Free The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse by Iván Repila

his skin. After the coming effort he will be left twisted like an old doll, and will undoubtedly be unable to move. He is going to burst inside. And he’ll be alone. Under these conditions, to survive one day would be a miracle. If his predictions are right and his brother manages to escape from the forest, and if he finds the path to the house and honours his pledge by coming back finally to find him, several days will have passed. At best, his life will no longer depend on him. For the first time.
     
    ‘Up you get,’ he says.
    ‘Already?’
    ‘Yes. We can’t delay it any longer.’
    ‘OK. Shall we say goodbye?’
    The brothers come together in a long, unrestrained embrace. Big ties the little bindle to a belt loop on Small’strousers. Afterwards, he scrapes around in a corner and pulls out Mother’s old bag of food, which his brother looks at with a sidelong glance, recalling a forgotten nightmare. He tosses it out of the well, and as it hits the ground, cloying fumes of putrid cheese splutter through the seams and it spits out black breadcrumbs and thin, wrinkled figs, decomposed like them.
    ‘Give me your hands,’ he says.
    Small gives them to him, and as he does he remembers the first day they spent in the well. He goes back to that time, but they are no longer the same; the well is no longer the same. Not even the distance separating them from the world is the same. They take their positions: Big spreading his legs to steady himself when the speed picks up, Small with one knee on the ground so that he isn’t dragged along, both of them gripping with such force that their knuckles blanch. And without another thought they start to spin. Big pulls his brother upwards so the rotation is clean and goes on spinning, and Small is raised a hand from the ground and he spins, another hand and he spins, until with the next spin he’s virtually horizontal, with his eyes closed and his clenched teeth making dents in his gums; and still they spin, faster and faster, with each spin mapping a bigger circumference, and when it seems like they are at the point of falling, exhausted and breathless from so much spinning, Small slips down tothe ground, but doesn’t touch it, then soars back up at an angle, and they repeat this twice more, and in the final ascent Big shouts Now and lets go, and with his eyes still closed Small breaks free and he takes off from the earth towards the sun like a comet of bones, and he extends his weightless body, made from a stalk or an arrow, and casts a fine shadow over his brother’s face as he flies above the roots into the daylight, and he tumbles several more times before settling like a leaf on the smooth grass that grows just beyond the well.
     
    Laid out on top of it, Small beams. With his hands he caresses the daisy petals, the small stones, the blanket that covers the earth. Everything has changed. The light is different. The smells are different. What a smell, the forest. Thirstily he breathes in the distant perfume of fruit and almonds. He turns his body to rub it against the new colours, to breathe as if for the first time. It feels like he has been born. He cries.
    Afterwards he drags himself towards the mouth of the well—mainly because he doesn’t want to break the spell that he is caught up in, and secondly to avoid stumbling and being pitched back in again. He pokes his head over and sees his brother sitting in a strange pose with his arms bent backwards and his legs spread out as if they belonged to another body.
    ‘We did it!’ Small cries, delightedly.
    ‘Ha ha! I knew it! We’re the greatest! Have you hurt yourself?’
    ‘A bit. But I’m fine. Are you OK?’
    ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
    They look at each other for a few seconds not knowing what else to say. It feels strange to be so far apart, even if in reality the distance separating them is just a few metres. It’s Small who speaks first:
    ‘I think I have to go.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’ll come back for