Page 25 of The Maiden and Her Monster

The Great Oak’s roots had spread.

They had ventured past Nimrah’s previous boundary, marked by slashes she had carved into one of trees.

A small miracle, though it was just delaying the inevitable.

But Malka’s interaction with the waral fruit had gnawed at her, instilling more anxiety about the deal she had struck, even if she herself wouldn’t be rooted to Nimrah.

It would be worth the cost, though. She thought of Imma every moment, but particularly as the nights drew near.

The jail in Eskravé was damp and decrepit, riddled with critters which thrived in the wet dark.

At best, Imma would be freezing. At worst, disease would crawl inside her like flesh beetles.

That is, if the Paja did not find other ways to torture her.

She shut her eyes. Inhaled.

The encounter with the Tannin had been a brush with death; a chasm of fear for her life and failure in her promise to Imma. It couldn’t happen again.

As the last of the sun dripped from the sky, the woods grew quiet.

Until the sound of something rolling in the snow paused Malka in her tracks.

“Sorry,” Amnon said. “That was me. I kicked something.”

They shone their lights onto the head of a fox carcass. Maggots had scattered when Amnon had jostled it, some lingering in the eye socket and mouth. They had eaten well, almost nothing left but bone, residual tissue, and stained blood.

“I’m gonna vomit,” Amnon said, face paling.

Malka was just grateful it wasn’t a human corpse.

She thought of Chaia here and hoped her death had been a quick one. It was the last kindness this world could’ve given her.

“Have you come across anyone here before us?”

She had been chewing on the question since they first met, letting it roll around her tongue until she could swallow whatever truth revealed itself in the answer.

If Nimrah had ever come across someone fitting Chaia’s description, any stubborn hope Malka held on to would be snuffed out.

She did not know if she was ready to change the shape of her grief, to feel it raw again.

But the days in Mavetéh were not guaranteed. She had swiftly learned that. One wrong step and she would have woken the Tannin, could have charred her face on an ill-timed falling waral fruit.

So, she asked. Ready for whatever answer Nimrah had to give her.

The golem shook her head. “When people venture this far into the forest, they tend to be dead by the time I find them.”

Malka bit her lower lip as a hot rush of tears threatened to fall.

“Well, actually,” Nimrah amended, “weeks ago, a group did pass through. I did not engage with them, but I did overhear they were headed toward Vy?. Anyway, next time I encountered them further south, they were dead. Torn limb from limb.”

Could it have been the same group they had come across that first day in Mavetéh?

“You didn’t try to warn them?” Amnon asked, disapproval lacing his voice.

“I’m supposed to be dead,” Nimrah responded dryly. “Remember that?”

Amnon crossed his arms. “You saved us.”

Nimrah shrugged noncommittally. “Perhaps if they had been actively dying when I found them, I would’ve saved them. Starting to think they would’ve have been more palatable companions.”

Malka ignored their bickering, her interest instead snagging on the mention of Vy?. It was the second time Balkisk’s capital city had come up recently—the first when Aleksi reflected on the duke’s robe of human bones.

The duke who also thought the papacy could fail, according to Aleksi. Malka had never considered it before, a life not run by the Church, but the idea had rooted inside her since he said it.

“What do you know of the Duke of Vy??” She racked her brain to think of his name.

If Nimrah was thrown by the shift in subject, she did not show it. “Everything I know is five years out of date.”

Malka stared at the fox’s jaw, its sharp teeth slicing the shadows of its mouth. His name came to her. “I’ve heard that Duke Sigmund hates King Valski.”

Nimrah laughed, gazing at the skull. “There’s not much of the king to hate. If you hate the king, you hate his puppeteers.”

There was a scattering in the brush.

Amnon unsheathed his sword. Malka held tight to Abba’s dagger, fox and conversation forgotten. Nimrah raised her finger to her lips.

Malka tried to regulate her labored breathing. They waited in silence, long after the scattering had ceased.

“Maybe it went the other way?” Amnon whispered.

Nimrah shot him an annoyed look, but Malka’s eyes caught on something behind Nimrah’s hair, moving so subtly between the trees Malka questioned her sight. She squinted against the twilight, but only the low tangle of branches came into focus.

Nimrah followed her gaze between the trees.

The roots from the ground hissed as Nimrah commanded them, rising as vipers.

“Run, now!” Nimrah ordered, but Malka was frozen.

The lantern illuminated the creature’s form as it approached from the shadows—branches and bone tangled together by sinew to form the creature’s mass, like a resurrected deer.

