around, Jarl, Asvord, and Elsa, but he does get a lot of chances to bounce these jokes off people because he’s stuck on Berk… I mean… Working on Berk.”

         My dad just rolled his eyes and went back to taking command of the ship.

         As you all well know by now, I am Jarl Mollerson, self-proclaimed world’s best mystery conqueror.

         “Who are you talking to?” asks Cazi as she walks behind me as I lean over the side of the ship.

         “Uh…,” I stutter somewhat caught off guard.  “Just talking to myself.”

         “Oh, okay,” Cazi continued.

         Anyway, she does bring up a good point.  No one will know what I am saying until I write it down in my books.  I have four of my five mysteries written down.  Have not had much of a chance to write down my last mystery.  However, when I get time, I take notes on my mystery, so I can write them down at any time.  So, if I were writing my book this very minute, what I am saying would be the narration of the story; also, what my thoughts are.  I have gone back and forth with myself, debating whether or not these narration thoughts should have quotation marks or not.  Technically, I am speaking so it is dialogue.  But at the same times, it is the narration which does not need quotation marks.

         Why am I talking to myself again?  Oh, yeah…

         My name is… I did that… Moving on…

         Setting the scene, we are out on the sea in a ship sailing westward.  The ship is a large ship with one main sail in the middle.  The companions I have with me are the following: Annabeth Everdeen, Cazi Olson along with her two younger sisters, Hannah and Abbie, Dawn Evergreen technically Everdeen, Angie Carolina, Ali Clar the Kind, Garth of Izar, Hyrith son of Goldern, Explodantor son of Ragvald, Meen Mordson, and my two sisters, the one older than me, Asvord, and the one younger than me Elsa.  My father is heading this journey and my mother is accompanying.  Dad is acting captain as the rest of us as our crew; mother is First Mate.

         Since The Secret Symbol, there has been no new mystery for us to solve.  For all intents and purposes, we have just been mulling about.  At the suggestion of my dad and a few ideas from Hiccup, I decided that my friends and I should undergo some training.  We are all great vikings with our dragons.  But are we good without them?  That is the question.  Vikings at one point obviously had to fight dragons, and thus, being a viking now is just not being good with a dragon.  What if at some point we are separated from our dragons?  Or, something happened to our dragons and we would have to do things the old-fashioned way?  This is way this training exercise is supposed to help with:  My friends and I to know what it takes to successfully sail from one point to another, on a ship, for a few days, survive on an island, and fend for ourselves, all without having our dragons at any point.

         Annabeth comes over to my right side and leans over the edge like I am and putting her left arm around me, giving me a small hug, “How are you doing?”

         “Fine,” I replied.  “How are you?”

         “A bit worried about you,” came her answer.

         “Worried about me?” I echoed.

         Annabeth explained, “Yes, I am.  Though it has only been a short period of time between your last mystery and now, but you need a mystery to work on.”

         I responded with, “Having a mystery is nice and I enjoy a good one, don’t get me wrong, but I see it differently now.  This last week has really shown me a lot and who I am as a person.  I now understand.”

         “What would that be?” asks Annabeth.

         “Now that I have you, that is all I’ll ever need,” I smiled.

         “Well,” Annabeth chuckled.  “You’ll need air, food, water, exercise, a few other things…”

         “Haha, very funny,” I laughed.  “I actually thought of that right as you said it.”

         Annabeth then rested her head on my right shoulder, reaching around and through with her arms to hold on to my right arm, she said, “I hope you were going to say that.  It is the same with me to you, besides the obvious needs for staying alive.  I’ll always be by your side.”

         At the end of my last mystery, I finally made the decision of betrothal to my best friend of what seems like many years over the course of several adventures.  Marrying my beloved Annabeth Everdeen is as good as done right now, we just need to plan ahead, get a date set, and sort a few other things out.  We both agree there is no rush.  On the other hand, we have known each other from about five years now, so, we do not want to wait too much longer.  It has been long enough.  We just want to take everything in stride and do the right thing.

         We stood there for a few minutes gazing across the ocean.  Then my father called me to the bow of the ship.  I stood up and turned to see what he wants.

