The Clue of the Missing Socks - Chapter 44

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my fellow vikings!  Oh and Happy Snoggletog too!  Now we have a new holiday we can celebrate in the month of December.

As my Christmas present to all of you, Chapter 44 is posted on Christmas Eve.  And as another present, I will post my final chapter, number 45, on Christmas Day.  And very possibly the first chapter of my sequel, The Mysterious Frozen Fire, by the end of the week.

I hope you all enjoy the holidays while you enjoy reading my latest chapter.

The Clue of the Missing Socks

Chapter 44

          “Are you alright Meen?” I asked running over to her.

          “Yes, I’m fine,” she said.  “But this guy.. eh.. not so much.”

          “He’s just out cold,” Hattori said checking GR.  “Good thing he was wearing a helmet or he might have a massive head ache when he wakes up.”

          “Well I didn’t swing as hard as I could have, so that probably helped,” added Meen.  “Though his head is gonna be ringing when he wakes up.”

          “Could we get a move on now, because I don’t want to stick around and wait for the answer to those ‘bells’,” replied Asvord untying the boat.

          We all chuckled and jumped into the boat and shoved off; people then volunteered to do the rowing.  I looked back as we started drifting out to sea with the tide, I saw Adam climbing up back onto the pier.  He did a slight nod as if telling he’s still on our side.  I acknowledged with another slight head nod.  With that Adam went over and checked his “boss” GR.

          Cullan, Pat, Jack, Hattori, Thoreous, and Explod were at the sides of the boat rowing.  To insure we could make a quicker get away, Cazi got out two extra oars.  Ashley and Asvord took the oars and sat opposite each other in front of Hattori and Cullan.  I told Asvord and Ashley I could do the rowing instead, but they both said they would be fine.  Bergr offered to row as well, but they said they could handle it.  And that they did.  It seemed at times they rowed faster than the other boys.  I helped steer at the rudder.

          We made very good time.  And after ten minutes of rowing, it looked like there was no attempt to follow us.  Within the next five minutes, we arrived at the island where we had set up our base camp.

          “I forgot how much rowing put a strain on your arms and back,” stated Pat as he jumped out of the boat and stretched to loosen up.

          We saw the rest of the dragons soon after that rush over and great their riders that had been gone.

          “You can sometimes get spoiled riding a dragon.  But I think it is a good spoil,” she said as she hugged Seabreez who rushed up to meet her.

          “I’ve missed you so,” voiced Elsa as she hugged her Meatballs.

          “We’ve only been gone three hours at best,” I said, while giving Fredrick several good rubs and scratches around his neck.  “But still I agree.”

          “Man I’ve never seen this many different types of dragons all in the same place at the same time,” Bergr spoke.  “and trained ones at that.  The only trained dragon I’ve seen has been Sparklebolt.”

          My sisters and I walked over and hugged our mother.  I then introduced her to our newly made friend in Bergr Kryson.

          “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” said mother as she shook Bergr’s hand.

          “Same here,” replied Bergr.

          My friends that were not with us when we met Bergr, I introduced them to him.  They all exchanged greetings.

          “So do you think GR and his gang will follow us now?” asked sapphire.

          “I’m not entirely sure,” I wondered.

          “So then we ought to study my books and get on our way.  Shouldn’t we?” stated Bergr.

          Nearby was a large, flat boulder that we used as our table.  Everyone gathered around the boulder to see.  I gave Bergr the three notebooks.  Bergr then told us that Book 1 was a journal of Hamish II and Bergr’s grandfather, Herigar Kyrson, daily findings and clues they found and or solved.  Book 2 was a collection of extra notes that Hamish II and Herigar had written down.  Book 3 was a map that led you from Cazi and Bergr’s island to another island further south.

