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extra pair of shoes in my bags (since there were CDs and DVDs and other things that I was beginning to doubt I’d get to use). The ribboned gypsy shoes had won over the tennis shoes and hiking boots. And now the gypsy shoes were the only ones left.
    As soon as we stepped off the bus, it chugged away around the curve, leaving us at the roadside, surrounded by my bags. For a minute I had an urge to run after it.
    I picked up a suitcase and started walking along beside my grandparents, limping a little from the blisters. After about four steps, Abuelita stopped, slid off her sandals, and handed them to me. “Here,
mi amor.
You don’t want to ruin your nice city shoes.”
    “But what about your feet?”
    “Mine are already tough,” she said. “Like a jaguar’s.”
    “Not even a thorn could enter your grandmother’s paws.” Abuelo laughed. He skimmed his hand over her back.
    Her sandals were well-worn leather with some kind of animal hair still clinging to it. The soles seemed to be cut from pieces of tire and attached to the leather with small nails. They fit me lengthwise but were too wide. I was glad she’d made me wear them, though, because we had to walk on a muddy path dotted with sharp rocks. For a while we walked through woods, through light that swam and flashed between leaf shadows. Soon we entered a clearing, a stretch of hilly meadows. My legs fell into a rhythm. Each step made it harder to go back to the bus stop, take a string of buses to the airport, and fly home to Walnut Hill.
    We reached a small stream, and Abuelo slipped off his sandals. He rolled up his pants and waded right in. “It’s only knee-deep,
m’hija,
” he said. “Easy to cross.”
    I took off the sandals and stepped into the cool water. It wasn’t easy to hold my suitcase above the surface. Halfway across, I shifted the bag to my other hand and looked back at the hills we’d walked over.
    Abuelita paused next to me, balancing the heavy duffel bag on her head, one hand steadying its weight. Her other hand rested at my back, urging me forward. “We have almost arrived, Clara.”
    I’d never seen an eighty-year-old with this much strength. When we stepped onto the opposite bank, her hand brushed a branch of small white flowers which leaped up at her touch. But they weren’t flowers after all! They were butterflies, and as they rose, they seemed to emerge from her hand, one for each finger, flying up like magic.

    A few minutes later, after we had turned a sharp bend in the trail, Abuelo set down the bags and pointed to the cluster of wooden and bamboo shacks that had just come into view. “This is our home!” he said. “And your home!”
    One shack was the kitchen, Abuelo told me as we drew closer, one the bathroom, one the bedroom, one a living room with a little bedroom attached. They looked like run-down toolsheds. They were old and small, but that was about all they had in common with my imagined house. I peered into the living room to see if there was a DVD player. Not even close. Only three wooden chairs and a table. Not even a TV, not even a sofa or rug or armchair. None of the things that made a living room a living room. My stomach sank.
    The farthest shack was the tiniest, just a few boards pieced together, with a torn sheet hanging over one open side. That was the bathroom.
    I tried to say something but couldn’t find any words.
    “There is a market every Saturday at the next village over,” Abuelo said. “If we leave at dawn, we arrive before the heat. Two hours walking.” His voice was hopeful, trying to please me, but now I barely noticed his effort.
    I said nothing. Two hours?
    “But what a pretty walk it is,” he added. He glanced nervously at Abuelita, who watched us in silence.
    He motioned to a field of green stalks with big leaves moving in the breeze. “Our cornfields,” he said. “We grow beans and squash, too. And in the woods, coffee plants.”
    I hardly heard his words. All I could think