Jo's Walking-Spell Cure is the turning point that ends Jo's ordeal in the Land of Topsy-Turvy. After the land reverses his body so completely that he must move on his hands, a witch in the Land of Spells applies a Walking-Spell to the soles of his shoes and restores him to an upright position. The cure converts an absurd physical predicament into a solvable magical problem, while the journey to obtain it makes friendship, memory, and the shifting geography of The Faraway Tree essential to Jo's recovery.

Causes and Background

Jo's trouble begins when the children reach the top of The Faraway Tree and discover a vast white cloud with a hole through it. A branch rises through the opening, ending at a little ladder, and the group climbs through into the Land of Topsy-Turvy. The transition is not merely a change of scenery: every house stands on its chimney, trees grow with their roots in the air, and the inhabitants walk upside down. The land's rule therefore becomes a bodily curse for Jo, not just a picturesque feature of the setting.

The group eventually climbs back through the cloud, but Jo remains inverted. He clings to the broad branch outside Moon-Face's house with his hands while his legs hang in the air and asks whether Silky and Moon-Face can remove the spell. His condition turns the familiar round room into a place of temporary refuge rather than a complete solution. Moon-Face asks Silky which land will next come to the top of The Faraway Tree, and Silky identifies the Land of Spells as the likely destination for the following day. That knowledge supplies the cure's immediate objective: Jo must wait for the appropriate land to arrive.

Journey to the Land of Spells

Moon-Face proposes that Jo stay overnight with him while the others return home to report what has happened. When the Land of Spells finally appears, Moon-Face takes a large purse because the needed remedy may have to be bought. He and Silky then help Jo along the branch leading through the cloud and up the ladder. Jo's passage is difficult because he is still upside down and must hold tightly to the ladder's rungs, but the same vertical route that first carried him into the reversed world now carries him toward restoration.

The cure thus depends on the recurring movement of The Faraway Tree's topmost passage. The cloud hole is at once an entrance, an exit, and a threshold between incompatible orders of reality. Jo cannot simply walk home: the route must be physically negotiated while his body remains subject to the Topsy-Turvy rule. Silky and Moon-Face's assistance is consequently practical as well as emotional. They help him cross the threshold until the Land of Spells provides a power suited to his particular condition.

The Witch's Diagnosis and Remedy

In the Land of Spells, the companions enter a witch's house. She is knitting stockings from green smoke rising from her fire, a detail that presents magic as an everyday craft governed by recognizable procedures. When Silky politely explains that they want Jo to come the right way up again, the witch immediately identifies the remedy as easy: she needs only to rub a Walking-Spell onto the soles of his feet.

The witch also explains why the spell will work. It will make Jo's feet want to walk, and because walking requires him to stand on them correctly, his body will be compelled back into the right position. This explanation gives the cure an internal logic rather than treating it as an unexplained miracle. The magic does not erase the earlier rule by force; it introduces a counteracting rule whose effect is specifically directed at the part of Jo's body that must resume ordinary movement.

Jo approaches the witch on his hands, an image that makes the problem unmistakable. She takes down a jar filled with purple ointment and rubs some of it onto the soles of his shoes. The spoken spell follows, beginning with “Rimminy-Romminy-Reet,” and the application is completed through both material action and incantation. The jar, the ointment, the shoes, and the verbal formula form a compact ritual: the cure is prepared, placed, and activated in a definite sequence.

Reversal and Consequences

The result is immediate. Jo swings right over, stands on his two feet, and is upright again. His restoration reverses the central value of the Topsy-Turvy episode: the position that had made ordinary movement impossible becomes normal once more, and the body that had seemed trapped becomes mobile. The scene's comic strangeness therefore ends in tangible relief rather than in an abstract declaration that the danger has passed.

The cure also changes the group's relationship to the surrounding magical world. The Land of Topsy-Turvy is shown to impose a rule that can overwhelm visitors, while the Land of Spells contains a specialist who understands how to counter it. Yet the remedy is not obtained through solitary power. Jo's friends remember the land's shifting pattern, wait for the correct arrival, guide him through the cloud, and speak for him before the witch. His recovery is consequently a collective achievement, even though the decisive physical action is performed by the witch.

Narrative Significance

Jo's Walking-Spell Cure establishes a recurring pattern in the wider adventure. The Faraway Tree links home, tree rooms, sliding passages, clouds, and temporary lands, but its connections are never effortless: travelers must find the opening, endure the governing rule of the destination, and discover a route back. Jo's cure makes that structure visible in miniature. The same tree that leads into a world of inversion also provides access to the remedy, while the next arriving land transforms a curse into a problem with a named solution.

The episode also prepares the logic of later escapes. The tree's spaces may be blocked, enlarged, redirected, or made to move, but the children and their companions repeatedly survive by understanding a specific property of the environment and acting together. Jo's restoration is the clearest early example of that method. Magic is powerful, but it operates through conditions: the correct land must arrive, the correct substance must be applied, and the spell's effect must correspond to the body's need. His return to uprightness therefore restores more than posture; it restores his ability to participate fully in the group's continuing movement through the enchanted world.