The Reindeer Girl by Holly Webb Read Free Book Online Page A

boots, binding them up with practised speed. She smiled wryly to herself, thinking how different this was from eight days ago, when she hadn’t even known how to put them on. Then she unlaced the door of the
lavvu
, stepping out into the night cold.
    Karl was a pale little shape in the darkness, and he whimpered and groaned as he heard her coming.

    “I know,” Lotta whispered. “It’s all right. We’re going to look for her. I know they said we mustn’t, but you’ll die if we don’t find her.” She wrapped her arms around the little calf’s neck. “I think this might be why I’m here. I’ve got to find your mother and rescue you both.”
    She started to untie the woven reindeer-leather rope that was fastening him to the tree, and then thought for a minute. She needed some supplies. They might be away for a good few hours, and she would need food. It seemed unfair, when Karlwould be starving, but she would be no good to him if she couldn’t keep going, and in this cold, food was necessary. And perhaps she had better bring a knife, just in case. Johan had told her that he had seen bears in these woods, and she remembered Oldeforeldre talking about wolves.
    She crept back into the
lavvu
, looking for a knife to borrow. She was searching around by the cooking pots at the edge of the fire, when a hand closed round her foot. Lotta strangled a scream, stuffing her hand into her mouth.
    “What are you doing?” Erika whispered. “Why are you up?”
    “I’m going to find Flower,” Lotta whispered back. “I can’t let Karl starve.”
    “You can’t!” Erika hissed. “Not on your own!”
    Lotta shook her head stubbornly. “I’m going to. I’m not going to abandon them.”
    Erika sat up. “I’m coming with you then. I want to find her, too.”
    Lotta nodded. “All right. Get some food, can you? I’m just finding a knife.”
    “Bring one for me. And I’d better give the dogs something,” Erika added. “Otherwise they might follow us.” She laid a little dried meat in front of the four dogs and whispered, “Shhh…”
    The two girls crept out, put on their skis and untied Karl.
    “We might have to carry him some of the way,” Lotta said, as they set off through the trees. “But I want to get him and Flower back together as soon as we can. We can’t leave him at the camp.”
    It was lucky that both girls had sleptin the daytime. Lotta felt wide awake now that they had decided on a plan. The moon was full and bright, and she could quite easily see the tracks of the hundreds of reindeer in the snow, with the marks of the sledge runners and skis here and there.
    “We can’t miss our way,” she said to Erika, smiling with relief. “It’s so clear.” Erika nodded. “I know – and the sun is rising earlier and earlier now it’s springtime. It shouldn’t be more than two or three hours that we’re walking in the dark. We might even end up going faster than all of us together were earlier on, you know. The snow’s harder in the cold of the night, and we haven’t got to keep stopping to chase back any stragglers.”
    The girls strode out strongly, and even Karl seemed glad to be walking, as thoughhe knew they were going back to find his mother. Lotta had brought a little grain for him, but she was hoping that they’d find Flower soon so that they wouldn’t need it.
    It was just as the sun was rising, and the light was creeping through the trees, that they came to the frozen river. Erika was sure they had crossed it late in the afternoon of the previous day, when Lotta had been asleep.
    “It
is
melting,” Erika said, a little anxiously. “I can hear it, the water flowing just under the ice crust.”
    “Is it safe to cross?” Lotta asked, testing it with her ski.
    “I think it is for now. But maybe not for much longer.” Erika set out quickly over the ice, and Lotta followed, trying not tohear the creaks and cracking noises as she and Karl crossed the river.
    As Lotta looked back, she