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A young opera singer on the cusp of stardom is hounded by a psychopath with a connection to her past, who forces her to watch as he brutally murders her friends and colleagues.

In 1914, a luxury ship leaves Italy in order to scatter the ashes of a famous opera singer. A lovable bumbling journalist chronicles the voyage and meets the singer's many eccentric friends and admirers.

A year has passed since the young Emperor went hunting with his falcon and captured the Peri, who was in the form of a gazelle, and married her. She is still all light, neither human nor a spirit, and if after three more days she casts no shadow, she must return to Keikobad and the Emperor will turn to stone. Since she cannot bear children unless she can find a human shadow, she asks the strange Nurse for help. The Nurse, who controls weird magics, brings her to the discontented household of Barak, a dyer, and his Wife. The Nurse attempts to purchase the Wife's shadow by promising her riches, an idyllic life, and a young lover. The Wife resists three times, and the Baraks are cast into an underground vault. The characters wander through eerily exotic settings while they recover their consciences, and all ends happily.