After reading all about the poet Antonio Machado, Javier decides to visit the writer's tomb. In the hotel, he meets a strange woman and her son; a hyperactive teenager. One morning, at breakfast, the woman disappears leaving her son abandoned. This marks the beginning of an odyssey for Javier, a reflective person who finds himself obliged to turn to action, in a story which mixes episodes of the fratricidal struggle which the country faced for three years with the search for an enigmatic woman and the grave behavioural problems the young boy displays. Everything is further complicated when, returning to Málaga, Javier finds himself involved in all manner of problems, when a body, eaten away by turtles, appears in a pool in the city.