Online Journey

What promises to be one boring summer turns out to be a lot more eventful than 12 year old Midge in this children fantasy book written by Steve Augurde. Midge is sent to stay with her Uncle Brian at Mill Farm in Somerset while her mother is on tour with the orchestra. She comes across a small winged horse which is trapped and injured: her first introduction to the hidden world of the "Royal Forest", an impenetrable thicket on a hill within the farm boundaries. Meanwhile, all the tribes who live in the forest, the Ickri, Naiad, Wisp, Trogglers and Tinklers, unite to send a group to search for the missing horse, Pegs. The adventures of the group demonstrate the dangers posed to the Various by the Gorgi world, as Lumst is killed by the ferocious tomcat Tojo. While Midge is accepted by the queen and her advisers as the saviour of Pegs, despite the news she brings of her uncle's plan to sell the forest land, Scurl and his archers believe that she is herself a danger to the tribes and intend to kill her. At the climax of the novel the archers attack the farm when Midge and her cousins are there alone. Throughout the novel Midge senses another presence, the girl in the photograph on the kitchen wall: it is Celandine, who once lived at the farm and was thought mad for believing she had seen fairies.