Janet Montgomery (aged 11) and Jeffery Davidson (nearly 12) travel from South Africa to England where they have a reunion with old friends Sipho Mdluli and Catherine Kopirovsky. They travel together to Italy for a beach holiday, but are diverted to a strange country where they end up without passports or money, and only the clothes they are wearing. They are sheltered by some secret nuns, but the surrounding forests have wild animals, and even stranger creatures that drive them even further into the wilderness. Catherine had an heirloom jewelled cross, whose jewels sometimes light up, and seem to be leading them on a mysterious quest, but some otherworldly creatures seem to be trying to divert them from it. They meet nomadic people who live in tents, some of whom help them, but others have more sinister intentions. A sequel to "Of Wheels and Witches" and "The Enchanted Grove".