Untamed - Sample Only!

1 Puphood

Willa - Five Years Old

I love my mama more than anything in this world. More than the sky and the sun and even the Moon. Mama is everything good because she's so good. I'll bet she's even prettier than the Moon. And she's better than honeysuckle and... and... a new shirt of that soft stuff... and the white stuff the father puts in his black coffee when he's home. Mama let me taste it once. What is it called? Sucre? Sucre, I think. I didn't like it much, but Mama seems to think it's great.

Mama is nothing like him, the Father.

I watch the leaves fall, drifting slowly down to blanket the forest floor under me. I am waiting for the perfect one. Orange, like the sunset, mama's favorite color. I haven't found it, yet. I have a pile of good ones, but not the perfect one.

The perfect leaf is either one solid color or at least all orange colors. No brown on it yet. It should still be soft. And, of course, all of the small parts have to match perfectly, both sides.

Mama is the all the good things. The Father is the hard things. I want to give mama a gift. While the Father is away I have time to be patient. I can find Mama a gift. When he is here I have to work, to train.

'Willa, the weak don't survive in this world. You're just a dumb little female, but you won't be a weak one even if I have to beat it out of you,' he says all the time.

I don't have time to climb trees when the Father is here. I have to practice. Stalking, hunting, defending myself. I sleep outside some nights. I didn't much care for that, when I was little. Now, it's not so bad. I know all the animal sounds. Owl, mice, bats, sometimes badger. Once I heard a lot of wolves, and the Father made me stay inside the cabin for three days and nights in a row.

I like the outside much better. A good thing, too, because I am, 'practicing for when my wolf comes,' the Father says.

I don't know if I want to have a wolf in me. Mama doesn't have a wolf. She says she did, once, but she died before I was even a pup in mama's belly. I don't really understand. Sometimes I look at Mama and wonder if she ate her wolf? Or did the wolf go away like the leaves on the ground and just disappear into her skin?

The Father has a wolf. He's as ornery as the feet. I like that word, ornery. Mama told me our best hen is ornery when I asked her why she pecks at me when I just want to pet her.

"Willa! Come inside sweetheart!"

I leap down from the branches of the tree. My left foot crunches the leaves a little and I frown at myself. Clumsy. And, I still haven't found the perfect orange leaf, but I will later. When mama calls me I don't wait. Mama needs me.

"Willa, what were you doing, Sweetpea?" she greets me with a kiss on my forehead. She says soon I will be taller than she is. I don't much care for that. I look just like the Father, tall and larger-boned than mama, with stringy yellow hair, brown skin, and eyes the color of maple syrup. Mama says I will be tall and strong like him, and beautiful. I wonder how I am beautiful, when my brown face and yellow hair have none of the best colors; the reds and purples and greens and browns of the forest. I am the color of washed-out bark.

Mama loves me, anyway. She doesn't much care for when I say I'm not pretty. She says things we love always look beautiful just like things we hate are ugly. A secret? I would love to be all dark curls and white skin, like her. She is really beautiful, a pretty flower instead of a plain potato like me.

"It's a surprise," I tell her, mysteriously.

Her blue eyes twinkle at me, "oh? Sounds like you have a secret."