A twelve-year-old boy is drawing me around himself. I will not allow any evil to cross my ring.

When the dwarf comes to take him, the boy says, “What do you want here?”

The dwarf ignores him. He wants to speak to the father who is quaking in his boots.

They haggle over who has rights to the boy, and it is finally agreed that neither of them has any right to his person. They decide to give him up to the water.

The father leads the boy out of my sphere. They go to a stream. He puts him in a small boat and pushes it off with his foot. The boat capsizes, and the father goes home, believing his son is lost.

But he is not lost. My ring extends beyond where anyone can see.

Circle in The King of the Golden Mountain, Grimms. Illustration by Arthur Rackham.