I felt as if I was all cut across and across and
through and through with flaming swords, and torn with red-hot saws.
Not the way it is when you divide yourself, so that you can be in two
places at once. Anybody can do that, and it hurts no more than cutting
a lock of hair, but this was--oh! there's only one thing could do
this. There was a pair of open scissors lying close to the child, and
I almost touched them!"
She could say no more, and there was no more to be said. "You
couldn't get the child, then," said the King, "and there's the end of
it. Nobody could, if they did all them things. I dunno how it is," the
King went on, half to himself, "a child lies there with a pair of
scissors open near by, and a horseshoe nail close to it--maybe hung
around its neck--and a circle drawn around it with a coal of fire, and
it never minds it at all. It sleeps and wakes and lies there as
peaceful and happy and quiet as if there was nothing at all out of the
common about it. I dunno how they can do it. They're queer people,
these mortals.
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