On holiday at a small seaside resort, Bridget meets Tom, whose aunt pilots the airship Goodcheer that takes lucky tourists on sightseeing trips around the bay. She does not guess what a role the airship will play in her life as she gazes out to sea with her wheelchair-bound brother and remarks casually:

"Isn't it funny how we often see clouds on the horizon and like to think they're mountains?"

Nor does she foresee the role of the sinister Madame Retsinis, a fairground fortune-teller who talks darkly of opportunities to travel to far lands...

Or what it all has to do with the strange local tales of Manny Reeve, a local eccentric who claimed to have visited a land whose people were threatened with ecological, fierce tribal conflicts and power-hungry tyrants.