The Village Of Joy

The road was orange with sand and dust, or maybe it was ground down pebbles and rocks from years of sandals traipsing one foot after the other. I don’t know how long we’d been walking; it felt like an hour, maybe two. My legs were aching from the uneven terrain and my skin was blistering from the sun. I’d be lobster red by tomorrow.

“What time is it, guys?” I asked, sure that if we didn’t speed up the sun that shone so powerfully would soon drop behind the mountaintops and we’d be plunged into darkness. There were no streetlights out here.

“Um, it’s twenty to two,” Sam said, while the other two continued with our alphabet game, which we’d already played twice over.

I shook my foot furiously to try and rid my shoe of a stone. I knew I should’ve worn flip-flops. “Are you kidding? You know we’ve only been walking for about a half hour or so.” I bent down and took my right shoe off, hopping while I tipped it wrong side up and watched the sharp little stone fall to the floor where it disappeared among the many others.

“How much further do you think we’ve got to go?”

“Not sure,” I said, “last time I was here we drove. Sure it won’t be too long though.”

We’d come, just the four of us on a holiday to the Spanish countryside. Our little villa was high on a hill, accompanied by just a handful of other houses and, right at the bottom of the hill, a bar with English speaking owners. We were grateful for that, but not for the fact that it was shut on Mondays, and without them to provide us with a taxi number we’d been unable to get to Villajoiosa- the closest town, appropriately named 'the village of joy'- to get any food. We’d opted instead to walk to the next little village; Bella Orcheta, I think it was called.

From the top of the hill where we were staying, it didn’t look like a long walk, but in actual fact it took us hours, which wouldn’t have been bad, except the sun was murderous and the wild dogs that barked and snarled seemed to have followed us the entire journey. We rarely saw them, but we knew they were there.

Still, we were happy just the four of us, and the smiles never left our thirsty lips.