Sarnac may have become a successful scientist, a leading light in the research of chemical reactions of cells, but he would never forget the dream. It was a dream he had had as a young child, a dream that was both beautiful and terrifying; frighteningly real and marvellously imaginary. And as Sarnac looks back on his childhood, he finds the world of his dreams and the reality he has lived have become so magically entwined that he can no longer distinguish between them.