A king was dying. An old man told his sons that only the water of life would save him.

The story of 1947, when Bender's band, after a beating of the Nazis, tried to fight their way through Czechoslovakia to Austria. They come out of the forest to occupy the family's rural estate, kidnap doctors to help heal one of their wounded.

When a comet passes the Earth very closely, it pulls a small part of North Africa, and a small swathe of humanity, along with it.

Eleven-year old Mísa has the temperament of a proper boy and endless problems with the grown-ups. It is no wonder that he longs to become an adult without further delay. Mísa keeps house together with his father and has various duties. After a failed attempt at dish-washing he goes off to the research institute where his father is working on an important invention. He is trying to produce a substance that would make poultry and other animals bigger and thus help the struggle against famine in the world, but so far he has only managed to produce a shrinking substance. After his father leaves the laboratory, Mísa mixes up different ingredients and makes the growth substance. He drinks it and instantly becomes an adult. His father, conversely, turns into a toddler after drinking the shrinking substance with his beer by mistake.

Thieves Svarc and Cihák are interrupted in their robbery of a jeweler's store. In order to disappear as quickly as possible, they jump into the nearest car and leave, finding on the way that a little boy named Jirka, son of the car's owner, is with them. They take him to a cottage where Cihák's eighteen-year old daughter Milena attends to him. Jirka first treats Milena with hostility, but as days pass, the "prisoner" and the "guard" become close. Milena cooks for the boy and takes care of him, but nothing can intimidate the dauntless Jirka and he seeks for the first opportunity to escape.