Page 12 of The Maiden and Her Monster

Aleksi leaned back on his palms, more at ease now the conversation had shifted.

“Triorzay gives us so much. The earth beneath our feet, the fish our travel companions will catch to satiate us. Protection from harm and the chances we seize during this life. But beyond the everyday blessings, Triorzay prepares us for the life that begins once this one ceases. Our eternal life, in Vasicati.”

Vasicati, the Ozmini afterlife for the righteous. She knew of it from the Church’s mandated religious lectures all Eskraven children attended, despite the only Ozmins in her village being those who managed local governance and property, like Chotek.

To some, Vasicati was rolling fields of goldenmase which scented the air with a sultry deep dizzying sweetness.

Like a high from the manta plant that lasted for eternity as they were free to daze, responsibility no longer clinging to anyone’s shoulders.

To others, Vasicati was not so much a place as a feeling.

Being forever satisfied—an already warmed cloak against cold shoulders, endless meals that did not grow lukewarm.

“What awaits you in Vasicati?” Malka asked.

Aleksi smiled wickedly. “A place where pleasure is never absent. Where I am consumed whole by bliss and unworried by anything else. Do you know that kind of bliss, Malka? God, I want to drown in it.”

“Pleasure?”

“The forbidden kind,” Aleksi added, eyes drifting to the curve of Malka’s neck. “The best kind.”

She did know that kind of pleasure, only it wasn’t forbidden.

Not for her or her people. She didn’t often have the chance, but when she did, she didn’t feel guilt.

Not when she ran her hand over her curves, nor when she dipped her fingers between her thighs.

Malka had never been with someone else like that, but it was hard not to imagine it now.

Someone else’s fingers on her, lips at the contour of her neck where she brushed her thumb.

Malka covered her blush with both hands.

“You know it, then,” Aleksi said, lecherous.

“How is your place in Vasicati guaranteed?” Malka asked, wishing the cold didn’t exacerbate her ripened cheeks.

Aleksi didn’t antagonize her further, much to Malka’s relief.

Instead, he said, “We have to be selfless. We must sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice what? Lambs or cows?”

Aleksi shook his head. “Sacrifice ourselves.”

“Kill yourself, you mean?”

“Saints, Malka. You know so little, don’t you? That is a sin itself. We sacrifice parts of ourselves to show Him we are selfless. That we give ourselves as payment for His protection. For our spot in Vasicati.”

Malka recalled what Rzepka had said. Triorzay had given her a life in the royal palace, and in return, she left it to join the Paja.

“Your sacrifice is collecting tithes with the priest?”

“One of many. The more you sacrifice, the more you are absolved. But sacrifice is different for everyone. Something to one person might mean nothing to another. So, we sacrifice what is meaningful to us.”

Her eyes flickered down to Aleksi’s arm, where she had seen a peek of his scar, identical to Rzepka’s.

Aleksi caught her stare and began to roll up his sleeve. He smoothed his fingers over the puckering white scar, similar to the pale mark of a tree sliced for sap. “What is meaningful to every Ozmin? Life, carried by the blood flowing through our veins.”

“You sacrifice your own blood.” Malka did not say this accusingly, but as if the statement was a ragged puzzle piece she had fit into place.

“It is the same as how you Yahad fast for your holy days. We are both giving something vital. You give up food, while we give up blood.”

Malka bit her tongue. They did not fast as a sacrifice, to give themselves to Yohev or guarantee their place in an afterlife. They fasted to show their dedication and resilience. To recognize hunger and appreciate fullness when the fast broke.

“Boy might not be so inept after all,” Václav said as he and Amnon reappeared, two small trout strung along some twine.

Malka swallowed whatever response she had planned for Aleksi. It was not worth the argument or angering the Ozmin by challenging his beliefs. Malka had learned many years ago silence was the best way to tame a beast. Instead, she ate.

Malka leaned into the fire’s warmth, grateful as her fingers regained their full range of motion. Her eyelids hung low, blurring the light into hazy shades of orange and white.

She was exhausted, frightened, and still on edge, like a strung-up chicken in the butcher’s window. She imagined a noose around her neck, held in Mavetéh’s teeth. When the Rayga wanted her, she would have no choice. It would pull the string taut, and Malka’s neck would break.

Except the Rayga did not give a painless death. She knew it from the dead girls in Eskravé. Rzepka’s ruined body. The Ozmini peasants whose limbs appeared from the earth, staining the dirt around them like beet juice.

