Page 27 of The Maiden and Her Monster

The woodland had not eased its haunting, as another day bled into night.

The waral fruit hung in shades of indigo blue and midnight purple, the most poisonous they had come by thus far.

Frenzied vultures danced through trees with roots bubbling from the ground like acidic healing potions.

Their sickly scaled feet caught Malka’s eye and soured her stomach.

She had commanded the earth like the shalkat Baba had warned her against. Stories of taboo magic, grown even more sinister since Mavetéh’s power clawed, awake and deadly. But the same magic bent to her will, filled her soul. And because of it, Amnon was alive.

If she closed her eyes, Malka could still feel the magic on her skin. Kefesh, she was learning, was not so easily forgotten. It lingered like a blood stain, memorialized like a puckering scar tainting smooth skin.

“We should rest,” Nimrah said, bending until Malka could help settle Amnon on the ground. She had been carrying him on her back for hours, yet signaled no tiredness, no aches.

The fog was dense, and it slithered through the trees like snakes, reminding Malka she was not the only one to command the earth.

Nimrah had used vines like whips and tree roots as spears. She was dangerous, and Malka could not forget that. But now that her fear from the deer creature’s attack had settled, she realized something else, as well. The creature had hurt Nimrah, too. She didn’t know what to make of that.

She recalled what Nimrah had said about Kefesh being unpredictable, the earth interpreting commands as it wished. Maybe this had been an unintended consequence. Though her magic had created the creatures, she was not safe from them, either.

Malka’s stomach growled loudly.

“Start building a fire,” Nimrah instructed. “I’ll find dinner.”

When Nimrah came back through the thicket with a rabbit slung over her shoulder, its feet bunched in her hand, Malka was still struggling to ignite a flame. Snow had dampened the rest of her matches, which she had regrettably left unprotected and forgotten, distracted with Amnon’s injury.

Her palms burned again as she rolled the wood between them, failing to catch a spark.

“You can start it with magic, you know,” Nimrah said. She had already begun to skin and gut the rabbit with Abba’s dagger. The air filled with the tangy scent of fresh blood.

“I can start it with my hands, too,” Malka retorted.

“The only thing your hands will start is bleeding the way you’re rubbing them raw.”

Malka continued to work the stick between her palms to no avail. When she pulled them away, her hands were covered in angry red abrasions.

“I shouldn’t be surprised anymore,” Nimrah said between her teeth, “that you’d rather bleed than listen to me.”

Malka lifted her gaze and steadied it on Nimrah’s stone-cut face. “You once told me not to forget what you’re capable of. I never have. I’m reminded every time we come across a vile thing in this forest, every time I look at Amnon’s wound. So, no, you should not be surprised if I’d rather bleed.”

Nimrah clenched her jaw, and the same unfettered look crossed her face as when she had seen Malka command Kefesh.

She peered at Amnon, who slept huddled against Malka’s bag.

“You both fear me. That, I understand. But Amnon does not hate me with such fervor as you. No, your hate for me is personal. Your cheeks redden when you look at me, and your fists tighten until your knuckles turn white. What is it that makes your hate for me run so deep?”

Malka fought the heat that crept to her cheeks.

They always betrayed her. When she was young, Imma could always tell when Malka lied, for her cheeks would flush like ripe cherries.

Chaia was always better at fibs and saying the right thing to get her way.

She resisted the urge to turn her face as tears threatened.

Chaia was in the deepest part of her heart, and her grief weakened her. She did not want to be weak now.

The sky croaked, and rain began to fall in spatters. Malka relinquished the stick and flung the wet tinder away from her.

Nimrah wiped the guts on her trousers. The rabbit wasn’t getting cooked any time soon.

The rain turned to hail, the pellets thrashing down on them as ferocious as swarming wasps.

Nimrah settled back into a nearby larch tree’s cavity for shelter.

Malka tugged her cloak around herself and Amnon, despite the cold fabric making her teeth rattle, but it was a meager protection against the turbulent shards of ice.

“I’ve got you,” Malka told Amnon, even though his eyes were rolled back in his head, caught in the deepest part of his delirious sleep. The hail had left scrapes across his face, some beginning to welt blood.

“There is room in here for all of us,” Nimrah said, motioning to the cavity concealing her from the elements. “Come.”

Malka hesitated, but Amnon was already hurt from the storm.