          Bergr then read what he told us was Hamish’s last entry into Book 2.  Bergr started to read Hamish’s last entry notes, “Entry 112:  It is less than a month before Snoggletog; so I must solve this mystery, or get close enough to the end so that another can solve it before the winter sets in.  This island that these ‘two taverns’ are on, I have been to it thrice.  The island is uninhabited by vikings, but there are signs of dragons either living on the island or just visiting the island as like a ‘rest stop’ of some sort.”

          The notes continued on to say, “On my second visit to ‘Two Tavern Island’, during the day I witnessed a marvelous sight: a beautiful black dragon fly over head and into the left entrance to the first tavern.  This black dragon flew a lot similar to a dragon that has been terrorizing Berk for some time now.  When the black dragon exited, it was ambushed by a white Monstrous Nightmare with small gold highlights all over its body.  The black dragon acted as if it had encountered the Nightmare before, but the black dragon seemed ready for him this time.  The black dragon dodged the Nightmare’s best attacks but then quickly scared of the dragon just by firing what looked like blue lava or some type of plasma blasts on both sides of the Nightmare.  The Nightmare then seemed frightened.  It screamed at the black dragon and then flew off.  The black dragon then seemed to nod as it watched the Nightmare fly off, and then it nodded again when it looked back at the Tavern it had been in.  After that it flew away.”

          “When I felt it was safe, I entered the tavern that the black dragon had exited.  After a little exploring, I found some dragon eggs.  The colors of the eggs were as follows:  dark blue, red, and black.  The eggs were beautiful.  After some more exploring I found that there were markings on the walls of the tavern.  I examined these markings and found that vikings had once lived on this island, but only for a short time.  Continuing to explore the tunnels, I came across a wall in my path.  Here is a sketch of that wall.”

          Beneath these notes in the book was a drawing of the wall.

          “This wall was probably the entrance to something very important, though I couldn’t stay long enough to examine it further; other than the fact there was a specific pedestal on either side of the wall.  On those pedestals were indentations.  I speculated that some type of object had to be placed there to enter the other side.”

          “As I said I visited this island thrice.  The last time I came to this island I did little more.  All the other caves in the tavern kept coming back to the entrance to the second tavern.  Herie and I could never figure out what these pedestals needed.  We tried to get through the wall every way we knew how, but to no avail.  After this all other clues about this mystery led back to the island.  Because of this, Herie and I decided to leave it alone for we had better things to be doing.  He and I both leave these notes so that others might be able to pick up where we left off.”

          “Whoa that is some interesting facts there,” voiced Jack surprisingly.

          “Well now we know where to go, so let’s go,” I said.

          We broke camp and packed up everything.  That took only five minutes.

          “Before we leave, I made a little something to give us some energy,” said mother.

          “Thanks mom,” Asvord said.

          “Yes, thank you Mrs. Mollerson,” replied pretty much everyone or a version of that.

          What we snacked on were protein bars that she had made back at Berk.   They were dried oatmeal cooked with raisins, elderberry grapes, and a few more ingredients that kept the bar together.

          We were shortly on our way to the island.  By now it was the middle of the afternoon when we were flying to the island.  I looked at the map in Book 3 and I took point, everyone else followed.  The trip lasted a half hour, even when riding our dragons.

          “This trip must have taken a very long time back in Hamish II’s day, because they would have had to take a boat,” said Pat as we arrived at the “Two Tavern Island”.  “The try to get to Cazi’s and Bergr’s island would have taken half the day, and the trip down here to this island would have taken less time, but still would be a long trip."

          “No wonder Hamish II only took three trips to this island,” stated Asvord.  “He and Herigar would have been tired just from the sailing alone.”

          “Yeah my grandfather often spoke of the long trips,” replied Bergr.  “But they passed the time by playing a game called ‘checkers’.  Hamish was quite good at it took.”

          “Interesting,” I said.

