I hadn’t time to ponder that question, though, because Liz and Diana had returned, both of them sopping wet and out of breath. Diana plopped herself down in the mud puddle, a colorful quilted bag in her lap. Liz moved behind me. I felt her hands slide on either side of my neck, gentle but firm. For some reason I recalled the first time I shook Liz’s hand at my job interview. I’d been surprised at how firm her hand-shake was and thought to myself that beneath her pink Chanel suit beat the heart of a steely-willed administrator. Little did I know then that those steel hands would someday be around my neck. I tried to distract myself from the thought of what she was about to do by watching Diana. From the quilted bag, she had taken out two long knitting needles. I thought they had unusually sharp points. Then she took out a skein of bright pink wool.

“Sorry,” she said. “It was the only color I had enough of.”

“What … exactly … are you going to do … with it?”

“Knit your spinal cord together, of course. I have to make the first stitch at the exact moment Liz realigns the bones. Oh my, but is it a knit or a purl? I don’t remember.”

“Knit, I should think,” Soheila remarked. She’d gotten up and knelt behind me. I heard her voice close to my ear, but if she was touching me I couldn’t feel it.

“I think so too. Hold on. I’ve got to cast on with an objective correlative spell.”

“Isn’t that a literary term?” I asked. “Are you going to deconstruct my spine next?”

Diana blinked her large Bambi eyes at me and I instantly regretted my sarcasm. “It’s the basis for most magic. It’s also called sympathetic magic. I’m going to create a correlation between your spinal cord and the yarn so that whatever I do to the yarn creates the same effect on your spinal cord. Are you ready?”

To have my spine turned into yarn? I thought groggily. I supposed it couldn’t make it worse. I told her I was ready.

Diana nodded and, leaning forward, plucked a hair from my head. She laid the copper strand along a length of the pink wool and made a slip knot while reciting the words, “Vice versa, topsy turvy, arsy versy.”

She slipped a needle through the knot. I felt a slight tug at the base of my neck. Diana positioned the second needle tip inside the loop and looked up.

“This may pinch a little,” Liz warned.

“Iuncta hals-bein …” The three women chanted in unison. I missed hearing the rest of the knitting spell because of the extreme pain and screaming. I did hear a crack that sounded like a gunshot. I lost consciousness. When I came to, I lay flat on the ground staring up at three very concerned faces.

“Callie, can you wiggle your toes?”

I wiggled my toes … and fingers … and then, tentatively, stretched my arms and legs. I felt … pretty good. My back felt like I’d just had it aligned by a chiropractor. Still, I felt just a bit … wooly.