In early eighteenth-century Lisbon, Baltasar returns from war missing a hand and searching for purpose.

In Lisbon, Baltasar meets Blimunda, a young woman gifted with visionary sight. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fe where women are burned at the stake, the two are bound body and soul by love of an unassailable strength.

Together with the eccentric priest Bartolomeu Lourenço, they attempt to build a flying machine powered by human will. But as the trio pursue Bartolomeu’s impossible – not to mention heretical – dream of flight, the Inquisition watches closely.