1
The first thing his consciousness registered was the smell.
Not the antiseptic smell of a hospital. Not the metallic smell of Santiago where he lived during university. It was a deep, humid, vegetal smell. The smell of earth after rain. The smell of the south.
He opened his eyes and saw a gray sky, cloudy, exactly like the sky of Osorno in winter. For a moment, his brain, still half asleep, built a reasonable explanation: he had fainted in the field, maybe heatstroke, maybe a fall while taking soil samples. Someone would come soon. The project leader, one of his colleagues.
But then he felt the pain in his ribs and remembered.
The truck. The curve. The student coming the other way looking at his phone. The impact.
This was not Osorno. This was the road between Puerto Montt and Calbuco, and it had been violent. Very violent.
He sat up slowly, supporting himself with his hands on the ground. Grass. Wet grass, soaked, with that slightly slippery texture that grass has after recent rain. He looked at his hands: they were dirty with black earth, but there was no blood. He touched his torso, his face. Everything seemed intact.
Too intact to have survived a head-on collision with a truck.
He looked around. He was on a gentle slope, covered with vegetation. He did not recognize any of the plants. That caught his attention immediately, because he knew plants. He knew the grasses of the south, the bushes, the trees. He had spent four years of his life learning to identify species, first by obligation, then for pleasure. The flora of southern Chile was his, in his blood like bitter mate.
Nothing he saw looked like anything he knew.
There was a bush with wide leaves, almost circular, growing in low rosettes. The leaves had a vein pattern that seemed to glow slightly, as if reflecting a light that did not exist. Further away, some thin trees with silver bark and branches growing at impossible angles, geometric, as if someone had pruned them with a protractor.
He stood up carefully. His body responded well. Too well. He remembered breaking at least three ribs in the impact, or at least that was what he felt before losing consciousness.
Maybe he was dead.
The idea crossed his mind with the same naturalness with which a bird flies low: fast, fleeting, not stopping. But if this was heaven, someone had done a terrible job imitating southern Chile. And if this was hell, well, at least there was grass and trees.
He heard a noise to his left. Something moving in the bushes. Instinctively, he lowered his head and stayed still, body tense, senses on high alert. The vegetation was thick, he could not see what it was.
A man emerged from the bushes.
He was short, with dark skin, dressed in a brown robe tied at the waist with a rope. His hair was long, tied in a messy bun, and in his hands he carried a wicker basket full of green leaves. He walked slowly, looking at the ground, and had not seen the newcomer.
Tomás opened his mouth to greet, to ask where he was, to say anything. But when the man looked up and their eyes met, the words froze in his throat.
The other's eyes were black, very black, but what caught his attention was not the color. It was the reaction. The man opened his eyes wide, let out a sharp cry, and ran down the slope, tripping on stones, dropping the basket and scattering the leaves on the ground.
Tomás stood paralyzed. Did he look that bad?
He looked at his hands again. They were clean. His clothes were the same as he remembered: jeans, field boots, a red and black flannel shirt, worn but decent. There was no blood, no wounds, nothing that would justify that reaction of terror.
Maybe the man had never seen someone with European features. Maybe he was in a very remote, isolated place.
But that theory collapsed when, five minutes later, the man returned with three others. They all dressed the same, all had the same dark skin and the same black eyes, and all looked at him as if they had seen a ghost. Or a demon. Or something worse.
One of them, the oldest, stepped forward. He had gray hair and deep wrinkles around his eyes. He raised a hand, palm open, in a gesture that anywhere in the world meant "stop" or "peace." And he said something.
Tomás listened carefully. They were syllables, sounds, but he did not recognize any. It was not Spanish, obviously. It was not English. It was not Mapudungun, the only indigenous language he had heard in his life. It was something completely foreign, liquid and rough at the same time, with tones that rose and fell like a melody.
He shook his head slowly, pointed to his ear with one finger. Then he extended his empty hands, palms up, in the universal gesture of "I have no weapons, I do not want a fight."
The four men looked at each other. The oldest spoke again, this time slower, as if volume were the problem. Tomás shook his head again.
