It all began when a wandering peddler of unneeded creatures sold Tristan and Isolde the egg of an Occitan phoenix. It would make a fine present for their grandchildren, who were coming to spend the summer with them. Just then, scientists announced that a strange star called Artemisia was heading toward Earth. It was very small, no bigger than a soccer ball, and its fall was not to be missed. But then a mysterious thief turned up in the dacha village, wearing a red cap twisted like the shell of a Roman snail, and it seemed he had set out to make life miserable for everyone around him.

Like Tove Jansson, Hans Christian Andersen, and other true storytellers, Konstantin Charukhin opens up in his novel a world not only of unbridled invention but also of enchanting melancholy, making the book a shining example of the kind of children's fiction that adults can enjoy too.