          We circled the island twice to scout the island and saw that it was a very small island.  It seemed just big enough to fit the two taverns.  However as we neared and got closer down to the island, we all noticed there was a great big mountain in the middle of it.  This island could have been a volcano once, because the top of the mountain came to an unusual small flat peek; that was concave making an indentation in the top.  Bergr directed us over to the northwest side of the island.

          “While growing up with school and then working at The Hole after that, I couldn’t find much time to come over here,” explained Bergr.  “I’ve only been here a couple of times, probably not more than two; and those two times were a very long time ago.  So given that amount of time, things have probably changed on the island.”

          “You’re probably right,” I agreed.  “The wear and tear on the island by the weather alone would change the landscape of it.  Not to mention any of the dragons that would have come here.”  After I said this we had landed and gotten off of our dragons.  The entrances to the taverns were very close to the beach.  From the beach to the entrances, there were no trees.  It was all open.  Though there was a large forest around the rest of the island.  The forest also stretched over part of the mountain.

          We did not see any dragon while we circled the island, so we came to the conclusion that we would not see any dragons down on the island.  When we landed at the entrance to the first tavern, we noticed that the second tavern’s entrance is blocked.  It was blocked by a cave-in apparently.

          “Well that takes care of entering from that side,” mother said.

          After entering the first tavern’s entrance, caves were huge.  The first big room in the tavern was large enough to fit all of our dragons with plenty of extra space left over.

          I turned the page in Book 3 and saw that Hamish II had drawn a detailed map of all of the tunnels that he and Herigar had explored.  Though the tavern was huge, there was very little light entering the tavern.  I saw on the side of the wall that there were torches in holders.  Asvord had already gone over to get one before I had looked up.

          “Spiker could you light it up for me?” she asked and then queued her dragon by saying a command she had previously taught Spiker, “Spiker, short blast.”  Spiker then complied and fired a small, short blast to light the torch.

          Asvord then walked over to me and held it so I could see the book better.

          “Thanks Vordy,” I responded.

          “You are welcome, Jarl,” she replied.

          I then studied the map of the tavern.  I noticed that Hamish had later noted that the second entrance from the second tavern had been caved in.  Hamish noted that Herigar had told him this one time after coming to the island and then relayed it to Hamish when he visited Berk once.

          Everyone else was looking at it the map as well.

          “Look here,” said Ashley pointing to a spot on the map.  “This must be the entrance to the tunnel we are looking for.”

          “I think you’re right, because none of these other tunnels go anywhere.  These must have been the tunnels Hamish was talking that only led back to this open area we are in now.”

          “So that would mean that..,” Meen started to say as she looked up to see which tunnel entrance it would be from the open area we were in.  “..that one.” She pointed to the one that was directly southeast of the entrance to the tavern.

          “Well let’s go,” Bergr stated.

          As we started to walk, Hattori then questioned, “If you have been to the island Bergr, how come you did not tell us where this tunnel was?”

          “To be frank, I actually forgot,” Bergr replied.

          “Oh,” said Hattori.  “You did say that you hadn’t been here in a very long time, so that would explain it.”

          The tunnel that we were in was large enough to hold three dragons next to each other, but was tall enough to fit three more dragons on top of them.

          “For a small island, this sure can hold a lot of room under this mountain,” stated Elsa.

          “Well for one thing little sister,” I started.  “Since this is a large mountain, there can be rises and falls in the tunnels because of the room that the mountain covers.  Also, the tunnels can also go below sea level often because the peeks that we see of low lying mountains in the sea are just a fraction of the actual size of the mountain.  This being said, the mountain could go all the way down to the ocean floor.  And we don’t know how far down that could be.”

          We were near a sharp turn and decline in the tunnel path.

          “Watch your step here,” said Bergr.  “The first one is-,”

          “Ahhh!” I let out as I took that first step.  My footing must have slipped and I slid down the tunnel.

          “Jarl!” Asvord screamed as she reached out to grab my hand.

          She was only able to slap my hand, as I then slid down the sharp decline.