Page 29 of The Maiden and Her Monster

Dawn brought swollen clouds and snow which dusted the trees like powdered sugar.

The sight of them made Malka hunger for Imma’s sufganiyot, filled to the brim with strawberry preserves that stuck to her fingers.

She craved them now, as she gnawed on a rabbit bone, the marrow staining her lips a brownish red.

At last, Nimrah had begun to feel the pull of the Great Oak’s thinning roots. The veins in her neck had bulged, but she otherwise cloaked how the strain began to affect her.

“We’ll have to do the rooting spell soon,” she had said, setting Amnon down. “Early tomorrow, I imagine, with our… speed.”

Unspoken between them, the knowledge that Malka would take Amnon’s place performing the rooting spell. He was too sick.

And though Malka had used Kefesh to save Amnon from the brink of death, it nauseated her to imagine herself bonded with Nimrah. The Rayga.

“You’ve been quiet,” Nimrah remarked, the bones of her meal already discarded on the ground.

Malka wiped her greasy fingers on her already ruined apron. “I have nothing to say.”

Nimrah threw a bone across her shoulder with more force than necessary. “It will be a long day, in silence.”

“I find Amnon’s deep snores rather calming, actually.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“It was a sweet lie,” Malka corrected. “One I offered so you did not have to hear how I truly feel about you.”

Nimrah sighed and a breath caressed the nape of Malka’s neck. Until, she realized, it was the dim whirling of the wind. Unbidden heat crawled up her ears.

“We should enter Valón on Trader’s Day,” Nimrah said, thankfully unaware of Malka’s distress.

Her attention was cast somewhere between the tangle of branches, as if she could see the city lying somewhere beyond them.

“Foreign merchants and vendors will fill the streets. There’s no better day to blend in. ”

The day after tomorrow. Ten days from the priest’s deadline, Malka mentally tallied. “Good.”

Nimrah ground her teeth. Malka’s clipped answers had been bothering her all morning, at which Malka took great satisfaction.

Malka began to strip the cloth from Amnon’s shoulder. He jostled, waking slowly as she rubbed more salve into his wound. It had coagulated, and its redness had lessened.

Deep bags hung under his eyes, but his skin had become less sallow.

“Start slow,” she ordered. “A couple of steps and we will rest again.”

He nodded, then raised his hand as if to say I know, I know. But he gripped her hard as he stood. Malka stumbled under the press of his weight but found her footing as his arm draped across her shoulder.

“I’m a dead weight.” Amnon closed his eyes, drooping his head.

“You’re alive,” Malka corrected. “And that means everything.”

“Only because of you.”

Malka swore magic sparked in the palms of her hands. “I could not watch you die.”

“And I’m grateful.” He glanced at Nimrah as he took a timid step forward. “My injury has messed with my sense of time. When do I have to perform the rooting spell?”

“You’re not performing it at all,” Malka said.

His eyes darted between them, then he shook his head. “Malka, you don’t have to do this.”

“I do.”

“Let me take the burden of Kefesh, like I promised,” he pleaded. His breathing had become labored again, his chest rising and falling in sharp puffs. She helped settle him on the ground, back leaned against a fallen trunk.

Malka felt Nimrah’s eyes on her. She resisted the urge to cradle her palm. “I have already used Kefesh, to save you.”

“What?” He paled even whiter. “You shouldn’t have done that, Malka. You didn’t have to do that for me.” There was no judgment in his voice, only guilt.

“I did, Amnon, and I don’t regret it.”

It was what he needed to hear, to absolve himself. And Malka mostly believed it, too.

Amnon’s eyes searched hers. “What was it like?”

“It… it was nothing like I have ever experienced.” Malka sat next to him, looping her arm through his.

It was one thing for her to perform magic, another to speak of it. As if voicing the experience would tear down whatever lasting barriers she had placed between herself and Kefesh.

Instead, she recalled a story she had been told in her childhood, one that spoke the words she dared not say aloud.

“Do you remember the story of Abayda the Mystic?”

