Using willow from the garden, I made 4 reindeer.  They reminded me of my months with reindeer herders in Kamchatka where Santa goes to buy new deer when his retire. But this year the deer for sale were too wild, so Santa visited me, he sprinkled Star dust on my willow deer and asked me to help teach them to fly.  Not as easy task, they made mistakes and landed in bushes.  Slowly they learned the technique and Rudy became their leader.  Sled pulling also proved challenging.  The practise continued, finally they were ready, it was time for Christmas.  The deer surged forward with the heavy-laden sled.  ‘yo ho ho’ shouted Santa as they rose into the night sky.

After reaching the Refuge for Lost Deer, and being made welcome by the owner of this ancient beautiful manor, Charles, the deer meet all the other lost and orphaned reindeer and are introduced to the ferocious lions who guard the door.  Charles offers to try and find their home (with me Christina).  He arranges for me to collect them in a week as they want to stay and help out at the Refusge.  Meanwhile Charles receives a threatening letter from bailiffs saying he has no right to own the Manor.  Urgently Charles searches for the ancestral document to prove his ownership.  Without success.  He remembers an ancestor tale that the deed was buried for safety in the grounds.  The deer join the search.  The day before foreclosure, sudden loud noise heralded the arrival of the bailiffs, a group of ruffians with batons who attacked the deer, and captured the young orphan deer to sell to a zoo.  Prancer faced against the bailiffs, roaring with anger, and the lions came over to join the battle.  Charles returned from shopping, he intervened demanding the bailiffs go away until the morrow.  Just in time the deer found the Deeds buried in an old Druid tump.  This parchment Deed dated 1432 proved Charles ownership and saved the Manor and the Refuge from closure.  I visited but the deer wanted to stay a week longer and celebrate, so I told them how to find the route home.

The deer had lost the ability to fly after Christmas, but Rudy and Comet did again take flight. They boasted that they could fly round the world, and they flew off leaving Prancer and Cupid behind.  Half way round the world, they were caught in such a storm they were flung towards the island of Madagascar.  Crashing down through a rain forest they landed in bushes beside some lemurs.  Comet was injured in the fall.  The lemurs were sympathetic, they raced off to fetch a unique medicinal plant to cure Comet. 

She recovered just as a foreign logging gang invaded the forest, chopping down the big trees and setting fire to the brash.  Deer and lemurs fled away in search of a new forest for the lemurs.  

The lemurs found new territory, and as the deer were crossing a marsh they saw 2 children stuck in deep mud and crying for help.  After rescuing the children the villagers made heroes of the willow deer.  The news leaked out of strange unknown animals, experts rushed to find this ‘new species’.  It was time for Rudy and Comet to come home.

After Rudy wins a race at a County Show, the devious Mick the Fixer kidnaps the deer and puts them in his dingey racing stable.  Only the stable cat is friendly.  Mick’s son, a lout called Snowboy, decides to ride the deer and become a jockey.  Having never before been ridden, the deer do not tolerate Snowboy on their backs, and Prancer is so frightened he bucks until Snowboy is thrown.  The deer are cast into despair.  The cat helps them escape through a nearly impenetrable barrier and tells them to go west to the Refuge for Lost Reindeer.   On the run, the deer cross woodlands, streams and along a fallen tree over a perilous river.  Two days later they reach the Refuge.

While the willow deer were getting ready to leave, Mick the Fixer/gangster arrived angrily at the Manor demanding the return of ‘his’ deer.  Mick raised his fists and tried to punch Charles, they sparred and Charles punched to hard Mick to he fell.  He got up and stomped off.  The deer set off on their way home.  But in a narrow lane they say Mick’s car, broken down.  They crept past through the fields, and reached a pond where they stopped to drink.  Mick’s son Snowboy had got bored with car repairs, he’d also found the pond and was sitting hidden above it in a tree.   Seeing the deer he bggan throwing stinging acorns at them and laughing.  He laughed so much he fell from the tree into the pond.  ‘I can’t swim’ he yelled.   Rudy plunged in to save him.  After the rescue he took the sodden Snowboy back to the car, now repaired, and slipped away leaving Snowboy near the car.  Later crossing more fields, Mick drove past, spotted the deer and gave chase in his car, ploughing through hedges, smashing closed gates.  The deer galloped wildly until blocked by a monstrous hedge.  To escape, they had to jump it.  They had escaped.  They trotted up a lane, nearly home.   But at the top they found Mick and Snowboy, and no escape.  But Snowboy had told his father that Rudy saved him from drowning.  Mick was grateful, he thanked them and let them go on their way.

I made one more willow deer named Star as she had a light spot on her forehead that shone in the dark. She turned out too small to be useful so we sent her to the northern deer herds to grow up. A year later Rudy went to visit her, since Prancer had forgotten how to fly and we would need a stand-in deer for Christmas.  Rudy found Star but she was still too small.  He flew home but she followed him, refusing to be left behind.  We still needed a big strong deer to replace Prancer.  Rudy remembered a stag at the Refuge for Lost Deer, so they went there.  However, the stag had mysteriously gone missing.  While the deer all played in the yard, a woman called to Rudy ‘Hello handsome’. Each day she returned offering treats.  She enticed Rudy to go with her for some delicious apples at her mansion.  To his horror she captured him and pushed him in a dungeon.  The missing stag Blitzen was also a prisoner.  Young Star had seen Rudy’s disappearance and followed him, watching him being locked in the dungeon and hearing the woman cackling with glee about a riddle for the door’s key.

Later that evening using Star’s light, she and Santa went to find they key to free the imprisoned deer.   But the key wouldn’t open the door.  Luckily Star solved the riddle and the prisoners were free.  Next day Charles confronted the woman angrily about stealing the deer, she pleaded with him for mercy and accepted the punishment of working in the Manor kitchen for a year cleaning dirty vegetables.  Restored to the Manor, Blitzen learned to fly and all looked good for Christmas night, but Rudy had caught a cold and his nose no longer glowed.   Star with her beam of light proudly took his place.