Walking-Spell

The Walking-Spell is a corrective enchantment used to restore Jo after the Topsy-Turvy curse has left him inverted. Its decisive feature is that it does not simply force his body into place: it makes his feet want to walk, so ordinary movement itself requires him to stand upright. The spell therefore converts a physical disability imposed by magic into the mechanism of recovery.

Definition and Magical Operation

The spell is offered by a witch whom Silky and the children visit while seeking a cure. Unlike the earlier goblin, who reacts angrily when Moon-Face mocks his spells, the witch is knitting stockings from green smoke and responds kindly to Jo’s predicament. She identifies the remedy as easy and explains its operation in concrete terms: she must rub a Walking-Spell onto the soles of Jo’s feet, after which his feet will desire to walk and he will have to stand the right way in order to use them.

The explanation gives the enchantment a simple internal logic. Jo is not cured by an abstract reversal of the curse, nor by someone physically turning him over and holding him there. The spell attaches recovery to the most basic action of walking. Because walking normally depends on standing on the feet, the desired action supplies the pressure that restores the correct posture. Its magic is whimsical, but its effect is presented as purposeful and rule-bound.

Application to Jo

Jo approaches the witch on his hands, a precise visual reminder of how thoroughly the earlier curse has disrupted his ordinary relation to the ground. The witch takes a jar from a shelf, opens it, and finds it filled with purple ointment. She rubs some of this ointment onto the soles of his shoes, making the shoes rather than Jo’s exposed skin the immediate vehicle of the enchantment.

The application is followed by a four-line incantation. The first pair commands Jo to stand on his own two feet; the second insists that he must go the right way up. The rhyme gives the spell both verbal shape and performative force: once spoken over the ointment, it is no longer merely an explanation of what might happen but an action intended to make the transformation occur.

The Cure and Its Immediate Result

The Walking-Spell works at once. Jo swings right over, lands on his two feet, and becomes upright again beside Moon-Face and Silky. The movement is both comic and decisive: the boy’s abnormal posture is not gradually corrected but dramatically overturned in a single physical motion. The result is confirmed by his standing as the others do, “as upright as Moon-Face and Silky,” which makes his restoration visible through comparison with his companions.

The cure also changes the practical conditions of the group’s journey. While upside-down, Jo has had to move on his hands and could not see the witch properly. Once the spell has taken effect, he is again able to stand and walk in the ordinary manner. The cure consequently restores not only bodily orientation but his ability to participate normally in the children’s movement through the magical world.

Language, Agency, and Significance

The spell joins bodily action to spoken language. The witch’s explanation establishes the rule, the ointment provides the material application, and the rhyme completes the enchantment. Its verbal pattern is especially direct: the command to stand is followed by the insistence that Jo go the right way up. The wording does not describe an accomplished cure; it instructs the body toward the condition the spell is designed to produce.

At the same time, Jo’s own action remains essential. He walks to the witch on his hands, receives the ointment, and is then compelled by the altered desire of his feet to swing upright. The Walking-Spell is therefore neither purely voluntary nor merely imposed from outside. It supplies an irresistible bodily impulse, but that impulse must be expressed through walking. The scene makes recovery a collaboration between magical intervention and the body’s ordinary mechanics.

The episode also sharply contrasts two kinds of magical authority. The goblin treats Moon-Face’s mockery as an insult and threatens to turn him into a bouncing ball or black beetle, while the witch calmly attends to the specific problem and supplies a remedy suited to it. Silky’s fear after the goblin’s threats leads her to speak politely, and that politeness brings the group to the shop where the Walking-Spell can be obtained. In this sequence, effective magic is associated not with bluster or spectacle but with accurate diagnosis, careful application, and a clearly stated rule.