Page 10 of The Maiden and Her Monster

When he was alive, Baba had nicknamed her Simcha Shachar, meaning the joy of dawn.

He had said one night Malka forgot to close her window before she fell asleep.

When the dregs of night drifted away and the sun rose beyond the tree brush, it yawned warm rays, spreading far and wide over Eskravé.

One such ray fell through Malka’s window, illuminating her sleeping form.

“I think the sun speaks to you in the morning,” Baba had said. “It likes your company.”

Malka had giggled, curls bouncing on her shoulder. “Baba, that doesn’t make any sense! Why would the sun want company?”

Baba had smiled, pulling Malka onto his lap . “The stars keep each other company at night. But during the day, the sun is the only light in the sky. Perhaps it gets lonely burning so bright.”

“ Is the sun magic? ” Malka had asked, staring at how the sun made the dust motes dance.

“Some may believe that. But I think there is a danger in assuming the world is made of magic. Men will try to command it.”

Today’s dawn shone dimly, white-yellow tinted fingers sprawling out from ashy storm clouds. Malka wondered what her grandfather would say now, as little light fell through her bedroom window.

There was certainly no magic now. Not on Malka’s side, anyway.

She adjusted her cloak and tightened the sack across her body.

At the doorway, she committed to memory the bedroom she shared with her sisters.

With two beds crowding the walls and a single window between them, it wasn’t much.

But it was the room Malka had lived in her entire life.

She could still remember sharing this room with her parents when her grandparents were alive, and after, when the room became hers and Danya’s to share.

They treated it like a castle and played games of suitors and princesses with all their newfound space.

When Hadar moved into their room, she had curled her warm sleeping body into Malka’s arms and her heart had been at the edge of bursting.

The three of them had made the room their own, paper cuttings lining a small shelf on the wall. Hadar’s were the most beautiful and intricate among them. Malka would have taken one as a reminder of home but could not bear to ruin any of Hadar’s creations.

Before Malka left, she unhooked Abba’s dagger from the wall and weighed it in her palm.

It was heavy and intimidating, the silver smooth and sharp.

Once, she had retrieved it for him, and nicked her thumb brushing the blade.

Her skin had peeled wide open, blood gushing from the cut.

It reminded Malka of the leather workers who flayed the skin from dead sheep, stringy sinew lingering on the carcass.

With unsteady hands, she slid the dagger back into its sheath and attached it to the waistband of her apron. Already in her sack was the snare Abba took on the Rayga hunts.

Tears streamed down her face, freezing against the frigid wind. They pierced her skin, and Malka rubbed them away before burrowing further into her cloak.

The air was fresh—pine and earth not yet tainted by the day.

Bakers had not yet slipped their dough into ovens, and the shektal vendors had many hours before they would roll out their carts and fragrance the air with perfumes and dyes.

It made sense to start her search early with the full day ahead.

It gave her the best chance to find the Rayga before night overtook the woods.

Someone called Malka’s name. Amnon stepped through the pathway between houses and onto the street.

Like Malka, he wore his weighty wool cloak and a sack filled to the brim around his shoulders. A sword hung from his hips, so long it nearly dragged in the snow as he walked. The swift schedule Bro ? ek imposed upon them had left little time for preparation.

“Amnon, you should go home,” she pleaded.

His smile fell. “What happened to good morning, Amnon? How are the fish today, Amnon?”

“Are you really teasing me now?”

“Malka, you can fight me on this all you’d like. But I am not leaving you to face Mavetéh alone.”

“You have nothing to prove.” she said, her last hope at convincing her stubborn friend. “To me, or to anyone.”

Malka had always imagined Amnon as the Falag pine trees, which grew faster than any other tree in the Rha?kan Empire.

So fast, they say the Balkisk Kingdom’s Cedyz Forest grew in a year’s time, from nothing to impending canopies.

But rising high was not without its consequences.

The Falag grew so quick, the sky could not prepare for them in time.

Once they brushed the bottom of the clouds, where the cerulean blue faded to the gray white, they began to slope back down until the weight of their down-turned trunks caused them to snap.

Young, with flimsy limbs and wide eyes, Amnon had dreamed of standing taller than his older brothers, whom his father favored. Even if he had to strain his neck so high it began to curve back toward the earth and snap.

