It's the perfect summer day for Tommy Holcomb and his friends to play stick ball. When a storm comes, a lightning strike opens up a hole in the ground. Tommy falls through the hole, and lands in a strange new world. The place is called Fragmenta. Once there, Tommy befriends Aronia, a twenty-foot tall blue caterpillar woman, and Glipt, a dwarf and self-proclaimed Grand Inquisitor who interrogates him to no end. Tommy learns from Aronia and Glipt that children are scarce in Fragmenta. Human children are considered the rarest. On Fragmenta, they are bought and sold for the magic that exists within them. Soon, Tommy is kidnapped and hauled onto an airship where children are held captive. He meets a boy named Raveesh who suffered a circumstance similar to Tommy's. As the boys make their journey toward a land island called Derkaloosh, Tommy befriends the ship captain's bodyguard Jamros, a giant and a devotee of the butterfly goddess Aronia. With Jamros's aid, Tommy plots his escape. Now, all Tommy must do is locate Aronia to find a way home.