Pilgrims book excerpt 4

My shadow withers and huddles at my feet. Bright gravel burns my eyes. This is no longer the high, rolling plateau of the meseta. We've descended onto the vast plains of the Castille, where gusts of hot air bend the fields of grain and whip my brittle hair into my eyes.

I cannot keep going, and yet the Camino pulls me on, dragging me into this desert of dust and sun. I am carrying more than a thousand kilometres in my feet, in my body. Each morning I wake at 5:30. My feet ache when I rise to stand, they cry when I pull on my sandals. Every kilometre brings me closer to Santiago, closer to my final rest; but each étape seems like eternity. Ten kilometres feel like 30 - tripled by the heat, the unchanging scenery, and a body sapped of its last strength.

The path does not bend all morning. It does not climb or descend. My mind assumes the monotonous rhythm of my footsteps. The highway is beside us, separated from the Camino by a few feet of scraggly weeds. After walking for an hour, nothing has changed. I could have been standing still.

“Alex…” I say and stop walking. We’ll never get there. The town we seek is backing away from us. I want to flag down a car. I want to sit by the road and not get up. I want to sleep in the ditch and wait for a stork to carry me off to the steeple of the church.

‘Come, Ta,’ he says. It’s not so far. We are almost there. You can rest soon.

But he sees the tears in my eyes and then he is beside me, wrapping his tanned arms around me, under my backpack against my sweaty back. I lean my head on his shoulder and tears shudder through me.

I don’t care anymore that he sees me cry. It feels better to be held than to cry alone.

Alex waits until I lift my head, then gently brushes my eyes. “Ça va aller,” he says. It will be alright. And for the next 10 kilometres he holds my hand, every single step.