The River That Circles the Town

Every castle needs a moat, and Albarracín grew its own. The river Guadalaviar swings around the great rock in a horseshoe, so the town sits almost entirely inside a loop of moving water. Today Polly declares a slow day and goes down to meet the river properly, the way one should meet anything that has been doing its job for this long.

Down in the gorge the air is cool and green. Poplars and willows lean over the current, dragonflies stitch blue lines above the shallows, and the water works at the rock the way it has for ages, patiently, without any particular deadline. Polly walks the riverside path slowly, the way Berta taught her, letting the town lose her kindly.

She spends the afternoon being useless in the best possible way. She watches water striders dimple the surface. She listens to the river change its accent at every bend, gravel here, deep stone there. High above, between two walls of rock, the pink houses peer down over their balconies as if checking that the moat is still on duty.

At dusk a fox comes down to drink at the far bank. For a moment the two of them regard each other over the moving water, bird and fox, neither in any hurry. Then the fox melts back into the shadows and Polly climbs the darkening lanes home, smelling of river and entirely satisfied with a day in which nothing important happened.