Page 19 of The Maiden and Her Monster

“Good,” Amnon said. “I’ve been thinking. We should go on as planned—try to find one creature to catch. There’s no reason for the priest to know there are multiple monsters. We didn’t know until now, and we have dealt with Mavetéh for years.”

“And if he finds out we lied?” Malka questioned. “It will not look good if another Ozmin is killed while a monster is in captivity and Imma is free.”

The priest would surely have them all killed.

Malka watched the crackling fire. “We were fools, Amnon, to think we could best any monster in this forest. A healer’s daughter and a fisherman’s son. It’s laughable.”

Amnon toyed with the leather of his belt loop. “We’ll find a way.”

The door burst open, wind whipping the flames in the hearth and rustling the loose hair from Malka’s kerchief. Nimrah spilled through, not bothering to shake the snow loose from her cloak. It dampened the ground as she tossed it haphazardly on the hook.

“I’ve found it,” Nimrah said, plopping into the chair across the table.

“Found what?” asked Amnon.

“The loophole to the Maharal’s order.”

“What?” asked Malka, jarred by the golem’s rapid return. “His order to root you to the Great Oak?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

Malka exchanged a glance with Amnon.

“Loophole…” Malka shook her head. “That sounds sacrilegious.”

Nimrah shrugged. “Even the Maharal and his sacred words are fallible to interpretations. It’s the price of religion, to be subject to exegesis.”

Unnerved, Malka clasped her hand around the ceramic mug of half-drunk tea.

“Besides,” Nimrah continued. “I prefer to look at it as another interpretation of his command. A reinterpretation, so to speak.”

The fire popped, and a log tumbled, char falling away and revealing its raw brown underbelly. It was the same color as Chaia’s hair, and Malka’s throat tightened.

“What do you mean reinterpretation?” Malka asked.

“Got the idea thanks to you, village girl. What you said last night in the dark.”

Malka slid down in her seat, ignoring Amnon’s raised brow. If her suggestion was meant to embarrass her, Nimrah had succeeded.

“When the Maharal birthed me, he tied my shadow to his. He said I was a new kind of life, that it would take time, maybe decades, for the earth to adjust to me. Our binding grounded me, kept me from trouble. When he brought me here, he severed our shadows.” She rolled up her sleeve more fully this time, revealing the Yahadi word in its entirety: ???? .

Shoresh. Root. “I needed to be bound to something, so he rooted me here by carving these letters in my arm and into a root of the Great Oak. Two birds with one stone—confining me, grounding me.”

“What are you trying to say with all this?” Amnon urged, crossing his arms.

“Tying shadows together is difficult magic known only to Kefesh’s greatest scholars.

I had always thought the Maharal would be my only hope at leaving my confines.

But then I realized, maybe I didn’t need to mess with shadows at all.

Maybe the solution was in the command the Maharal made to root me to the Great Oak.

Maybe I just need someone to change the letters of the spell carved into the Great Oak to command my freedom instead of my rooting. ”

Malka shook her head in disbelief. “That story was not supposed to encourage you. It was meant to warn you away from such careless endeavors. You of all people should understand how ruinous messing with Kefesh can be.”

Nimrah swallowed, then pivoted her gaze.

“You’d be left without a tether,” Amnon added. “A situation in which nothing at all would go wrong, surely.”

“If a new rooting spell is initiated shortly after the current one is severed, I could be bound to another life source. A more… portable life source, you could say. One that would allow me to travel out of the forest.”

Malka shook her head. “It wouldn’t work. You’d need someone willing to be rooted to you. Willing to mess with magic.”

Nimrah shifted, chair creaking in the silence of Malka’s remark. Their eyes met. “I would.”

Malka scrutinized her for a long moment, then let out an exasperated laugh. “And why exactly do you think we’d agree to that? After everything we have said. After everything you have done.”

Nimrah traced her stone hand with her flesh one. “Because I have something you need. Something no one else can give you.”

Amnon narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”

Another pause. “I wasn’t lying when I said that creature was one of many Kefesh-created monsters here. Even if you hunted them all, you couldn’t stop more from emerging. It would be a waste of your time.”

A sharp pain rapped Malka’s chest. Nimrah had not said anything she didn’t already know. But the way the golem voiced it, confident in its impossibility, perturbed her. She gritted her teeth. “Are you getting somewhere with this?”

