When she was only two years old, Ninita lost her parents to a tragic accident. Now a nine year old orphan, she dreams of adventures and finding a home of her own. But her adventuresome ways have kept Ninita from connecting with adopting parents. A little girl who is known for running off to play at hunting thieves and lunch with dragons, isn’t the practical little girl parents in the country of Tierra look for in potential daughters.

After years of burying her hopes deep in fantasies, she decides that she would find her own way home and runs away.

Her adventure quickly finds her when an old bruja, a witch woman from the days when magic was still in Tierra, rewards the little girl for returning her only cow. She offers Ninita three beans from the Great Stalk and warns her that there could still be some magic left in them. Too excited to listen, Ninita carelessly plants one. And the old bean does the one thing it shouldn’t have been able to do. Grow.

While Ninita sleeps the magical bean sprouts, growing into a stalk just big enough to take a little girl up and into the Cloud Plains. The Plains are a country high above the clouds, inhabited by a race of giants that once fostered a cautious friendship with Tierra through the Great and lesser stalks. But the Great Stalk was devastated in a battle against a traitorous magic user, a brujo from the Plains. The countries have not seen, or spoken to the other since that day. And both suffer as the gradual loss of magic takes its toll.

Ninita finds herself stranded in a world she was taught little about, until a young man from the Plains finds her. Jonas is a bookish giant and has studied the Great Stalk for a long time. He found something odd in his studies, and is out searching for an answer many people think does not exist. But now that he has found Ninita, the first Tierrish person to reach the Plains in more than seven years, he knows that he is on the right path.

The unlikely pair set out to finish the search, praying they are successful. The future of both their lands hangs on the outcome of their journey, and in the end, it will be the only way for Ninita to find her way home.

(Much more to come!)