“You’re doing this for your family, let me do this for mine. We all would feel much better if the Rayga is found. And your Imma…” Amnon shuffled a hand through his hair. “Well, you know my youngest brother wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for her.”

Imma had healed so many over the years, including Amnon’s youngest brother, who had developed a cough so fierce during his first year, they did not think he would have made it if not for Imma’s consistent healing tonics.

Malka grew more confident in her decision. Eskravé needed Imma. Her family needed Imma.

As they approached the edge of Mavetéh’s grasp, two people came into view, their chestnut horses vibrant against the thicket of trees.

“Aleksi?”

“Hi, Malka.” Aleksi flashed her his signature smile, though his eyes were glassy.

His horse puttered to the side, revealing the knight behind him. Václav.

Malka spared Amnon a distressing glance, heart sinking. She imagined the knight grabbing her blouse with his fist, the same way he had Amnon, proclaiming that Father Bro ? ek had changed his mind, or perhaps he never intended to let her go at all.

She cleared her throat. “What’s happening?”

“Father Bro ? ek has decided we should accompany you in your mission,” Aleksi said.

“To make sure you don’t do anything suspicious—or conjure any curses with your Yahadi magic,” Václav added. “Sent me to lead and Aleksi here since you two already looked so friendly.”

Malka almost felt bad for Aleksi. He had defended her and as a result, would face Mavetéh. Even if neither he nor Father Bro ? ek believed the forest a threat, she knew better.

“What exactly do you think we could do? Create a new monster to bring back and claim as the Rayga?” Amnon asked, incredulous.

“Never know with you Yahad,” Václav said.

Amnon opened his mouth, but Malka set a placating hand on his arm.

Aleksi and Václav readied their horses, and Amnon used the distraction to lean in close and whisper, “Malka, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea. But it can’t be a bad one, to have two extra swords swinging. Besides, we don’t exactly have a choice.”

“Let’s hope they swing at the Rayga and not at our heads,” Amnon grumbled.

With a kick, Václav and Aleksi began their jaunt into Mavetéh, with Malka and Amnon trailing behind on foot.

“So, do you have a plan, Malka?” Aleksi asked. “Or are we wandering around?”

In truth, Malka didn’t have a plan. It had all happened so fast—from volunteering, to saying her goodbyes, to making sure she had enough sleep to keep her wits about her today. But like an animal, the monster still fed. It must thirst, too, eventually.

Malka gulped, hand tightening around the shoulder strap of her bag. “We should walk along the bank of the Leirit river.”

The monster always found its girls—of that, Malka was sure. She wanted the upper hand, to catch it unawares before it caught her. It was the only way she could imagine a situation where she might win.

It was foolish, she knew, but she did not have the luxury of choice.

Reality chilled her bones, like a clutching cold that made anyone shake long after snuggling close to a warm fire. Her heart pulsed in her ears.

It is only dawn, she reminded herself. You don’t have to worry until nightfall.

The shadow of the trees swallowed them, sun slipping from view as the opaque canopy overtook the sky.

The ground crunched like brittle bones beneath her feet.

It had been five years since she last stepped foot in these woods, and nothing rang familiar.

The trees now emerged from the ground like unfurling pin curls, trunks twisted unnaturally.

The leaves dressing them were as serrated as the dagger at her hip.

A fallen berry splattered under her boot, sending specks of red on the surrounding snow.

She imagined the berry as fingers, crunched beneath her boot as beneath a blade.

Malka didn’t want to think about Minton, so instead she recalled the rhyme she used to sing with Imma to learn how to forage in Kratzka ?ujana:

Trees with trunks the size of boulders

And berries as small as stars

Will you pick the one that feeds our bellies

Or one that stops the heart?

Black will pucker on the tongue

Eat the blue and be forever undone!

She never considered placing one of the belladonna berries in her mouth, but it would be a far more favorable death than the Rayga. She made a note to store some if she found a plant.

Trees towered over them, shadowed limbs tangling together in the canopy above. On some oaks, a kind of glowing fruit. It was eerily quiet, the only sounds the crunch of their boots on dead leaves and the horses’ steady trot.

The rich scent of earth and rotten flora were stifling, the freshness of the crisp morning long gone. The clouds of Malka’s breath swirled languidly, caught in the syrupy air.

The wind howled a wolf cry. “Perhaps we should walk a little faster,” she suggested, breath hitching.