The Magic Shears

​Once there was a barber with a magic pair of shears: the hair he cut would never grow back. Though the barber never cut the same head of hair twice, people came from far and wide to see him, and thus he prospered.
 
One day a man asked him, “Do your magic shears work only on hair?”
 
“I’ve never tried them on anything else,” admitted the barber.
 
“If you cut my nails,” the main persisted, “will they cease to grow?”
 
“I don’t know,” said the barber. “Shall we see?”
 
So they tried the barber’s magic shears on the man’s fingernails, and, lo and behold, his fingernails ceased to grow.
 
“What about my journey home?” asked the man.
 
“What do you mean?”
 
“I traveled from far away to visit you, from a kingdom across the sea. Would your magic shears work on my return voyage?”
 
“I don’t know,” said the barber. “Shall we see?”
 
So they located the man’s kingdom on a map, and the barber’s kingdom, and the wide sea in between. Using his magic shears, the barber cut the map in two and moved the kingdoms closer together, and, lo and behold, the man’s destination was no farther away than a bird could fly.
 
“What do you do with it all?” the man asked.
 
“I’m not sure I understand,” said the barber. “What do you mean?”
 
“All the extra? Where does it go?”
 
The two men looked down at their feet, and, lo and behold, there it was: all the hair he’d ever cut, and all the hair he wouldn’t cut, and all the fingernails, and all the seas of the world, and all the kingdoms, and all the people of all the kingdoms, there at their feet, and the two men realized, feeling very foolish, that the barber’s shears weren’t magic after all.