Bad children are punished. Be bad, a child is told, and you'll be turned into an animal, marked with your crime.

The Wild Children are forever young, but that, too, can be a curse.

Five children each tell a different story of what they became:

One learns that wrong can be right, and her curse may be a blessing.

Another is so Wild he must learn the simplest lesson, to love someone else.

An eight-year-old girl must face fear and doubt as she dies of old age.

Love and strangeness hit the lives of two brothers in the form of a beautiful flaming bird.

Finally, the oldest child learns that what is right can be horribly wrong.

Together they tell a sixth story, of a Wild Girl who can't speak for herself, and doesn't seem Wild at all.