Twelve-year-old Lilia goes north to seek the family she has never known, accompanied by her friends Kai and Karina and their dog Ove, on an adventure fraught with peril, especially when they become lost in Bitra Forest, the Elf King's domain. Inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The princess and the pea.

Skye believes that moving across the country will be the perfect chance to start over. In their isolated new neighborhood Skye manages to fit in, but her younger sister Deirdre withdraws from everyone, becoming fixated on the swampy woods behind their house and building monstrous sculptures out of sticks and bones. Then Deirdre disappears. Now something awful comes scratching at Skye's window in the middle of the night, claiming she's the only one...