Fia is a wise and somewhat tough 8-year-old girl. Perhaps a cousin of Pippi Longstocking, only a little more vulnerable. Like Pippi, and all other children, she wants to be big and strong, with the power and opportunity to make the world the way she wants it to be. Fia has a difficult role as a kind of "mother" to her mother, a mother who is unable to cope with everyday life. But in the yard opposite lives the magician Bustric, and he becomes Fia's anchor in life. Bustric is a little grown up, but very much a child, and he saves Fia from being seen as a liar and a dreamer in the new class she has to start in.

The Soviet Union, 1991: Captain Igor Fedorov is about to set a new record for solo space flight when he loses contact with the base in Kazakhstan.