The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse (2 page)

B
Y THE THIRD DAY
they have developed a routine. When the sun comes up they drink water and gargle, then spit it out on the other side of the well in the same hole that they have dug for their waste deposits. Afterwards they take turns to shout, calling for help for several minutes at a time until their throats burn from the strain. For the rest of the morning Small busies himself collecting all manner of insects and roots, which he mashes in his shirt until they form a thick paste. Meanwhile, his brother does his exercises. Big builds up his muscles, adhering to a fixed regime, with push-ups to exercise his arms and shoulders, sets of sit-ups and then squats, which he does until his legs no longer obey him and he has to stop. He moves on to resistance training, lunging at different angles, strengthening his back and spine. To finish he repeats the push-ups, the sit-ups and the squats, but with his brother in tow so the session ends with him lifting Small up onto his shoulders, as if he were a weight bar or a sandbag. He rests for fifteen minutes and in this intermission the two brothers go back to their shouting, only stopping when
they can no longer utter a word. Afterwards, Big repeats all of the exercises.

If they are able to look up at the sky without the sun burning their eyes they agree that the morning is over, and with that the afternoon begins. The distribution of food is totally unequal. Big eats eighty per cent of what his brother collects, leaving Small with what little he can extract from a worm, a few insects and two or three roots. Both sate their appetite in silence, and keep aside a small portion for supper. Once they have finished, they drink all the water they can and repeat their chorus of shouts. Afterwards, Small tucks himself into the foetal position, barely moving, and Big spends a couple of hours doing stretches. With the last light of the day they eat the vestiges of food that they left aside, still observing the same rationing model, and then go back to shouting until nightfall. They lie down pressed together, each of them searching in the other’s body for some warmth to help him sleep. Meanwhile, the forest answers their daytime shouts with a nocturnal song. They await it restlessly, wondering whose they’ll hear first: the crickets’, the owls’, or the wolves’.

S
MALL DREAMS
about a swarm of butterflies and watches himself catch them with his long, retractable tongue. If they are white, they taste of bread; if they are pink or red, of fruit—a combination of strawberries and oranges; the green ones taste of mint and peppermint; if they are dark they don’t have a flavour—eating them is like licking windows.

The night before, a glow-worm fell into the well, which his brother devoured without batting an eyelid. In the dream, too, there are glow-worms, but they’re big and you can’t eat them, so he picks one and mounts her like an iridescent cavalryman. He is so hungry that he rides the glow-worm to a clearing set apart from the plain and when she stoops to let him down, he sinks his teeth into her side, tearing off pieces of luminous flesh, and drives his nails into her green haunch until he is in up to his hands, his elbows, the full length of his arms, and he slurps the glistening blood as if he were drinking raw egg out of the small crack in its shell. Satiated, and still atop the glowing body of his mount, he begins to cry, kicking himself, since
without her, and in the terrible darkness that now covers him, he has no way of escaping the well.

In his dream the well is big like a city. Some say the citizens are all starving because the land exhausted itself. Small can’t recall life outside of the well, but Big is older than him and remembers.

‘They needed space up there,’ he answers whenever Small asks why they live in such a rotten place.

‘Are there many of them up there?’

‘No, very few of them.’

‘So above is small?’

‘No. It’s very big.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Up there is where they hold the power.’

‘What’s that, then?’

A flying dog licks his horns, tickling him. His brother always talks like this, with few words, because he works a lot. For years he has been constructing a ladder out of liquorice laces in order to reach the edge of the well.

‘Can I have a little nibble?’

‘You know you can’t. We need all of the laces.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘So am I. But you ought to think about everyone, not just yourself.’

Small looks about him: there are people sleeping on the streets, children playing with talking flowers, men carrying
babies in their marsupial pouches. There are others, like his brother, building contraptions in an attempt to get out of the well: a slate boat, a tower of clouds, a catapult made from the bones of the last dragon.

