Phoebe is just a nine-year-old girl, not extraordinary, even if she is a bit too smart for her own good. When she asks the witch how to bring her cat home, the spell she casts has some unexpected consequences. The hole she opened in the sky will lead her on a remarkable journey, through the land where the living cannot go, through forests she has been forbidden to enter, and across a dangerous land where everyone and everything appears to want to destroy her. Her companions are among the most suspicious of the strange beings she encounters, as she is traveling with a talking tree and a group of witches and not-exactly witches that have a mission she is expected to fulfill. The problem is, she does not know what they expect of her, and she's worried it may be evil. She has little choice but to trust them once they carry her past the point where she can find her own way home, but by the time she returns, she will not be the same child that began the journey.