The Horse Healer Read Online Free PDF Page A

provisions. There was a garden there and a number of fruit trees.
    When they hadn’t yet passed the first, two crude-looking men came out onto the path.
    â€œWhat do you want?” one of them, the fatter of the two, screamed. Diego saw him wave a wooden rod, but in spite of this violent gesture, he approached him.
    â€œAnswer the question!” the other one shrieked, a toothless man in his sixties. “Tell us what you’re here after or you’re going to have a big problem on your hands.”
    â€œI had to escape from the Imesebelen, and I just arrived in Toledo.”
    â€œAnd you’re hungry … for sure,” the first one interrupted him. “And when you passed by here you asked yourself if we’d have something to give you, maybe in exchange for work. Right?”
    â€œYes. You’ve got a good eye.”
    â€œWell, go back the way you came, and run if you don’t want all your bones broken.”
    â€œBut what did I do to you all?” Diego pulled Sabba back, letting her know of his intentions.
    â€œYou haven’t done anything because we haven’t let you. … Others have already come through with the same thing in mind and they’ve robbed us of all our fruit and vegetables.”
    Diego made Sabba turn around and squeezed his knees into her sides. The animal burst into a trot, taking them away from those men.
    â€œWe’ll kill whoever steps onto our land! Tell everyone!”
    Rather dispirited, Diego came across several groups of refugees, but none of them seemed ready to share their food. The women looked at him suspiciously and the men sent him away, some casting insults and stones.
    After numerous leagues riding slowly around the outskirts of Toledo, when night had begun to fall, Diego realized that nobody was going to do anything for him. They had tried to rob him and fight him, and the reality was, he felt treated worse than a stray dog.
    He passed that first night without being able to sleep, watching over Sabba, because he was afraid someone would steal her.
    Nor did he eat anything the next day until night had nearly fallen. Every time they came across an encampment, he would look through the rubbish furtively, trying to find a little bit of cast-off food. Only in one did he find a few chicken bones, and in others, a few apple skins that he chewed slowly, savoring them, as though they were manna from heaven.
    Increasingly desperate, he decided to try his luck on another farm. He found one isolated on a hill; it looked abandoned, but a delicious scent filtered from it.
    The only thing he had to sell was Sabba’s bridle. He would exchange it for dinner if they wouldn’t accept his labor.
    â€œYou’ll see how our luck is going to start to change. …” he told Sabba.
    The mare responded with a neigh and a shake of her head, as though she understood.
    The ramshackle dwelling had a small garden on one side and a neglected stable on the other. As he faced the door, Diego thought it would fall to pieces if he knocked too hard. He was bowed over, just like the walls in the humble adobe façade.
    At that moment, a delicious aroma of stew reached him and his stomach burned with hunger.
    The first two times he struck the wood, nobody responded; it was only with the third that a woman appeared, as filthy as she was indifferent, ugly, and haggard.“We don’t pass out alms here!”
    She was going to shut the door in his face and yet something made her change her mind. She began to scrutinize him from head to toe, as though he reminded her of someone. Her eyes traveled over his face, his neck and ears, and then his skin, his height. … Seeing him so thin, for a moment she almost seemed to pity him, but then, without knowing why, she decided to carry on and sent him away.
    â€œWait, lady! If you help me, I’ll pay you.”
    That worked wonders. All of a sudden her eyes began to sparkle, and a fake welcoming air