The Boy Who Cried Wolf

High up on a green hill, above a little village with red roofs and smoking chimneys, a flock of white sheep was grazing. There were forty of them, maybe more. They wandered calmly through the soft grass, nibbling clover and dandelions. And among them, with a long staff in his hand and a wooden whistle in his pocket, a boy sat on a stone. He was the shepherd boy. Every morning he climbed up to the hill with the sheep. Every evening he came back down to the village again. His job was simple. He had to keep the sheep from straying. And he had to watch for the wolf that sometimes crept up from the forest below.

The sun climbed higher in the sky. The bees buzzed in the clover blossoms. A stork flew slowly across the meadow with its long legs trailing behind. The sheep bleated softly to themselves. Baa. Baa. Baa. The boy sat on his stone and looked down at the village. He could see the women walking to the well. He could see the man chopping wood behind his cottage. He could see the children playing by the fountain. And he sighed. It was always the same. The same hill. The same sheep. The same long, long day. He yawned and tossed a pebble down into the grass. He wished that something, anything at all, would happen.

Then he had an idea. It was not a good idea. It was the kind of idea a bored boy gets on a long, hot day. He remembered what the grown-ups always told him before he went up to the hill. 'If the wolf comes, shout! Shout as loud as you can, and we will come and help you.' The boy smiled to himself. It would be so funny. To see the washerwoman drop her laundry. To see the miller come running with flour on his hands. To see all the uncles and aunts come rushing up the hill to help him. And then it would turn out there was no wolf at all. He laughed out loud at the thought, so loud that the nearest sheep looked up in surprise.