[1][2] Eleven-year old Margaret Walters, better known as Midge, is sent to stay with her Uncle Brian at Mill Farm in Somerset, England while her mother is on tour with the orchestra.

While exploring, she comes across a small winged horse named Pegs, which is trapped and injured in a barn, which is 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, Troggles 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 Gorji world, as humans are called by the tribes, and one of them, Lumst, is killed by a ferocious tomcat named Tojo.

While Midge is accepted by the ickri Queen Ba-betts and her advisers as the savior of Pegs, despite the news she brings of her uncle's plan to sell the forest land.