A clever young prince is in love with a beautiful young witch. They are good, and are beloved by their small kingdom. She is dear to him, and he is prideful of her beauty and her power. The morning of their wedding, a neighboring prince offers to buy her from him and the young prince rebuffs the offer. The ugly prince is infuriated by the prince's laughing rejection and arranges to have the young witch kidnapped, to marry for himself. After she is kidnapped, the ugly prince realizes he cannot publicly marry her, he can never truly have her, and so he sends her away, far across the sea.
Distraught, the boy prince rouses his kingdom to help find her, to no avail. Angered, he begins to accuse the citizenry of collusion in her disappearance, they revolt and cast him from his home. Before he leaves, he's given a small bag of magic by an old wizard.
Soon the prince is hungry, lost and wandering in the wastelands. He encounters an elderly oracle who tells him where he can find his lost love: a distant and legendary city. And so he sets off for a destination faraway across the sea.
Seeking transport and now penniless, the boy meets a pirate who takes him aboard. They find themselves pursued and eventually trapped by the fleet of an evil king. The boy prince is forced to use his bag of magic, and creates the illusion that the entire crew of the ship are women. The king's men consider a woman at sea to be bad luck and, alarmed at the idea of an entire ship of women, they allow the pirate's ship to pass. The pirate is so impressed with the boy that he takes the boy into his confidence, and eventually lets him command the ship.
But the boy isn't ready for such responsibility and foolishly steers the ship into rocky, dangerous waters. The pirate skillfully saves the ship, but is so angry with the boy that he abandons him on the rocky island where the ship was almost lost.
To escape the wild animals that lurk on the island, the boy sets out on a raft. In the night, a great ship pulls him from the dark waters. He is incredibly grateful. But things are not as they seem, and as the captain and as crew behave more and more strangely, the boy comes to believe this is a ship of the damned. He does not reveal his suspicions but convinces the captain to let him disembark at their next port. The captain reveals that this is indeed a ship of lost souls but allows the boy to safely to land, on the agreement that the boy makes sure that the ship and it's crew are not forgotten.
At this port, he meets a slave girl who sells meat to the hungry merchants. She is very beautiful, but wears great heavy chains and disappears at sunrise every morning. The boy, famous for his voyage aboard the lost ship, remains in this port for a time, doing small jobs and earning his keep. The slave girl begins to fall in love with him. One night, she entices him to join her for the sunrise. They stand on the beach, holding hands and facing the east as night gives way to morning.
As the blinding rays of sunlight kiss the ocean before him, the boy looks around to find himself within a walled garden of monstrosities! The slave girl tells the boy that a giant Cyclops is the lord of this place and it is he who imprisons her and every morning she must return here to serve the Cyclops. The monsters here are her wards, she cares for them, and they for her. The Cyclops soon appears and is enraged to discover a boy in his palace! It chases the boy through the garden of mad monsters. The boy finds himself trapped with the Cyclops closing in. He narrowly escapes with his life when a great hawk appears atop the garden's great wall, with an old woman clutching to its neck. The mad old witch hauls him aloft and they fly high and away from the Cyclops, his garden fortress and his slave girl.
The old woman brings the boy near to the city where he believes his bride to be, but she refuses to land: she is heading toward the sea, to feed her great hawk. The boy summons his courage and jumps.
He lands safely and brushing the dust from his greyed tunic, he raises his head to face his destiny. Approaching the city's gilded walls, he notices that the walls are quite tarnished, but no matter, he rings at the city gate. No answer. He calls out, to no answer. He pushes the gate and it bursts under his force! Inside he finds a city of inanimate figures, frozen in various tasks. An entire city of statues!
Incredulously, he wanders the city and finding nothing alive, he heads back outside the city walls where he finds a drunkard laying on the ground. He wakes the drunkard and asks, what has happened here? The drunkard laughs and says that this city was cursed by the gods over a century ago, that the inhabitants are cursed to remain as they were, as they are. This is why the city is legendary, because it no longer lives! Furious at his own foolishness, the boy wanders away, the drunk's laughter ringing in his ears. He will never see his bride again.
Humiliated, the boy wanders back the way he came. A poor choice, as he soon crosses paths once again with the Cyclops! The monster is in a fury: the woman he has kept prisoner has escaped and the Cyclops blames the boy. He attacks the boy who runs to the ruins of a fallen palace. Deeper, deeper within the ruins he is chased, but unbeknownst to either, this is the forgotten labyrinth of the Minotaur, who still lurks within. Hopelessly trapped by the ancient and enormous man-bull, the boy's one chance is to pit Minotaur and Cyclops against one another. But during the furious clash between two legendary monsters, he is crushed by the two behemoths.
He wakes to find himself among the monsters and fires of Hades. He charms the hellions and regales them with the tales of his big adventure so far, and grim Hades himself agrees to help send his soul up to Olympus. Why, asks the boy, would he need to go there? Hades tells of a young woman so beautiful she has been spirited away by Zeus himself. Finally, this must be where his lady love is truly hidden! She is bound deep in creation's furnace, the workshop of Zeus, King of Gods. Hades gives the boy the powerful crown and wings of a herald of Zeus, and teaches him how to sneak past the Olympian gates and into the place that is wellspring to all creation.
Within, the boy finally finds his bride! The young maiden has been stripped of her powers and is betrothed to one of Zeus' ugly, spoiled children. At the appearance of her prince, her ashen face beams pure radiance. Under the disguise of the herald, the boy whisks his love away with him, in plain view of the entire Olympian host.
Reunited, they must get themselves away from Olympus. But Zeus has seen the deception and sends forth hordes of his half-finished horrors and angry heralds to destroy the two lovers.
They nearly escape, but are stopped, trapped within the gates of Olympus! Their eyes meet and as they kiss, one last time in death, their magic is reborn! Using the herald's crown and the witch's magics, they leap over the gates, higher than the clouds, higher than the sun and moon!
When their feet return to earth, they encounter the smell of a great fire. They look to the north, and indeed, an entire island is burning. With Zeus not far behind, they use what time they have and all their combined magics to raise a new island and bring the men and women and all the animals of the burning land to safety. Never before have they expended so much effort, and they collapse upon one another on the rocks of the newly formed beach.
Their heroic rescue of the islanders impresses Zeus. The King of the Gods considers the boy's adventure and concludes that it is worthy of legend. Not only are the boy prince and the girl witch reunited and returned to their land as heroes, Zeus himself cleaves a space at the edge of the night sky, within which the pair live forever together among the stars.
