Rd 1 Agent Pitch Contest #27 - THROUGH THE EDGEWOOD

Through The Edgewood
MG Fantasy Adventure
70,000

QUERY:

Eleven year-old Izzy has read every fairytale there is, so she knows that when the faeries steal a child, they always leave a Changeling in its place. But when her little sister, Hen, disappears, there’s not a Changeling in sight. She’s just gone.

Izzy suspects the old woman next door knows something she isn’t telling. Izzy follows her down a winding underground passage, into the Edgewood – a forest on the borders of Earth and Faerie. But this is nothing like the charming woods from Izzy’s stories. Before Izzy and her neighbor can even begin looking for Hen, enchanted cobwebs attack, enveloping the old woman like a human cocoon.

Fleeing for her life, Izzy runs into a band of outlaw Changelings, shape-shifting orphans more likely to steal her shoes than help her out. She befriends them, and learns they’re the last three Changelings left in Faerie – all the others have mysteriously disappeared. The new friends set out on a joint search-and-rescue mission across eastern Faerie. The future looks dark when they discover Hen and the missing Changelings have been imprisoned by an evil queen. It looks blacker than a troll’s toenail when they learn Izzy has something the queen desperately wants.

If they can’t stop the queen, Izzy and her sister will never go home, the entire Changeling race will be enslaved, and Hen won’t be the last victim of the queen’s sinister plans.

FIRST 150 WORDS:

Izzy Doyle stood in the school supply section of the Piggly Wiggly, coming to terms with her fate. She agreed to come with her mom and sister to the grocery store because she needed a new journal. As she faced her only options – yellow legal pad, or inspirational kittens – the full weight of her situation came crashing down on her narrow shoulders. This was it. Her new hometown.

She flicked the thin metal stand with the toe of her shoe. How could her dad have accepted a job in a town with no movie theater, no swimming pools, and – this part was almost too horrifying to believe – no library? How could her mom have agreed to it? Izzy vaguely recalled her parents going on about fresh air and getting closer to nature, but she didn’t connect the dots until now. When they said “nature”, what they really meant was complete isolation from the rest of civilization.