‘I’m tired of thinking about everyone!’

Big lays another lace and a worm the shape of a chicken slips out from a hole. He wipes the sweat from his brow with his forearm and says:

‘Once we are up there, we’ll throw a party.’

‘A party?’

‘Yes.’

‘The kind with balloons and lights and cakes?’

‘No. The kind with rocks, torches and gallows.’

And, on dreaming of fire, suddenly he wakes up. He feels as if a flame has set alight the base of his skull or somewhere behind his eyes. The sky is only just beginning to let the light in and Big is sleeping, so Small gets up slowly, taking care not to wake him. With the taste of fluorescence still in his mouth he rummages among the roots for an ant or a worm. He knows that he is meant to follow the diet that his brother has devised for him strictly, but the hunger he feels on waking is hard to control. According to Big, he can go many days drinking the muddy water from the well, eating a few bugs and sucking on the tips of the roots. However, he stresses, he must remain as still
as possible so as not to expend energy outside his hours of collecting.

He spots a small worm a metre away and moves closer, but just as he is about to trap it his stomach lets out a rising growl, which ricochets across the tapestry of earth hanging all around him. Something inside him jolts his guts with the lash of a whip. It’s so loud that it seems like a ghostly echo from the well itself, and Big wakes up, sullen, orienting himself more with his ears than his eyes.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re awake already? What was that noise?’

‘Me.’

Big rubs his face and sees his brother fixed to the wall as if he formed part of it, stooped in the shape of a question mark.

‘You made that noise? It sounded like mooing.’

‘I think I’m breaking inside,’ says Small.

The day passes without incident, continuing its round of fears and hopes. Nobody responds to their shouts but they are getting used to that. When night falls, Small clutches on to his brother tightly.

‘I’m not feeling good.’

‘I know. I can see it in your face. You’ve lost weight and you’re weak.’

‘Maybe I should eat more.’

‘Not yet. Relax, you’ll get used to the hunger. Your stomach is getting smaller each day, which is why it hurts: it’s shrinking. Once it has shrunk as much as it can, you’ll find that what you’re eating is enough.’

‘But I’ve got no energy. It’s hard to get up. It’s hard to do anything.’

‘I’m the strong one. You don’t need to concern yourself with anything other than holding out. If something happens, if it’s cold, if you’re frightened or if an animal attacks us, I’ll defend you. I’m your big brother. Try to sleep.’

‘I don’t want to sleep yet. I’m afraid to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have dreams… strange dreams. I dream about eating things that I shouldn’t eat. I dream about Mother… My dreams are terrible…’

‘You mustn’t be afraid of dreams; they aren’t real. They’re thoughts that we have in our head and they get all mixed up, memories that we can’t put into words. If you dream about eating things it means you’re hungry, that’s all. If you dream about flying it means you want to go home… Do you see?’

Small assents with a lift of his chin. His brother’s words soothe him and he closes his eyes. With his last breath before falling asleep, he asks:

‘And what does it mean if I dream of eating Mother?’

T
HEY COMPLETE
their first week in the well and hear a new sound.

Small wakes up in a daze, still seeing with dream-filled eyes, as if he were moving through a bank of fog. Even by day the night rules in his pulse and a crepuscular stillness casts a haze over everything. His brother is breathing deeply. The sound comes back, closer now, bringing with it a tremor that reaches all the way down to the boys’ earthen beds.

‘Hello?’ says Small, unsticking his dry mouth. ‘Hello?’

When he speaks for the third time, Big calls out in chorus with him. Only just awake, he shouts according to a primal impulse, without knowing why. Both of them repeat the Hellos, the Helps, the We’re heres. They clap, stamp their feet on the ground, howl. Then they fall quiet and listen for a response that might give some sense to their outbursts.

The wind is black and greets them with paws and breathy grunts, long like tongues. The brothers look at each other with eyes so wide it’s as though they were trying to pop them out of their faces.

A pack.