         “Okay,” Annabeth retorted, sighing as she sat her right elbow on the edge of the ship to rest her chin in the palm of her right hand.  “Maybe not physically by your side at every waking moment.”

         “Sorry,” dad chuckled.  “but I wouldn’t call him if it wasn’t important.”

         Seeing my father’s expression that it is important, I started for him.  But not before kissing the left side of Annabeth’s head.

         Briskly walking up to meet him, I say, “What’s up?”

         Father hands me his spy glass and points as he answers, “West by northwest, one hundred yards.”

         Looking at the place he is pointing to, I study the area.  It did not take me more than a few seconds to see what is wrong.

         “Shipwreck,” I declared.  This got everyone’s attention.

         “That’s what I think too, but something’s strange,” father reported.  “And I don’t like to see something strange on the horizon.”

         “That is not all that is on the horizon.  There is something else,” I add.  “A storm is going.  Look at the front moving in.”

         I point out a layer of clouds forming a storm front; the clouds are starting to roll back on themselves.  This happens when a warm front meets and cold front.  By the looks of things, the cold front is trying to go over the warm front.  Because cold air naturally falls to the ground and warm air rises, when two fronts who try to flip the roles, storms brew and rise up.  The two forces create a conflict in wanting to go down while the other wants to go up.  This conflict brings forth the storm.

         Father agreed, “Seeing the clouds the other day, I knew it was going to rain.  Good opportunity for a storm too; about due for one.”

         Dawn could not believe her ears, “You knew it was going to rain, let alone storm?”

         “When you put it that way, it sounds less inviting of a challenge to something I was not intending it to be like,” father explained.  “I wanted you guys to have the full experience of what it is like on the seas, storms and challenges in all.”

         Cazi then said, “That does make sense.”

         Hannah brashly questioned, “Sense?  What, do you want us to be in danger?”

         Annabeth haphazardly interjected, “Welcome to life with the Mollersons.”

         Hannah is about to continue, but Cazi stepped in, “It makes sense from the point of view of getting something out of this voyage to learn from.  If there are no challenges, how are you going to remember what you learned?  The best way is through application to your situational practice.”

         Hannah began to open her mouth yet stopped short realizing her older sibling is correct; Hannah folded her arms a muttered, “Shut op Skrill-Face.”

         I always wondered what it would be like if my crew had a Snotlout and Twins.  Now, I know.  Cazi tells me Hannah is more like Snotlout than anybody she knows, other than Snotlout.  Abbie’s a bit more laid back or reserved, but she will be ready to step up when her name is called.

         My crew does not have a “twin like viking” in the bunch, probably for the best.  I do not know even if there is another pair of vikings much like the twins.  Although the Olson Triplets, Cazi’s three younger brothers, come very close.  In my crew as it stands, Dawn could be compared to the twins in certain aspects.  Dawn will go on her first instinct and go all in as do the Twins do.  Dawn’s saving grace maybe that she is a Berserker and that is what they normally do.  That being said, they have more control over it and usually will not cause too much trouble; most of the time.

         My father gave some orders to us the crew of the ship to secure all belongings and gear either down below in the hold or fasten down on deck.  All ropes for the large sail are tightened and checked to make sure they will not come lose if or rather when we are tossed by the waves of the sea and knocked by the winds.

         Father maneuvered the ship towards the shipwreck to investigate.  As soon as we neared it, we all felt a rush of cold air come at us.

         Dawn announced, “Why did it have to get so cold all of a sudden?”

         “That’s what a cold front will do to you,” I replied.  “Though, this is much colder than most fronts are.  So, the rest of you better be on your best guard because a front this cold means there is going to be winds to match in intensity as well as a storm.”

         Everyone nodded and became serious.

         My father pulled the ship up alongside the starboard side of the ship, the right side, and set anchor to investigate.  My father, mother, Annabeth, and I jumped from ship to ship to see what is going on.

         “Jarl,” came my dad.  “You and Annabeth check below.  I’ll check the captain’s quarters and the deck for any clues.”

         “Alright,” I answered.

         On this particular ship, the captain’s quarters are on the main deck.  Progressing down the cargo hold steps, with Annabeth behind me, we see a completely empty hold.

