The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse by Iván Repila

 
    ‘ I T LOOKS IMPOSSIBLE to get out,’ he says. And also: ‘But we’ll get out.’
    To the north, the forest borders a mountain range and is surrounded by lakes so big they look like oceans. In the centre of the forest is a well. The well is roughly seven metres deep and its uneven walls are a bank of damp earth and roots, which tapers at the mouth and widens at the base, like an empty pyramid with no tip. The basin gurgles dark water, which filters along faraway veins and even more distant galleries that flow towards the river. It leaves a permanent muddy peat and sludge specked with bubbles that pop, spraying bursts of eucalyptus back into the air. Whether due to pressure from the continental plates or the constant eddying breeze, the little roots move and turn and steer in a slow, sad dance, which evokes the nature of all the forests slowly absorbing the earth.
    The older brother is big. With his hands he digs up lumps of sand to form a step strong enough to hold him, but when he lifts himself up in the air the weight of his body defeats him and the wall breaks.
    The younger brother is small. He sits on the floor with his arms around his legs, blowing on a fresh graze on his knee. While thinking that the first blood always falls on the side of the weak, he watches his brother fall once, twice, three times.
    ‘It hurts. I think it’s broken.’
    ‘Don’t worry about the blood.’
    Outside, the sun continues its loop and is eclipsed behind the mountains, drawing an afternoon shadow like a curtain over the well until it’s barely possible to make out the pale cheeks, the eyeballs, the teeth. Attempts to carve a way out through the wall of earth have proved futile, and now Big is on his feet with his fingers hooked into the belt loops of his trousers, focused, searching the day’s end for the answer to an enigma which fades as darkness falls.
    ‘Up you get. You might be able to reach the edge if I put you on top of me.’
    Small shudders, but he isn’t cold.
    ‘It’s really high. We won’t reach it,’ he says, standing up.
    Big takes Small by the hand and in one move lifts him up to his shoulders, as if they were playing at grown-ups and being as tall as a man. They steady themselves against the wall and from this position Small realizes that they won’t be making it to any ledge.
    ‘I don’t reach. It’s really high.’
    Big grabs Small’s feet firmly so he can lift him and increase their height by the entire length of his arms.
    ‘What about now? Now do you reach?’
    ‘No. Still no.’
    ‘Are your arms stretched?’
    ‘Of course!’
    ‘Hold on then,’ he says, and Big propels himself upwards and jumps as high as gravity and his legs allow him, emitting first a puff and then a kind of animal pant, full of rage, which his throat finally turns into a cry for help when they fall to the ground, hitting their elbows and backs against the soft mulch at the bottom.
    ‘Was it close?’
    ‘I don’t know. I had my eyes shut,’ Small says.
     
    At night, the rustle of the forest is accompanied by a nagging buzz, the din of invisible jaws that inhabit the space like an amorphous mass. The brothers hug one another stretched out on the driest side of their new country, on a pelt of thick roots that enfolds them unresistingly. Neither of them sleeps, how could they?
     
    At sunrise the well is a different colour. The dry earth on the higher part is composed of copper sediments, brownish-grey scars and yellow pine needles. Further down inside the well the earth is damp, black and blue, and the tips ofthe roots have a purplish glint. The sun is warm, and only the birds respond to the silence. Small’s intestines gurgle under his hands.
    ‘I’m hungry.’
    Big rouses himself and tries to focus his vision with the turn of his neck. His sleep-stiffened muscles stretch from the Achilles tendon to the annulus of Zinn.
    ‘We’ll eat once we find a way out. Don’t worry.’
    ‘But I’m really hungry. My