‘Wolves?’ asks Small.

‘I don’t know. Did you hear growling?’

‘No. Do you think they could be wolves?’

‘They could be goats.’

‘In the forest?’

‘They could be lost. If they’re goats, the shepherd might come after them.’

‘And if they’re wolves?’

‘Then the shepherd won’t come.’

The steps become more and more clear, and the sound of panting coming from the animals has taken over the night. Inside the well, the brothers’ stillness is catching: the insects have stopped buzzing, the water has stilled in its tracks; at last, nature is silent. For a moment, the well slips its bonds and breathes like a home that the brothers don’t want to lose. The siege appears to be a fleeting assault. A wash of calm crawls up the walls, stills the mouth of the well and extends beyond its sheer edges to where the baying creatures howl. They go quiet, and for a split second the forest settles in an implosion of peace.

Then, like an unearthed landmine, it hits them.

‘Wolves!’

Snouts start to appear, sniffing out sweat and dirty flesh. The brothers know they reek, that their own excrement and bodies have given them away. The snouts are crowned with
rows of jagged teeth, and above their slavering tongues, rounding off the image of the beasts, slitted eyes glisten, filled with night.

The boys open their mouths as if to shout, but don’t.

The first of the wolves drops its head and eyeballs them, baring the roof of its mouth. It knows its prey is weak, that it’s ailing and has no means of escape. There is constant movement at its sides. The pack circles the hole in a hunger dance. One of them extends its paws, threatening to pounce. It’s not the only one. They seem to be considering ways of reaching their feed and retreating back into the forest. Another one prepares to launch itself into the well, the very idea of which leaves a long thread of drool dangling from its muzzle. But before it bends its legs a rock splits its head open and the dance breaks up.

‘Get out of our house.’

The sound of bone cracking is followed by an authentic yelp, genuine pain. The animals protest and pace around, but the rocks keep hitting them all the same. They retreat.

‘You got him!’ says Small.

Over the next minutes a few of the wolves return to the hole, but without conviction. Most of them back off, regrouping several metres away where the rocks don’t reach. Eventually, they leave.

‘Can you hear them?’

‘No. They’ve gone.’

‘You frightened them.’

‘Yeah. I frightened the wolves. With rocks!’

Small lets out an astonished laugh, still gripped with fear.

‘Let’s sleep for a while. They won’t come back. There are still a few hours till the sun comes up, and we have to preserve our energy. You go first. I’ll stay awake a bit longer, just in case any of the bastards show their faces here again.’

Small thinks, he said ‘bastards’. His brother has beaten the wolves. Tonight he’ll sleep like few nights before, and it will be the last night, too, that he rests peacefully.

Big settles down in the middle of the well, rocks in either hand, and he doesn’t take his eyes off the hole. Tonight he’ll ask himself how he would fend off the wolves if they got out of the well, and the thought won’t let him sleep. In his head terrible images will take shape of his brother’s skin separated from the bone, of his own, ripped apart in a bloody ritual, his mind still alert to the sound of the beasts as they chew.

F
OR FOUR DAYS
the sun scorches the fields, dries the well, and marks the trees with great strokes of copper. The water that filtered through the earth turns first to sludge, then to clods of black sand. When there is nothing left to drink, the two brothers break their daily routine to suck on the roots that poke out from the walls until their mouths taste of coal.

‘I’m not well,’ Small says.

‘It will rain.’

They know this land well, the motions of the sky under which they’ve grown up, the cloud cycles. They know that a ferocious sun this month heralds an imminent downpour. It will rain because it always rains when their skin starts to peel, and because the land seems to be governed by a mechanism of suffering that works against every one of nature’s decrees. As such, the people here are tough in skin and character, and they meet the exigencies of the land with unbending patience, without demands or complaint. This, however, presupposes a rupture in their
emotional communication, in their shows of affection and in the human contract of cohabitation. The brothers are living proof of it. They no longer look one another in the eyes or search for themselves in the other as they did in the early days. Displays of affection aren’t called for in a world dictated by the need to survive. Love is like a vow of silence, where cruelties befitting a reptile, a prehistoric crocodile, are meted out freely.