         Annabeth wondered, “Either they just got through with a cargo drop off, or someone picked it clean.”

         “It might just be me and thinking of the mystery part of it,” I started.  “But I would pick the latter.  Why would a ship of this nature just be sitting out in the middle of the ocean with no cargo?  My guess is this ship was attacked, hence the damaged mast and outside hull.  No signs of struggles, however.  If there was a fight, whoever it was cleaned up after themselves leaving no evidence of anything.”

         The ship is not huge, but it is still a fairly good side cargo ship.  There was no sail on the mast, so we could not see if this is a Berkian ship.  Just by the looks of it and the way it is built, there is no way this is a ship from Berk.

         “Jarl, get up here,” called out my father.

         Quickly obeying, Annabeth and I ran up the stairs.

         Father quickly said, “The quarters have been picked clean and no clues as to what clan this ship belongs to.  But we have bigger problems on our hands.”

         Father pointed and started from our ship.  He points towards the storm front moving in and man do the clouds look ominous.  It is still the middle of the day, but with the cold front past us and the storm front nearly on top of us, the ominous clouds of a very dark gray caused the sun to be completely blocked out.  For the middle of the day, it became dark.  Still as light as a cloudy day would, but adding in the dark clouds, and it seems darker.

         “We need to find our island soon,” mother declared.

         Asvord asked, “What island?”

         Father replied as he hurriedly reeled in the anchor with the help of Hyrith and Garth, “The island we are taking you guys to is to do some good old fashioned viking survival training.  With this storm, we all may get a little bit more than we bargained for.  We must reach landfall before the heart of the storm hits.”

         Father then told Hyrith, Explod, Garth, and myself to man the oars, to increase our speed going into the wind.  Father is at the helm, steering with the rudder.  Annabeth, Cazi, and Asvord are to make sure all of the ropes to everything, mainly the sail, stay secured, fastened, and tightened.  Dawn, Hannah, Angie, and Ali all volunteered to be additional rowers.  My father gladly accepted as we need as much speed as we can get going into the wind.  Finally, Elsa, Abbie, and Meen were told by my father to help spot land or any obstacles in the way of the ship; mother would help monitor them to help as well as spot.

         Everyone now became silent, ready for orders.  All that could be heard is the wind.  The cold could definitely be felt.  I am on the left side with Hyrith, Explod, Dawn, and Hannah currently rowing.  Father also started us on a rhythm to keep us going at the same time, both sides rowing in unison.

         The storm constantly picks up in intensity.  The water became quite choppy and larger waves started forming.  With us rowing, we are able to get the ship up to a quick and constant speed.

         Ten minutes later, the seas began to become very choppy.  We also could see the rain coming from about a mile away.  As the rain continued to come, the wind mustered up a very large wave coming straight for us.  Father angled the ship not directly for the wave, but at a diagonal so as to less the magnitude of the wave against the ship.

         “When I give the signal, guys,” father addressed the ones rowing.  About two minutes later as the wave is about to hit, “Bring in the oars and brace yourselves.”

         We, who were rowing, immediately brought in the oars and secured them.  We stood in a bracing stance as the wave rose our ship up.  The wave itself is not all that violent.  The angle at which it titled the ship is quite steep.  Our feet wanted to slide out from under us, but leaning forward plus holding on to the edge or parts of the ship helped.

         As we reached the picked, Abbie yelled out as the ship went down the other side of the wave, “Land yo!  Four hundred yards off starboard bow!”

         “Thank you, Abbie!” declared father just to acknowledge the report.  “Rowers!  Back to your stations!  We need to go full speed ahead to make it to that island!  It should be the one we are looking for, but at this point, any island will do.”

         The rest of the designated rowers and myself unsecured the oars and went back to our spot we had been previously.  Dad started the rhythm through a chant and the ship gained speed as we tried to make the island before the heart of the storm hit.  A few minutes later, the rain came and started pour pouring buckets of water on us, excluding the buckets.

         Then a flash of lightning very close by struck and a clap of thunder sounded ten times louder than Fredrick belching!

I fixed it and put "yo".