There was an awkward silence. The four men whispered among themselves, throwing him furtive glances. Finally, the old man made a gesture with his hand, pointing down the slope, to where they had come from. The gesture was clear: "come with us."
He did not have many options. He did not know where he was, he had no food, no water, nothing. He nodded and began to walk behind them.
On the way, he picked up one of the leaves the first man had dropped from the basket. He examined it while walking. It was a simple leaf, lance-shaped, about ten centimeters long. It had a very marked central vein and secondary veins forming an almost perfectly symmetrical pattern. But the strange thing was the color: a green so intense it seemed to radiate its own light, and on the edges, tiny golden dots, like specks of metallic dust.
He had never seen anything like it. Not in books, not in fields, not in the university's experimental greenhouses.
He put the leaf in his shirt pocket, with the same care others would use for gold.
2
The village was small. About thirty houses of wood and stone, thatched roofs, arranged around a central square of packed earth. There were children running around, chickens pecking the ground, and in the center of the square, an enormous tree, gigantic, with a trunk so wide it would take ten people hugging it to surround it.
The tree immediately caught his attention. Not only for its size, but for its leaves: they were the same as the bush he had seen before, but huge, the size of a tray, and the golden dots on the edges were so bright they looked like small jewels embedded in the green.
The four men took him to one of the houses, the largest, and made him wait outside while they entered. He stood, hands in his pockets, trying to look as harmless as possible.
People looked at him from their doorways. Children approached with curiosity, but their mothers called them in that strange language and the children retreated, frightened.
A few minutes later, the old man came out of the house, accompanied by another man, younger, about thirty years old, dressed in a better quality robe, dark blue, and with a small metal pin on his chest, something that looked like a stylized flower.
The young man looked at him with curiosity, without fear. He approached, walked around him, examining him like one examines a strange beast. Then he pointed to his own chest and said:
Wei Chen.
Tomás understood. It was a name. He pointed to his own chest and said:
Tomás. Tomás Huinca.
Wei Chen frowned, repeating the syllables with difficulty: "To-más... Win-ca?" He nodded, satisfied, then pointed to Tomás and then to the village, and then made a questioning gesture with his hands.
Where do you come from?
Tomás thought for a moment. How to explain Chile? How to explain Osorno, the university, the truck, death? He pointed to the sky, then to the ground, then made a circular gesture with his hand, trying to express "from very far away, from another place."
Wei Chen nodded slowly, as if that answer made sense. Then he pointed to Tomás's clothes, the jeans, the boots, the flannel shirt, and said something to the other men. They nodded, and one of them ran off to another house.
Minutes later, the man returned with an armful of clothes: a brown robe like the ones they wore, rough but clean. Wei Chen pointed to Tomás's clothes, then to the robe, then to the village.
Change. Stay. For now.
Tomás nodded. There was no point in refusing. Besides, his clothes were starting to feel uncomfortable, wet from the recent rain and the sweat of the walk.
They took him to a small empty house, near the big tree. It was modest: a single room, with a wooden bed frame covered with straw, a low table, a bench, and a small stone hearth in one corner, with a hole in the roof for smoke to escape. On a wooden shelf, some clay pots.
He changed clothes in private, carefully folding his old garments and placing them on the table. The robe was rough, chafed his skin, but it was dry and clean. The jeans, the boots, and the shirt remained there, a reminder of who he was, where he came from, everything he had lost.
When he came out, Wei Chen was waiting outside. He gestured for him to follow, and took him back to the square. Now, more people had gathered around the big tree. A group of children, a handful of women with baskets, some old men sitting on logs.
Wei Chen pointed to the tree, then to Tomás, and said one word: "Shenmu."
Tomás repeated: "Shenmu." Wei Chen nodded, satisfied, and pointed to the word as if to say: "that's its name." Then he pointed to the ground, the village, and said another word: "Cunluo." Village. Then he pointed to a woman passing by with a jar on her head, and said: "Ren." Person.
He was teaching him words. Like a child. Like an absolute foreigner, which was exactly what Tomás was.