‘Do you love me?’ Small asks.

‘It will rain.’

By the time the sun sets on the fourth day of drought they have gone hours without drinking a single drop of water, and Big is showing signs of dehydration. Even his urine has dried up. A silent rage throbs in his temples and for a moment he wants more than anything in the world to strangle his brother, to put his hands around his neck so that his eyes pop out of their sockets and he can bite into them and suck out the white jelly, as if they were salt-water sweeties.

‘Don’t ask me any questions.’

‘I haven’t said anything to you.’

‘Don’t talk to me either.’

Small closes his eyes and thinks about rivers, lakes, puddles of rainwater that he could splash and dance and jump about
in. He imagines torrential floods in all flavours: lemon clouds that release their juice over the meadows and marinate the livestock; deluges of sweet orange to swim and dive in with his mouth open, never drowning; hailstorms of purple grapes; supernatural ice melts; underwater meadows. He digs a hole in the darkest part of the shade and puts his head in up to his ears, in a place where the soil retains a cool cover of blackness and silence. And in this ostrich-like pose his mind elevates beyond the well and his thirst disappears, his brother disappears, the prolonged pain in his stomach disappears, and his breathing slows to the exact stillness of invisible things.

He burrows down deeper still.

His teeth are covered with earth as he opens his mouth to breathe in the thick air. Deeper. The oxygen barely reaches his lungs, and in this state of near breathlessness he is struck by a flash of lucidity, a grey thought sparks white, and sets off a chain of impossible links. Each of his doubts corresponds to a certainty, like a tide of small fires that course into a river of molten lava. He is no longer himself. Now it is not him suffering this slow death in the well. Now no longer a thirst to quench. Now no. At the heart of his discovery is a murderous act of selfishness, new levels of indolence. He lets himself be carried by the nothing, by the emptiness…

‘Get out of there, you idiot!’

Big grabs his legs and heaves the weightless body of his brother who hasn’t moved a muscle in minutes and is practically unconscious. He seems to be immersed in a hallucinatory dream and Big slaps him on the face to snap him out of it. Small comes around and opens his mouth like a fish out of water. His neck is encrusted with sticky sweat and he coughs up grainy clumps of earth, with his tongue covered in a carpet of yellow moss and stone shavings.

‘You nearly suffocated! Have you lost your mind?’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.’

‘I’ve told you, it will rain. It always rains. You have to hold on.’

A couple of hours later, Small realizes that the well is not a well, but a mortar, and his brother is nothing but a fruit stuffed with bones that he must pestle in order to extract its oil, like they do with olives. At first he uses rocks to bash him, but the process is slow and onerous. So he builds a blood mill operated by oxen that drag a shaft, which in turn rotates an enormous stone, and grinds the flesh and bone and entrails until they become a wet paste. He then collects it all in his brother’s skull and invokes the rain, which appears in the form of a gushing tap; and from a mixture of the water and the paste he distils a dark liquid, so thick he can neither chew it nor drink it, but which nonetheless sates his thirst, his hunger, everything. And when it is all
gone, he positions himself underneath the huge stone and spurs the oxen.

By nightfall their bodies have collapsed and they lie unconscious, covered by a blanket of earth. A tremor courses through Small’s fingers. Something in his mind has broken beyond repair from the thirst and hunger. His pupils spin like blind carousels. They see a lawless palace celebrating the eve of his madness. Big is suffocating. His parched skin sticks to his flesh and his muscles shine out like a moon, swollen from the strain of their daily overexertion. He gargles in his dreams and nibbles the cracked flesh of his lips so that a trickle of blood leaks down into his throat, filling him up until he feels sick.

As death appears at the edge of the well, the storm breaks.