Nimrah made no rush to continue. She only licked her lips and leaned back in her chair, the corner of her mouth curving up as Malka became more and more tense. “Patience, village girl, ever heard of it?”

Malka was surprised only the stories of her violence had reached Eskravé, and not her petulance.

Only when Malka waved her hands in surrender did Nimrah finally proceed. “ However, there is a reason for the sudden creation of these creatures. A source, so to speak. If this source dies, it’s possible the creatures will die, too.”

“What?” Amnon sat upright. “Why didn’t you say this earlier?”

Nimrah shrugged. Malka was slowly coming to know this movement, always associated with her confessions. As if she wished to distance herself from the truths she offered. “You didn’t ask. You thought there was one creature, I told you there are many. Which is true.”

“Yet you omitted the most vital truth of all—one that could save Imma.” Heat colored Malka’s cheeks.

She had been on the verge of tears in front of Nimrah, convinced their mission was hopeless.

Meanwhile, the golem had kept this revelation hidden.

She tightened her fists, resisting the urge to wrap her hands around Nimrah’s flesh throat and take a stab at cracking the stone of her face.

“I did not mention it,” Nimrah said, interest drifting to a beetle scurrying across the table, “because I knew what question would follow.”

“You know where the source is,” Malka said slowly, understanding dawning. “And only now that you want something from us, you’ll share it?” Oh, how accurate the stories of Nimrah had been. She was just as heartless, just as selfish.

“It’s not information shared lightly.”

“Why?” Amnon pushed.

Emotion clouded Nimrah’s face, a crack in her disinterested facade.

But as quickly as it came, Nimrah shook it away, her eyes turning as cold as the stone she was made from.

Another shrug of her shoulders. “Because I am that magical source. The curse on the woods—the creation of those monsters—took root when my magic was tied to the Great Oak.”

It was not the confession Malka had expected, that is, if she could anticipate anything about the golem. Nimrah’s words twisted her on an axis. She could do nothing but grow rigid in her seat.

Next to her, Amnon’s face was the color of milk. “Are you saying this to trick us into doing your bidding?” He leaned closer to Malka. It was his instinctive motion every time he sensed trouble, always ready to defend.

“I don’t trick.”

“When did the Maharal bring you here?” Malka questioned. “When was your magic tied to the Great Oak?”

“The first of spring, five years ago.”

The events had happened the same year—the forest taking its first girl and Nimrah killing the Yahadi boy.

That Malka already knew. She hadn’t known, however, just how closely they had aligned.

Malka remembered that season—it had been an unusually late spring, when the forest took its first girl.

Winter had stayed far past its welcome. Imma had been mad about the delay of the bloom.

A bloom that never came. Malka had never considered the golem the cause.

Their village thought she slumbered in the attic of the shul Bachta.

But she had been here.

Her magic, this cursed Kefesh, had turned Kratzka ?ujana into Mavetéh, the source of all her nightmares and all her heartache. She was right to have called Nimrah a monster, only she had not known how truly venomous.

When her village had named the Rayga, it was with the thought that one monster was the source of their grief.

One monster could be hunted, killed, and then the women would be safe.

Though she knew now many creatures hunted their girls, the beasts all came from the same monstrous source.

A source that could be killed. And with it, all its creatures.

The true Rayga: Nimrah.

Malka had been lured by a false sense of safety, eating Nimrah’s food and sleeping in her fire-warmed quarters. She wanted to spill out the contents of her stomach, cleanse herself of Nimrah’s depravity. She would not be fooled again. By this golem, or by Kefesh.

“You lied about who you are, Rayga, ” Malka spat. She felt for Abba’s dagger, but she hadn’t attached it to her hip that morning. It still lay useless by her cloak. The snare she had was packed deep in her bag.

“Why would I tell you this freely when you’re so dead set in your ways?

” Her voice began to raise slightly, building like the first cracks of thunder.

Then, the stormy gloss of her words was gone, replaced by that indifferent tone she was so fond of.

“When you wish me dead simply because I am the Maharal’s golem. ”

“You think this would make us want to help you?” Amnon’s fists were clenched so hard on the table his knuckles were fading to white. “Wrong.”

“No.” Nimrah rolled her eyes. “But I am going to offer you a deal.”

Amnon caught Malka’s attention, his eyes drifting to his belt. The hilt of Abba’s dagger peeked out of the leather at his hips, an ambitious glint in his eye.

Malka swallowed.