The Boy Who Cried "Gold!"

Started as a parody of the fable "The boy who cried "Wolf!" I don't know exactly what it is now...

The Boy who Cried “Gold!”

 

Once there was a boy who lived in a village. Although peaceful, not all was happy. The harvest was bad this year; the villagers would have to buy food to feed themselves. But there was little money to buy food. This inescapable dilemma left the villagers tense and anxious. The boy was walking along the flowing stream, hunting for crayfish to eat when a thought came to his head. He found a way to cheer the villagers up, if only temporarily. He put on his best ecstatic face and raced through the streets of the village shouting, “Gold! I found gold! We can feed ourselves now!”

“Where?”  the villagers asked expectantly.

“In the river, where I was catching crayfish.”

The villagers left their work, grabbed their pans and sieves, and raced to the river. They searched through the water, stones and mud, eagerly looking for the said gold, but there was none, because the boy lied to cheer them up.

“Are you sure there was gold? they asked of him.

“No, there was none. I saw how miserable everyone was, and I thought this would cheer you up.”

“Well you’re wrong!” the villagers spat at him, “Now we’re behind on our work and the winter draws ever near.” They grumbled and cursed the false hope they had once felt, and went back home.

The next day, the boy was searching nearby caves for mushrooms to eat, and once again he had the same thought as yesterday to cheer the village up. Now they were even more miserable and needed cheering more than ever. But then, he thought, they would be angry, and even more miserable. Noticing the cycle that could possibly develop from his plot, he pushed them to the back of his mind.

Because he was thinking and not paying attention, he tripped over something in the dark cave. Getting up, he saw he has stumbled upon an old wooden chest. He opened it, and gasped at the sight of glowing, glittering, gold ingots.

“This is enough money to feed the entire village for a decade!” he exclaimed.

He raced back to the village shouting, “Gold! I found gold in the caves! We won’t have to starve ever again!”

The villagers looked up from their work, made to get up, and then hesitated. They all looked at each other and said, “This boy is just trying to give us false hope again. There’s no gold.”

“Yes there is! I found a treasure chest full of it! We can take it to the city and trade it for food.”

“Go away!” the villagers snarled at him.

So he did. He took his family’s wheelbarrow and headed back to the cave. He took the chest and all the gold and pushed it ten kilometers to the big city. He took it into the great bank and spoke to the surprised attendants. “Will this besafe here?”

“Yes,” they told him. “This gold is yours and nobody else’s. “

The boy felt guilty for not sharing his gold, but then he remembered how the villagers cast aside his offer to help him collect it.

It wasn’t long before news circulated around the city of the lucky boy who found treasure so close to his home, and how his village refused to believe him. Men of wealth flocked to meet him, and from them the boy hired who he thought were the most skilled managers and investors.

The young boy now owned a house in the city and a money lending business. On one of the first days of winter, he was casually walking through the streets, as he was rich and had nothing to do, when he spied the people of his old village, haggling over cheap bread with the few, meager coins they had. They recognized him too.

“It’s the boy, the one who pretended to find gold! We didn’t think you would run away. But why are you dressed so nice?”

“Because I did find gold, and you wouldn’t believe me. I wanted to share, because you all looked so miserable, but you all gave up on having hope, and tried to suffer through yourselves.”

Author's Note

So, what do you think this means?