Chapter 1

Maggie laughed when one piglet tripped over another and they both tumbled across the floor. Although Maggie always enjoyed helping out in Bob’s stable, she especially loved taking care of the flying pig and her babies. Still chuckling, Maggie dumped the bucket of grain into the mother pig’s feed pan.

‘What’s so funny?’ Leonard, the talking horse, asked from the next stall.

‘The piglets are so cute!’ Maggie told him. ‘I love the little sounds they make.’

‘Hunh!’ he grunted. ‘That’s one thing I could do without. Those “cute” little sounds keep me awake half the night.’

Maggie no longer thought it was unusual to have a conversation with a talking horse, but then, she was used to a lot of unusual things happening at the stable where her friend Bob the Stableman took care of rare and magical creatures. Maggie had been helping Bob with the stable chores for a few weeks now. Bob and his wife, Nora, had taken Maggie in when her stepmother, Zelia, had kicked her out of the family cottage. Maggie loved her new family and thought it was a big improvement over her stepmother and stepsiblings. She missed her father every day, though. She wondered what he would do when he came home from chopping wood on the other side of the Enchanted Forest and found that his daughter was gone.

The mother pig lurched to her feet and ambled to her feed pan. Maggie hurried out of the way. The pig’s wings looked a little tattered. Her babies must have been chewing on them again.

After stepping out of the stall and latching the door behind her, Maggie sat down on a bale of hay. Reaching into her pocket, she took out the brand new journal that Bob had given her and opened it to one of the pages she’d started. She read over what she’d already noted.