The Sheep of Legend

Maggie was walking up a narrow alleyway when she heard an odd clickity-clacking. She paused and tugged her hat off listening to for the sound and heard it again, high overhead. 

“Tenk ain’t taken proper care o’ these clocks these days!” She grumbled, using the ring of keys she’d failed to return to City Hall to let herself into the narrow stairway that led up to the roof of the building. From there she climbed a curl of steps up through a hatch and into the clock itself. At first she saw nothing amiss in the great room which held the clocks workings. 

But then she heard a long, low, malicious ‘baaaaaa.’ 

She gasped and caught sight of it just before it bowled over her and down the stairs.

“Oy!” She shouted, scrambling to her feet and running down after it. She made a jump for it just as it leaped off the edge of the roof but missed, getting only a handful of wool. She cried out and held her hand toward the sheep…

Who rolled over in mid-air and hit the ground with a soft ‘pfaf” sound, like a pillow being swung into someone’s face, for so great was his white woolly coat that it absorbed his impact and, as he bounced jauntily onto his hoofs, he raised his horned black face and blew a raspberry at Maggie. 

Maggie shouted a rude remark after him and then stared down at the handfull of silvery-white wool that she’d caught off of him. 

“Great Woolly White!” She exclaimed “The sheep of legend!” 

Yes! It was Great Woolly White! The Sheep spoken of with awe by a thousand shepherds with awe and fear. It was said that whoever caught Great Woolly White and sheered him would become a shepherd of legend. The greatest shepherd who ever lived.

Maggie grinned, she knew that she would be the one to find and catch the sheep, now that she knew he was loose in the city.