The Reindeer Girl by Holly Webb Read Free Book Online

Lotta, or you’d sleep the night through on that sledge, you and the little reindeer. Come on.” She unwrapped Lotta and helped her to stand up. Lotta yawned and groaned as she stretched her cramped legs, and then crouched down to untie Karl.
    “I wonder where your mother is,” she said, looking around for Flower. “Mamma, have you seen her?”
    Mamma frowned. “No… Not since we stopped here. Erika! Johan! Have you seen the mother reindeer?”
    Erika appeared at the door to the
lavvu
, looking worried. “Isn’t she here? She was following the sledge!”
    “But she always stays close to Karl,” Lotta murmured. “Where can she have gone?”
    Erika looked upset. “I’m sorry – I was so tired, I was concentrating on walking. I just thought she was there…”
    “And I was asleep,” Lotta said guiltily. “I don’t know when I last saw her – soon after we set off again this afternoon, I suppose.”
    “The mother? I thought she was at the back of the column,” Johan said. “I saw her there earlier on this afternoon.”
    “She must have got tired and fallen behind!” Lotta cried. “We have to go and find her.”
    “In the dark?” Johan frowned. “We can’t, Lotta. It isn’t safe. We have to stay with the herd.”
    “I know,” Lotta said. “But Flower should be with the herd, too, and we left her behind. It’s my fault for falling asleep. I was supposed to watch out for her. Please, can’t we go back and look?”
    Erika nodded. “She might only be a little way back along the trail.”
    “I’m sorry, girls.” Lotta’s mamma exchanged glances with Johan and shook her head.
    “Tomorrow morning then?” Lotta pleaded.
    “I don’t think we can wait,” her mamma said gently. “She could have wandered a long way off our trail, and we need to keep going, as fast as we can.”
    “So we just have to leave her?” Erika whispered.
    Lotta swallowed back tears. She hatedto think of Flower, lost and all alone without her herd. But then as Karl wriggled in her arms and let out the honking noise that meant he was hungry, Lotta realized something even worse.
    Without his mother to feed him, Karl was going to starve.

Chapter Seven

    Lotta lay warmly wrapped up in the
lavvu
, watching the dying embers of the fire. She knew she ought to go back to sleep – it would be another long day tomorrow. But she just couldn’t. She had slept a little earlier in the night, worn out from crying, but then she’d woken again.
    Flower was out there somewhere. And Karl was tied up to one of the trees, just outside the
lavvu
, hungry and miserable. She and Erika had tried to get him to take some grain, but he’d hardly had any of it. He wanted to feed from his mother, like he always did. And he didn’t understand where she had gone.
    If they had been with the rest of the female reindeer, Lotta and Erika could have tried to milk one of them and fedthe milk to Karl. But here they had no milk to give him at all. And it would take them at least three more days to reach the calving grounds. Karl wouldn’t last that long without food.
    Lotta sniffed and turned over, listening to the snuffles and soft sighs as the rest of her family slept. Then she heard a plaintive honking noise, and her breath caught in a sob. That was Karl, outside, calling hungrily for his mother.
    It was no good. She couldn’t leave him out there like this. Even if he did make it to the calving grounds, it would be hard to find a mother reindeer who would feed him as well as her own calf, and they would all be skittish and hard to milk now they had their new babies.
    Lotta couldn’t let him fade away.Her pappa had told her to look after Flower and Karl. She couldn’t let them all down. She got up carefully, climbing over Erika and Nils and her aunt, and making for the door. The dogs were sleeping, too, and although Cam opened one eye to look at her, Lotta put her finger to her lips, and he didn’t bark.
    Lotta shrugged on her big coat and her