I expect them to go clambering down the rock face like a pair of monkeys, magically picking up all the little grains of dirt, the bits of twig and leaf. Instead, they hold hands and sing some nonsense song that trills and rises like morning birdsong, when it’s not squeaky and shrill like the cries of mice and other rodents.

I’m about to ask them to please stop fooling around and help, when something magical does happen.

Once upon a time . . .

I don’t know where they come from, these hundreds of birds and animals and bugs. Pink-winged flickers and spiny lizards. Cactus wrens and little white-throated woodrats. Ground squirrels and sparrows. Shrews and mice and toads and beetles. Tarantulas and a whole column of harvester ants.

I lose track of them all and can only stand there with the others, watching as the animals and birds swarm over the rocks, or fly from one to another, collecting little unrecognizable bits that they drop in a growing pile at Timony’s feet. The crow girls laugh and clap and egg them on.

“That’s it, that’s it!”

“Every changeling bit.”

They look at each other, giggling at the impromptu rhyme.

And when the growing pile seems to encompass every little bit and piece that spilled when my pail went tumbling off the edge, Timony moves his hands over it and mutters something just under his breath. I watch as the seaweed creature falls apart, collapsing into a mess of drying weeds liberally sprinkled with driftwood and shells and other debris. While there, in the pile collected by the wild creatures the crow girls summoned, something stirs.

I realize I’m holding my breath, but I can’t seem to let it out and take another.

Something stirs.

Once upon a time . . .

The debris rises in a ghostlike shape of a man, then slowly solidifies.

Once upon a time . . .

And Geordie’s standing there, blinking in the bright light.

“Oh, my god,” I hear Lizzie say.

“Ta da!” Zia cries.

“La di da di da ta da!” Maida adds, so as not to be outdone.

Their little army of helpers scamper and fly away as quickly as they came, and then the crow girls are birds again, flying loop-the-loops in the air above us.

You see, you see? I hear in my head.

We promised and we did.

Because we’re the can-do crow girls.

Then with a dip of their wings and a chorus of bye-byes, they’re gone, too, sailing away from the mesa on currents of wind, casting two shadows on the red dirt of the plain before them. But I hardly see them go. My whole world narrows to the fact that Geordie’s back. He’s in his own body and he’s okay. Grinning at me.

I don’t have words for what swells inside me.