The hours passed like that. Wei Chen pointed at objects, said words, and Tomás repeated them, engraving them in his memory with the same meticulousness with which he recorded field data. Shui, water. Huo, fire. Shitou, stone. Cao, grass. Hua, flower.
When the sun began to hide behind the hills, painting the sky a deep orange that did not resemble any Chilean sunset, a woman approached with a steaming clay bowl. She offered it to Tomás with a shy smile and said: "Chi."
Eat.
Tomás accepted the bowl with gratitude. It was a kind of thick soup, with pieces of something that looked like vegetables and other pieces of something that looked like meat, although he recognized neither. The broth had a strange taste, herbal, with a slight bitterness that reminded him of mate, but more intense, more complex.
While eating, sitting on the ground by the fire they had lit in the square, he watched the people. They talked among themselves, laughed, argued. A daily life, normal, like any village in southern Chile, but with those small differences that unsettled everything: the clothes, the language, the plants, the air itself, which smelled of something he could not identify.
After dinner, Wei Chen sat beside him. He no longer seemed so distant, so cautious. He pointed to the sky, where the first stars were beginning to appear, and said something long, a complete sentence. Tomás shook his head, not understanding.
Wei Chen tried another way. He pointed to Tomás, then to the sky, and then made a falling gesture, a descending motion. Did you come from the sky?
Tomás hesitated. How to explain reincarnation? How to explain death and rebirth in a language of which he barely knew ten words? He pointed to his chest, then to the ground, and moved his hand in a gesture of "I don't know." Then he pointed to the sky, touched his head as if sleeping, and pointed to the ground again. Slept, woke up here.
Wei Chen frowned, processing. Then his eyes opened a little wider, and he said a word Tomás had not heard before: "Zhuǎnshì."
He repeated it several times, pointing to Tomás, then to the sky, then to the ground. Tomás did not understand, but he nodded, because it seemed to be what Wei Chen wanted to hear.
Later, in his small house, lying on the straw bed that creaked with every movement, Tomás took the leaf from his shirt pocket. He had transferred it from his old clothes to the new robe before storing his belongings. Now he held it in front of his eyes, in the faint moonlight coming through the half-open door.
The golden dots glowed weakly, as if they had their own light. The veins of the leaf formed a pattern too perfect, too symmetrical, as if someone had designed them with a compass.
He wondered what kind of plant it was. He wondered what kind of soil produced it, what kind of climate, what kind of nutrients. He wondered if it had medicinal, nutritional, industrial uses. He wondered if he could cultivate it, study it, understand it.
For the first time since he woke up on that slope, he smiled.
He did not know where he was. He did not know how he had arrived there. He did not know if he would ever see a familiar face, a familiar landscape again. But there were plants. There was earth. There was a whole world to discover, classify, understand.
That was enough.
3
The first days were a chaos of new words, gestures, misunderstandings, and strange food. Tomás learned fast, very fast, as if his brain, freed from all the worries of his previous life, had become a sponge thirsty for information.
He learned that the village was called "Clear Springs Village," or something like that. The word "Qīngquán" appeared repeatedly when the villagers spoke of their home. He learned that the giant tree in the square was sacred, that they called it "The Shenmu of a Thousand Leaves," and that people left offerings at its base: small painted stones, pieces of cloth, grains of rice.
He learned that Wei Chen was not the village chief, but a kind of local scholar, someone who could read and write, and that was why the villagers respected him. The real chief was an old, quiet man who lived in the largest house and barely spoke, but whose decisions were law.
He learned the names of everyday things: the cooking pot, the water jar, the harvest basket, the sickle for cutting. He learned to greet in the morning ("Zǎo shang hǎo") and to say thank you ("Xièxiè"). He learned to say "I'm hungry," "I'm thirsty," "where is the bathroom?"
The bathroom was a hole in the ground behind the houses, with a small thatched hut around it. Not very different from some places in southern Chile, actually.
But what really interested him was not the words, but the plants.
Every day, he went for walks around the village. At first, some villagers followed him at a distance, watchful, as if afraid he might escape or cause harm. But over time, seeing that he only crouched to look at herbs, that he collected leaves and smelled them, that he examined the earth between his fingers, they lost their fear.
