Dottie Blanket and the Hilltop Page 5

  She shut her eyes tight and ‘collected’ it as the tired mother sheep shifted away. Its heavy bottom shuffled along the straw.

  ‘Is the mother OK?’ asked Winnie. ‘Why isn’t the lamb bleating?’

  Blod, too busy to answer, put her fingers deep in the lamb’s mouth. She pulled out lots of goo and threw it on the floor.

  ‘Cold as ice,’ said Blod. ‘Quick. Back to the house.’

  So they ran and hobbled back to the kitchen, where Blod did something very strange. She put the floppy little lamb into the bottom of the oven!

  ‘Don’t cook it!’ said Dottie.

  ‘I’m not cooking it,’ said Blod. ‘It’s not the hot part of the Aga. It’s only a little bit warm. Just you wait. You’ll see.’

  Dottie could barely stand it. She wanted to get the lamb out straight away. But Winnie just held her hand.

  Suddenly, there was a noise inside the oven. Blod opened the door and the lamb jumped out!

  It wasn’t floppy anymore. And it was bleating!

  Blod grabbed its wriggling body and rubbed its back.

  ‘Thought we were going to lose you,’ she said to the lamb. ‘I could see you were going to be trouble from the start.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, looking at the girls. ‘Best get her with her mother. Or we’ll have another one to feed!’

  Dottie laughed with relief. ‘I thought you were going to cook her!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, bach,’ said Blod. ‘And shut the door on your way out. Same time tomorrow, mind.’

  ‘Bleat,’ said the little lamb.

  (Which probably meant, ‘And please don’t forget!’)

  Winnie and Dottie grinned.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Home

  ‘So what do you think of the hilltop, then?’ asked Winnie, as they trudged back up the track. ‘Is it better than home?’

  Dottie remembered the flat.

  The city.

  The smells.

  And the noise.

  ‘Home?’ she said.

  The word felt empty and cold and strange. The flat by the railway station wasn’t home. Not any more. It was just a flat that smelt of fish.

  Dottie felt all out of place.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Winnie. ‘Why are you sad?’

  ‘I was just thinking about Somewhere Else,’ said Dottie. ‘I mean, the City. It doesn’t feel like home anymore. And actually, I never really had any friends there anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Winnie. ‘You’re fab!’

  Dottie blushed. ‘That’s not what they called me at school.’

  ‘What did they call you?’ asked Winnie.

  Dottie blushed again. She didn’t really want to say.

  ‘They called me “Dottie Stank-It” and “Dottie Twice-with-Chips”.’

  Dottie waited for Winnie to laugh.

  But Winnie didn’t. She just said, ‘Oh. So you were just like Fflwffen.’

  ‘How?’ asked Dottie. ‘Fflwffen doesn’t smell of trains or fish?!’

  ‘I know. But her mum didn’t like the way she smelt either. I mean, your mum does, obviously. But your friends didn’t. So you’re kind of just the same.’

  ‘Am I?’ asked Dottie.

  ‘Yeah. Happens all the time on the Hilltop.

  If a ewe doesn’t like the smell of its lamb, she just kicks it away. So you are definitely just like Fflwffen.’

  ‘But Fflwffen smells beautiful,’ said Dottie.

  Winnie leant over and sniffed Dottie’s jumper.

  ‘Actually, she smells just the same as you!’

  Winnie grinned and waved and ran off.

  ‘Oh! Thank you!’ smiled Dottie, waving back.

  She climbed up the stairs of the tiny cottage and sniffed her jumper three times. Warm wool, milk and toast.

  Then she closed her eyes and collected ‘the moment’. And labelled it with a word that began with ‘H’.

  But the word wasn’t ‘HILLTOP’. For this wasn’t just any old hilltop. This hilltop was actually:

  ‘HOME.’

  First published in 2014

  by Firefly Press

  25 Gabalfa Road, Llandaff North, Cardiff, CF14 2JJ

  www.fireflypress.co.uk

  Text © Wendy Meddour 2014

  Illustrations © Mina May 2014

  Wendy Meddour and Mina May assert their moral rights

  to be identified as author and illustrator in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

  Print ISBN 9781910080122

  ebook ISBN 9781910080139

  This book has been published with the support of the Welsh Books Council.

  Cover design by: theundercard.co.uk

  Dragonfly series design by: Laura Fern Baker