The Wild Girl Read Online Free

one another.
    ‘Supper at last!’ Gretchen cried. ‘I am near ready to faint with hunger.’ The pretty one, she wore her flaxen hair in ringlets, a feat only achieved by the very uncomfortable practice of wearing rags in her hair to bed.
    ‘Father will not be pleased,’ Röse said with a certain amount of pleasure. ‘It is a sign of a disordered mind to be so unpunctual.’ Thirteen-year-old Röse was the clever one, and seemed to take pleasure in being positively dowdy. Her fair hair was scraped back in a thin plait, and a small book of sermons protruded from her pocket.
    ‘Why so late?’ Lisette asked. The eldest, and her mother’s prop, she was also the tallest, with a long face and nose and beautiful, long-fingered hands.
    ‘He’s almost popped all his buttons already tonight,’ Hanne said. She was the musical one, always getting into trouble for singing at the top of her voice around the house.
    Dortchen would have liked to have been the clever one, and Mia would have liked to have been the musical one, but with six girls in the family, those roles were already taken by the time they were born. They had become the wild one and the baby, with absolutely no choice in the matter at all.
    Dortchen was called the wild one because one day, when she wasseven years old, she had got lost in the forest. She had wandered off to a far-distant glade where a willow tree trailed its branches in a pool of water. Dortchen crept within the shadowy tent of its branches and found a green palace. She wove herself a crown of willow tendrils and collected pebbles and flowers to be her jewels. At last, worn out, she lay down on a velvet bed of moss and fell asleep.
    She did not hear her family calling for her. She did not see the sun slipping away and the shadows growing longer. Waking in the dusk, she had gone skipping to find her sisters, her hair in a tangle, a wreath of leaves on her head. Ever since then, no matter how hard she tried to be good, Frau Wild would always say, with a long-suffering sigh, ‘And this is Dortchen, my wild one, always running off into the forest.’
    ‘You’re too soft with her, Katharina,’ Herr Wild would growl. ‘You should’ve mastered her will by now.’
    It was true Dortchen loved to be outdoors. With so many siblings, it was hard to find time to be alone, and the old house was always full of people shouting, arguing, singing, crying, slamming doors, ringing bells or running up and down the stairs. Out in the forest, it was just Dortchen, free as the wind in the leaves and the birds in the sky. Whenever she could, Dortchen would take a basket and go to the forest in search of fallen chestnuts or mushrooms. She would come home in the evening with her cheeks flushed, her lips stained with berry juice, and her head full of dreams.
    ‘What do we have?’ Gretchen lifted the lid of the tureen and wrinkled her nose. ‘Not red cabbage again.’
    Frau Wild drifted into the room, a shawl trailing from her elbows. ‘Girls. The time. Your father.’ She collapsed into a chair.
    ‘Bad weather ahead. Better batten down the hatches.’ Hanne pretended to swoon into her own chair, her hand held to her temple in mockery of their mother.
    ‘You couldn’t possibly understand, Hannechen,’ her mother said in a faint voice. ‘Who will your father blame?’
    ‘Never mind, Mother,’ Lisette soothed her. ‘Perhaps Father hasn’t noticed the time.’
    ‘He always notices the time,’ Frau Wild replied, one hand pressed against her chest.
    The door opened so abruptly that it thumped into the wall. Hanne at once scrambled up and took her place by her chair, head bowed and hands folded. Frau Wild rose to her feet, murmuring, ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear.’
    Herr Wild came into the room and stood looking around with frowning eyes. He was a heavyset man, dressed soberly in brown, with grey hair drawn back from his forehead and tied in a queue. In one hand he held a pocket watch.
    ‘Twenty minutes past the