Horns jutted from its skull, a tangle of vines dripping from its mouth like saliva.

But most stark, and deceptively animalistic, were its feet, scaly like a rooster’s, which dug muddy prints into the snow.

Fear clawed up her throat, its talons like acid.

Throughout their childhood, Chaia had told Malka many haunting stories of gruesome animals, tales she had coaxed out of older Eskraven boys, who were always desperate to impress her with their knowledge.

But this creature was unlike any of the monsters she had known.

Worse than anything her mind could conjure.

The air stilled as the creature stalked forward, all murmuring of the forest’s creatures quieting like frightened babes.

Nimrah’s warning echoed again, ordering her to flee, but the creature had a mystifying hold on her.

The same hold the Tannin had as she held her breath, anticipating its waking.

Maybe this was how it would end. How the creatures had drawn in the other women. Her luck had run out.

It charged toward her. Malka wrapped her hands around its antlers to keep them from pressing into her chest. The creature was much stronger than her, though, and the force of its charge knocked her to the cold, hard ground. Under the creature’s weight, she gasped for breath.

Then, the pressure lifted. Vines had wrapped around the antlers like rope, and the deer had fallen to its side. Nimrah’s magic did that. Malka scrambled to her knees as Nimrah hauled the creature up with her hands.

If Malka had questioned the golem’s monstrosity before, she didn’t now. She looked cousin to the deer, green veins protruding against her skin as her muscles flexed to keep the deer at bay. The stone across her face and arms shone in the moonlight.

“Malka!” Amnon screamed, clutching her arm.

But the golem could not hold back the deer any longer. It rammed into Nimrah, sending her flying back. The deer set its sights on Malka once again, like a lion to a lamb. A fox to a rabbit.

Amnon swung his sword hard against the deer, metal tangling in its branches. It growled low and feral before jumping and sinking its teeth into Amnon’s shoulder.

Malka screeched as Amnon was thrown from his feet, falling hard against the ground.

A root burst from the soil, impaling the creature through its skull. The growls, one fierce, became whimpers as it crumbled to the ground.

Malka stared in shock before her wits came to her. She ran to Amnon on wobbly legs, falling to her knees to cradle his head in her hands.

“It’s only subdued,” Nimrah warned, coming closer to Malka. She still panted, voice strained. “We need to get away from here.”

“Help him,” Malka pleaded. “Please, I can’t lift him.”

Nimrah sighed, and hoisted Amnon on her back with a grunt.

They found a clearing far enough away that the deer could lose Malka’s scent, and Nimrah transferred Amnon carefully to the ground.

“Malka?” he called, voice barely a whisper.

“I’m here.”

He convulsed in pain. The deer’s teeth had ripped away his cloak and the layers of his travel kroj, exposing his bloody shoulder and the stark white of his bone through the muscle.

She needed to stop the bleeding. Clean the wound. Prevent infection.

Malka knew how to do this. She knew how to heal.

Malka tore from the fabric of her petticoat—what she hoped was the cleanest part.

“Help me raise his arm.”

Much to her shock, Nimrah obeyed, helping to slip Amnon’s arm from the bulky cloak.

With a practiced hand, Malka formed a torniquet from the linen. She bit back despair when the cloth immediately soiled deep red.

Amnon’s eyes drooped back, and his body slacked as he fell unconscious.

Malka dug into her satchel, hand searching its depth for the black perphona. Its thorns pricked her skin. She cursed but didn’t stop.

“I… I need a stone, some sort of flat surface. I need to make a poultice.”

“I don’t know if—”

“A stone,” Malka pressed, unwilling to hear what Nimrah had to say. “A flat surface.”

Nimrah’s lips thinned. She saw the sweep of Nimrah’s cloak in the corner of her eye as she disappeared.

When she reemerged, Nimrah dropped a handful of stones to the ground. Some rounded, some flat.

She let her healer instincts take over as she prepared a poultice, grinding the leaves rhythmically until they were powder.

She didn’t have hot water to make the plant pliant and ready for use, nor did she have all the ingredients she would have liked.

She didn’t have her sewing needles to stitch Amnon’s gaping wound.

So, when Nimrah said to her, “I don’t think it’s enough,” Malka couldn’t bite back with anything, because she agreed. It wasn’t going to be enough.

Underneath her, Amnon began to convulse, sweat soaking his face.

Malka threw her hands up. They were covered in the black perphona paste and blood. This wasn’t right.