The Dancing Lamb: The Story

One night, the little boy could not sleep. There was a very loud thunderstorm outside. It was not the storm, however, that kept him awake. The boy was very excited, and kept thinking about all the adventures he would have on the mountain the next day. He was so excited, in fact, that he climbed out of his bed before the sun rose the next morning and prepared some food to carry with him. At dawn, just as the sun began to peek over the horizon, he stepped out of the door and turned toward the mountain.

Far away, the boy noticed something he had never seen before: a cliff jutting out from the mountain's side. Outlined in the early morning light, he could see something small standing on the very edge of the cliff. Well, not really standing -- it seemed to the boy that whoever it was, they were dancing. He decided that he should go tell them that dancing on a cliff is a very foolish thing to do, because of course it is a very foolish thing to do. And so the little boy began to climb the mountain.

The boy began to grow cold. He could not remember ever being this cold before, and supposed that the part of the mountain near the cliff must be a very cold place. As he climbed higher and higher and came closer and closer to the cliff, the leaves of the trees around him began to turn blue. The boy thought the blue leaves were very beautiful. He was so distracted looking at them that he did not notice how close he was to the cliff until he almost ran into a sign hanging from one of the trees. It said:

FAYE WILL NOT LIVE ON THIS CLIFF.

The boy could see that the word "not" had been written by someone different than the rest of the sign. This was very strange, of course, but not nearly so strange as the sign next to it, which simply said:

YES SHE WILL.

Looking past the signs, the little boy saw the cliff he had been looking for. In the very middle of it was a small house. Approaching this house, the small boy knocked on its door very quietly, then a bit more loudly, and waited. Eventually, a small lamb opened the door and smiled at him.

"Hello," said the boy. "I saw you dancing this morning, and thought I should tell you that it is a very foolish thing to dance on cliffs."

The little lamb just smiled at him. "Did you like my dance? It is an Irish dance, you know. From Ireland. I do it every morning, out on the edge of the cliff. My name is Faye."

The boy didn't know what to say. "Yes, I liked your dance. But I mean, you shouldn't dance on the cliff! You might fall! In fact, you shouldn't even be living on this cliff at all. It is very cold and dangerous."

Faye just smiled at him again. "If it's cold and dangerous, why are you here?"

The boy didn't know what to say.

"And anyway," said Faye, "I have to live here. The signs say so. Come inside!"

The boy stepped inside Faye's house, and discovered that it was much warmer inside, and that maybe it wasn't so bad to live on a cold cliff after all, if you had a warm house. "What do you mean the signs say you must live here? Didn't you make the signs?"

The lamb shook her head. "I don't know who made the signs. I was just climbing the mountain one day, and there they were! This house was standing here with the door open, and there was a sign saying that I would live here. Of course, as you said, the cliff is a very cold and dangerous place, and I did not want to live here, so I changed the sign and wrote that I would not live here. I rather like to just follow the wind wherever it takes me."

The boy was confused. "Only one sign? But there are two signs outside. Where did the second one come from?"

"I don't know that either. After I changed the first sign, I kept walking," said Faye, looking a little confused herself. "The next day, I passed by again, and there was the second sign -- 'YES SHE WILL.' So I thought, if the signs want me to live here so badly, then that is what I will do. I have lived here since then, and it has been wonderful."

Yet again, the little boy didn't know what to say. He thought. And then he thought some more. Finally, he said, "Well if the signs say so, then I suppose you should live here. But still, it is very foolish to dance on the cliff's edge!" He looked very sternly at Faye, expecting her to agree with him. Instead, she smiled at him again. She smiled a lot.

"Come outside with me, and I'll show you why I dance," she said playfully, and before the boy could object to the cold, the lamb had darted out the door. Reluctantly, he walked outside and found her standing at the edge of the cliff, looking into the distance.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Faye asked him. "It's simply too glorious, and if it wasn't for the mountain, I wouldn't ever have seen it."

The boy looked into the distance. It took a moment for him to realize what he was seeing, but when he did, he understood why the lamb couldn't help dancing.

In the distance, beyond the boy's village and beyond the forests on the other side of it, the boy saw the ocean. In the morning light, it sparkled and glimmered bright lights and rainbows at them. White birds flew over it. Small fish and big fish swam in it, and boats sailed on top of it. The clouds overhead were reflected in it, and waves of all sizes rolled steadily towards the shore. The ocean was so beautiful that the boy felt like dancing from joy. He realized that Faye had already begun to dance again, and so he joined her. He could not dance the dance from Ireland like she could, but he tried.

After a while, they were both tired, and went back inside where it was warm.

"Now I understand why you dance," said the little boy. "It is very cold here, and very dangerous, but the ocean is so beautiful. And after all, if the signs say you should live here, then that is what you should do."

The lamb smiled, and the little boy went home again. But sometimes, when it is dangerous or cold, he thinks of Faye and the beautiful ocean, and he dances.