She swallowed her opposition and wrapped her hands around Amnon’s shoulders, dragging him until she pressed against the back of the tree hollow.

She settled herself next to Amnon, putting as much space between her and the golem as possible.

The space was already tight and suffocating.

As she pressed her body further into the cavity, she caught Nimrah staring.

She was grateful for the shadows that cloaked them, hiding her face.

Until a spark eclipsed the dark air, and light filled the cavity.

Malka’s mouth fell agape. “Did you do that with magic?”

Nimrah’s lip quirked. “No. Unlike you, I’m adept with wood and tinder.”

“You couldn’t have done that before our dinner spoiled?”

Nimrah shrugged. “I was trying to prove a point.”

“You’ll find my hatred grows when I am hungry.”

Nimrah’s smirk fell. “Someone you knew fell victim to Mavetéh, didn’t they?”

In the hollow of the tree, Malka could hear her own shaky breathing. She swallowed hard and drew her necklace between her fingers.

“Tell me.”

It wasn’t said as a command, but a lament. Nimrah’s eyes were no longer on her. She had hiked up her sleeve and was tracing the word carved into her stone forearm.

“Chaia.”

She gave her name time to breathe, let it fill the small space between them.

“My best friend. Unlike the others taken by Mavetéh, we never found her body. Still, they declared her dead. After seeing these woods and what they did to Amnon… I don’t have much hope she survived.

” Malka expected to cry, but numbness pierced her instead.

“It is indescribable. To lose someone you couldn’t imagine life without.

” She faced Nimrah, cheeks heating. “And then stare her killer in the face.”

“I’m sorry.”

Malka had heard those words so many times since Chaia’s disappearance, they had become shallow to her ears. “Sorry doesn’t bring her back.”

Amnon coughed, and Malka brushed her hand across his forehead to soothe him.

“Let me say this: I will be glad to die. For Chaia. For your mother. For all the Yahad I was supposed to protect and have let down.” Nimrah shifted her attention to the woods, looking past the hail which fogged the air hazy white.

She held her chin high, like a soldier from the Rha?kan Empire’s military would.

Resolute. Unyielding. “After I atone for yet another of my piled sins.”

The air held silence like the fog held water. Malka recalled something she had not processed earlier, mind too occupied with thoughts of saving Amnon.

I may not be a believer, but I know how your religion works, Nimrah had said.

“Earlier, you said you were not a believer of the Yahadi faith. But you were created by a rabbi using holy magic to protect the Yahadi people. How can you brush against Yohev so closely and still not believe?”

The golem sighed. “It’s complicated. I was made to protect the Yahad, that’s all. There was no room for anything else. I couldn’t have my own belief. Couldn’t forge my own path. I was not born young and nurtured. One day, I appeared, ready to do the Maharal’s bidding.”

Facing Nimrah’s stone side, she could not read her well, expressions dimmed by the carving of her face.

It bothered her more than she wanted to admit, how her eyes could trace the sharp edges of Nimrah’s chin, her nose, the deep chisels of her cheeks, and have so little grasp on the truth of her. A permanent veil.

It reminded her of the Feast of Lots mask she had worn when she was younger. Wood carved to the shape of her face, berries dyed a pigmented flush on the cheeks, and charcoal-painted eyebrows. All to match the appearance of the Shabhe Queen—the heroine of the Feast of Lots story.

She thought of pressing the mask to her face. Hiding behind the costume, becoming someone else for the night.

“Your thoughts are very loud,” Nimrah said, lips curling in the shadow light.

“I was thinking of the Feast of Lots story. Do you know it?”

“It is told every year at the festival.”

A yes would’ve sufficed.

“The Shabhe King hated the Yahad. So much so that even his own wife had to keep her Yahadi identity a secret.”

Nimrah raised her brow, willing her to continue.

“We’ve learned to keep Kefesh at arm’s length the way the Shabhe Queen learned to hide her identity. It wasn’t until the crown threatened slaughter of her people that she cast aside her safely hidden identity for a desperate attempt at saving them.”

“You think the Shabhe Queen desperate for revealing her identity?”

Malka shrugged. “What else could you call it?”

Nimrah steepled her hands. “Bravery, some may say. In fact, I believe those are the exact words from the song made for her. Shabhe Queen, brave and true, who spoke to her king, breaking all the rules. ”

Though Nimrah didn’t sing the song, she recited it like poetry, intonations drawn out in her smoky voice.