Twelve-year-old Brine Seaborne is a girl with a past ...if only she could remember what it is. Found alone in a rowboat as a child, clutching a shard of the rare starshell needed for spell-casting, she`s spent every day since housekeeping for an irritable magician and his obnoxious apprentice, Peter. But everything changes when Brine and Peter accidentally break the magician`s starshell and need to flee the island. Lost at sea, they blunder into the path of the legendary pirate ship the Onion. Before you can say `pieces of eight,` they`re up to their necks in the pirates` quest to find Magical North, a place so shrouded in secrets and myth that most people don`t even think it exists. If Brine is lucky, she may find out who her parents are and why they sent her out to sea. And if she`s unlucky, everyone on the ship will be eaten by sea monsters. It really could go either way.