A king's youngest daughter is playing at a forest well with her golden ball, "this ball was her favourite plaything", when it slips past her hand and sinks into water so deep that "the bottom could not be seen". Out of that water a cold, ugly creature bargains its way up, meaning to climb from the well straight into her life. The record files the king of frogs — the shelf's address for the king of animals — on a single served witness, the Grimms' Household Tales (collected 1812–1857), where it stands as the very first tale, The Frog-King, or Iron Henry. Weeping at the brink, the princess "saw a frog stretching forth its thick, ugly head"; it will fetch her plaything back only on her promise of a place at her table and in her bed.

What the tale actually delivers is less a king of frogs than a king under a frog's skin. Made at last to keep her word, the princess in disgust hurls the creature "with all her might against the wall" — and it falls "no frog but a king's son", with "beautiful kind eyes". Behind him stands the servant "faithful Henry", who in grief at his master's enchantment had bound "three iron bands" round his heart lest it burst; as they ride home restored, each crack the prince mistakes for the carriage breaking is "a band from my heart" springing free.

The shelf's apparatus reaches far past this German nursery tale — to the tale-type numbered 440, to the Sanskrit Panchatantra (an ancient collection of beast-fables), to Breton, Hindu and Chinese entries — yet only the Grimms' tale is wired to served text; the rest wait unread. And even the served witness holds a quiet correction: the frog proves a prince, not a monarch of his own croaking kind. What is it about a king that a story likes to hide first in the coldest, lowliest thing at the bottom of the well?