An old woman, the same one who had given him soup the first day, approached while he was observing a bush with blue flowers. She pointed to the flower, said "Lánhuā," and made a gesture of putting something in her mouth. Edible?
Tomás shook his head, pointing to the flower and then making a face of "I don't know, I'm not sure." The old woman laughed, and then tore a leaf from the bush, chewed it, and nodded, offering one to him.
He accepted it cautiously. The leaf had a fresh taste, slightly acidic, like a cross between lettuce and lemon. It was not unpleasant. The old woman nodded, satisfied, and went on her way.
That night, Tomás took one of the empty clay pots in his house and, using a charcoal from the hearth, began to draw on the inside of the pot. He drew the blue flower, as accurately as he could, and next to it he wrote, in Spanish: "Lánhuā. Hoja comestible, sabor ácido. Posible fuente de vitamina C. Investigar más."
He had no paper. He had no notebook. But he had pottery and charcoal, and he had a memory trained not to forget details.
The next day, he found a different plant. And another pot. And another drawing.
Wei Chen discovered it a few days later, when he entered the house looking for him and saw the pots lined up against the wall, each with a drawing and some incomprehensible scribbles. The local scholar approached, examined the drawings with curiosity, and then pointed to the scribbles.
What is this?
Tomás hesitated. Then he pointed to the pot with the blue flower, pointed to the flower, and said: "Lánhuā." Then he pointed to the scribbles in Spanish and said: "My words. From my land."
Wei Chen nodded slowly, processing. Then he pointed to the next pot, with the drawing of a long-leafed grass. Tomás said: "I don't know the name. But they use it for thatching roofs. It is water resistant."
Wei Chen looked at him with a new expression, a mix of respect and strangeness. He pointed to the pots, then to Tomás, then made a circular gesture that encompassed everything, as if asking "are you making a record of everything?"
Tomás nodded.
Wei Chen was silent for a long time, looking at the pots. Then, without a word, he left the house and returned a few minutes later with an object in his hands.
It was a notebook. Small, with yellowed, worn pages, but a notebook. And a tiny brush, and a piece of solid ink in a small wooden box.
Tomás felt his eyes moisten. He did not know why. It was just a notebook, a trivial object. But at that moment, in that lost village in a world that was not his, it was the most valuable gift he could have received.
Wei Chen handed him the notebook and said something Tomás interpreted as: "So you don't have to draw on pots."
Tomás took the notebook with trembling hands. He opened it. The pages were empty, waiting.
Xièxiè - he said, with all the gratitude he could put into that word.
Wei Chen nodded, and for the first time, gave him a genuine smile.
That night, Tomás did not sleep. He sat by the hearth, with the notebook open on his knees, and began to write. Not drawings, but words. Descriptions. Hypotheses. Questions.
"Plant 1: Lánhuā (local name). Blue flower, five petals. Leaf edible, acidic taste. Grows in humid soils, near water sources. Villagers use it in salads. Possible high ascorbic acid content. Investigate medicinal properties."
"Plant 2: Thatching grass (local name unknown). Long, flexible leaves, very resistant to humidity. Villagers dry and braid them for roofs. Could it have antifungal properties? Or is it simply a physical structure that prevents filtration?"
"Plant 3: The Shenmu. Giant tree in the village square. Huge leaves with golden dots. Villagers consider it sacred. No one uses it for anything, only leave offerings. Why is it so big? What nutrients does it find in the soil? Are the golden dots accumulations of minerals? Or perhaps..."
He left the sentence unfinished. He did not want to write what he was thinking, because it sounded too absurd. But he thought it anyway: What if the golden dots are not minerals? What if they are something else? Something that does not exist on Earth?
He put the notebook under the bed, next to his old clothes, and lay down. Outside, the wind moved the leaves of the Shenmu, producing a deep whisper, as if the tree itself were breathing.
Tomás closed his eyes and smiled.
He had lost his world. But he had found another. And it was full of questions waiting for answers.