“I will not let anything happen to you tonight,” Amnon said beside her, softly so Václav and Aleksi wouldn’t hear from their resting spot by a nearby tree. He brushed his knuckle across Malka’s cheek. It lingered too long—the intention of a lover not a friend.

Malka thought of the noose around her neck, the prickle of it tightening against her skin. She wrapped his hand in hers. “I know you will try.”

Amnon sighed. He was exhausted, too. His under eyes were drawn as loose as a rooster’s neck, creases deep and pigmented from the cold.

“Malka, you can’t end up like them. The Ozmins we found… they were unrecognizable.”

Amnon had been spared from seeing the Rayga’s other victims, Rzepka’s body already covered when he arrived.

He had only heard the stories whispered in the night.

But it was different, seeing them in these woods—the sharp tang of blood still hanging in the air, decay crawling into their noses and burrowing deep.

But Malka had seen Rzepka. Her flesh torn and bones jutted. Her eyes strewn on the ground like a pair of dice, soft tissue licking hardened snow.

A bone-deep fear sunk into Malka’s stomach.

She pictured Imma’s loving face. Her calloused fingers that put Malka and her sisters back together again when they had hurt themselves. There was a reason Malka was here in Mavetéh. And it was not to die.

“I will not end up like them, Amnon,” she declared. But they were not fools. And the promise soured on her tongue.

But neither Malka nor Amnon wanted to discuss her fate further. Instead, Amnon said to her, “Sleep. I will keep watch.”

Malka shook her head. “Only for a bit. You will be exhausted if you don’t rest tonight. We’ll alternate.”

When he perched against the tree closest to Malka, vise grip on his sword, Malka settled on the ground and pulled her cloak tightly around.

She had fallen asleep drenched in cold many times, but without the walls of her home to block out the wind, her teeth chattered painfully. She bit her tongue and tasted blood.

Václav joined her near the fire, leaving Aleksi to keep watch with Amnon.

He sprawled out and yawned, his eyes catching Malka’s from across the flame. “We could always cuddle for warmth, you know.”

Malka shifted so her back faced both the heat and Václav, grinding her teeth.

Distracted by the weather, Malka had not let herself think of what the night brought with it, wrapped in the darkness like a garden onion. If she peeled back the night, would she find endless layers of its terror?

The wind rustled through the trees again, whipping against her ears as brutal as ice. As the howl pressed close, she swore she heard her name in its wake, intoned like the poisonous berry rhyme, warning her away.

She turned and turned, batting at her ears. No matter which way she laid, she could not escape the sound of her name on the wind’s taunting lips.

Malka wondered if this craze tormented Abba. If a wine bottle could dull the sounds. Could the alcohol tear her name away from the wind’s mouth and strip her of its haunting?

Hopeless of any sleep, Malka stood. “I’m going to go relieve myself.”

Amnon frowned. “Not alone.”

Malka crossed her arms, indignant. “Just on the other side of those trees, I’ll be in your line of sight.”

Amnon tested his lookout. Once he confirmed he could see Malka from the river, he relented. “Have your dagger?”

Malka shifted her cloak, revealing the weapon at her hip.

Guided by her torch lantern, she disappeared behind the trees.

On her way back, she caught her reflection on the water. It was half frozen where the current slowed, speckling the river with hazy white ice.

Her appearance was as wearied as she felt, the bags under her eyes as deep purple as Amnon’s bruised face had been.

It was the first night she had slept without Hadar tucked by her side in many years. The ache hurt more than any cold. She could come back from this. She must. Closing her eyes, Malka thought of Hadar’s soft breathing and matched hers to the figment.

When at last she settled, Malka opened her eyes and observed her reflection once more. Her ringlets splayed out of her kerchief, the rest of her hair wild against her shoulders. The undulating flow of the river shadowed the angular jut of her nose.

A sharp movement caught her eye from above her reflection, there and gone so quickly it must’ve been a trick of the torchlight.

Malka blinked hard, and it was there again. A shadow lurking behind her reflection. She spun quick, holding out the lantern to the dark. She met only the bole of a tree, bald branches dipped in snow.

She untensed. It should not have been a surprise Mavetéh made her see imaginary things. The men of the Rayga hunt claimed Mavetéh’s curse brought with it hallucinogenic sap, which made men inconsolable whenever it touched their skin. Hallucinations only cured by alcohol burning down their throat.

Malka ran a hand through her hair, feeling for sticky sap. She stared at her palm as it came away dry.