Griffin is nine years old. He's haunted by fragments of a dream. He sees a journey - a celestial city, a great cathedral, and a figure roped to the steeple, about to fall...

It is Cumbria 1348, the year of the Black Death. A medieval mining town lives in fear of the advancing plague. Griffin's older brother Connor returns from the outside world in a state of despair, until Griffin tells of his dream and reveals their only source of survival. Make tribute to God. Place a spire on a distant cathedral. Do it before dawn or the village will be lost.

Griffin sets out on a bizarre journey with Connor, Searle the pragmatist, Searle's naive brother Ulf, Martin the philosopher and Arno the one-handed ferryman. Together they tunnel through the earth to a new world - New Zealand, the antipodes, 1988. But Griffin has a chilling new premonition...one of them will die at the cathedral.