In a medieval fantasy kingdom, two orphans May, Kseniya Piryatinskaya and his sister Martha, Tatyana Aksyuta live in poverty. May carries a peculiar gift: he can sense gold from a distance, yet the mere presence of gold sickens him. Despite this strange talent, the siblings never use his ability to gain riches. One wintry night, during the Winter celebrations, a gang of robbers seizes May to exploit his magic, and Martha sets out on a perilous quest to rescue him. As she pursues the thieves through the freezing darkness, she collapses into the snow, fighting exhaustion and cold.
Martha is found by a traveling scientist, Orlando, Andrey Mironov, and the two seek shelter in his mobile wagon. When wolves kill Orlando’s horse, they press on on foot, the cold biting at their resolve. Martha pleads with Orlando to join her in rescuing May, but Orlando is captivated by a constant stream of scientific ideas he wants to pursue, and he worries that a quest would derail his work. Yet his curiosity eventually wins out, and the pair continues their journey through a succession of fantastical lands.
Their first stop is a perilous swamp that leads to a distant mountain where a dragon sleeps. The journey there tests their nerves, but they discover a bizarre paradise perched on the dragon’s back: a village where warmth abounds, food is endless, and labor is a forgotten memory. Knights lounge about, guarding a secret that promises eternal comfort, and those who stumble upon it are tempted to stay forever. Orlando wrestles with the temptation to settle into this dreamlike refuge, while Martha remains focused on finding May. During their time near the village, they spot May and the robbers close by, and the dragon’s awakening unleashes chaos, destroying the village and scattering the travelers. Though they survive, Martha and Orlando are parted once more.
Their travels take them to a bustling city and a tavern, where Orlando’s outsider status becomes a flashpoint. A heated brawl erupts after he dances with a local woman, and the altercation lands him in trouble with the town guards. A harsh inquisition follows, and Orlando delivers a fervent defense of his scientific pursuits, but the tribunal finds him guilty and orders him to be immured in a high, looming tower. As the stone seals around him, Orlando remains magnanimous, while Martha refuses to abandon him and slips into the tower just before the seal; both accept a grim, slow death together. Outside, May remains in the hands of the robbers, where the pecking order of cruelty shifts as their leader, Gorgon, begins to show a protective, even paternal, side toward May. The robbers press on, tracking a hidden chest of gold that May’s talent allows them to sense. Brutus, a loyal but ruthless conspirator among the gang, aids Gorgon in pursuing wealth at all costs.
Meanwhile, in a bold turn, Martha and Orlando climb toward the tower’s summit, where Orlando conceives a flying contraption. He sketches the device and eventually builds it, and the two leap from the tower to escape captivity. They crash-land in a city ravaged by the Black Death, a plague-witch who stalks the streets. Martha and Orlando shelter the city’s orphans and a sense of hope returns, though Orlando ultimately succumbs to the plague and is cremated by plague doctors. Martha tends to the survivors and helps the orphans reconnect with their Good Grandmother, Marie Rosůlková.
Ten years pass, and Martha reaches a land ruled by a cruel prince who turns out to be May in disguise. In the intervening years, May has learned to control his gold-sensing ability, using it to attract wealth telekinetically and inadvertently becoming the robber gang’s unspoken heir. Gorgon openly guards May, and the reunion is tense: Martha sees that May, now grown, is both a boon and a threat to the gang’s plans. Gorgon, and his ally Brutus, attempt to trap Martha in a tower and eliminate her as a threat to their ambitions. May, enraged by what he perceives as Martha’s threat to his complicated life, explodes with anger, drawing all the gold in the castle to himself and obliterating the fortress and its greedy inhabitants.
In the ruins, Martha realizes May has lost his power to sense gold, and a mix of sorrow and regret clouds her heart. Yet a glimmer remains: she recognizes the spark of Orlando’s spirit in May, especially as he speaks of “flying home.” Encouraged, May begins to recreate the idea of a flying machine, stumbling forward with a wall’s blank page in front of him. Though their journey began in peril and doubt, it ends with a renewed whispered promise of flight and a future built on courage, science, and a sibling bond that endured every trial.
In these vast, perilous worlds—where dragons loom, knights dream, and plague spirits roam—the duo’s perseverance finally creates a path to freedom. And as May traces the lines of a new flying contraption on a wall, the story closes on a fragile, hopeful note: the deadliest monsters may be conquered not just with force, but with ingenuity, trust, and the stubborn resilience that only family can grant.