Amnon leaned his head back against the trunk, casting his eyes toward the canopy above them, as if willing the memory of the story to him.

“A little. Will you tell it again? Like you told those stories all those years ago, when I fell from that wretched tree, and you whispered the tales to me as your mother threaded stitches in my leg?”

Malka nodded, warmed by the memory.

“Abayda the Mystic was not always Abayda, nor was he always a mystic. For, sometimes, our names are given to us long after we are around to turn ears at them. Abayda, before he was Abayda, was called Yosef. He was not yet a mystic, but a farmer, who lived at the edge of the only forest Yohev had yet created.”

Nimrah settled herself on the ground. She nodded to Malka to continue her story.

“It was a simple job, to tend to the sheep and cows. Yosef would wake at the first red touch of dawn, say his morning prayers, shear the sheep, milk the cows, and herd the animals into their pen once night spilled blue across the land, sand whipping into stars and constellations above.

“Yosef wanted to be content with his life, he truly did.

For he went to sleep each night with his belly full and his livestock happy.

But he would toss and turn in his cot, feeling an absence he could not describe.

A cavity he could not fill. But Yosef had all he needed to be happy.

So, he closed his eyes and believed the feeling would disperse in the daylight.

“But the next morning, the sadness did not cease.

If anything, it grew. Grew until it clenched his heart like a taloned claw.

He prayed, sheared the sheep, milked the cows, and herded the animals into their pens once night had fallen, but he was still not content.

Again, he tossed and turned in his cot, the creaking of the wooden bed loud in the drowsy air.

“Soon, Yosef would forgo herding the animals back into their pens. He would no longer milk the cows or shear the sheep. He pulled himself out of bed only to pray and then slipped back under his tattered blanket to sleep even when the sun still hung high in the heavens.

“One day, he woke to a shattering wind which blew through his open window like a wildfire. He prepared for the chill, as it was dead winter. But the chill did not come. Instead: warmth. Yosef leaned into it.

“ Yosef, the wind spoke to him. You are troubled. I see the cows are not milked and the sheep are not sheared. What is preventing you from doing so?

“Yosef had no doubt it was Yohev, the God of His Ancestors, speaking to him.

“‘Eternal one,’ Yosef spoke back in reverence. ‘I am sorry I have forsaken my duties. But I am heavy with the weight of a sadness I cannot elude.’

“ Ah, Yohev said through another gust of wind. I know the sadness which you name. You are aching for a wife. You desire children to fill your farm with laughter and singing.

“‘Yes!’ Yosef shouted. ‘It is a wife and children I am missing! I feel their absence like a hole in my heart. Like the sting of a bee that grows with each throb.’

“You shall have a wife, Yosef, but you must do one thing.

“‘Anything!’

“There is a book held in a cobblestone tower just east of this forest. You must bring it to me.

“‘Yes!’

“But caution, Yosef, for you must not open the book. If you disobey me, I cannot grant you what you desire.

“Yosef promised not to open the book.

“ I will be here tomorrow at midnight to collect the book, Yohev said, and left with another breeze.

“So, Yosef set off the next morning, eager to please Yohev and get a wife. When he arrived at the tower, he began the climb to the top. The stairs wound around and around and by the time he reached the top of the tower, he was sweating and aching for breath.

“But there, in the middle of the room, was a brown leather book made from the finest sheepskin.

A golden clasp hugged the book, with a jagged lock at its center.

Next to the book was a key with the same jagged pattern.

Yosef peered back and forth, from the book to the key, and decided to take both in case Yohev had need of it.

“On his walk home, Yosef’s heart grew heavy once again. He was so close to having a wife, but the promise of one did not subdue the ache he felt now, as he walked alone on the dirt path.

“When he arrived back at his farm, Yosef returned to his cot. It was early still—the sun hung low, streaming light through his window. Dust motes danced in the light, and Yosef watched them tenderly from his cot.

“The bed creaked and creaked as he tossed and turned, waiting for Yohev to come. He grew impatient, and in his boredom, he eyed his bag, shrugged up against his wall. The leather book peeking out the rim.

“Yosef wondered if he should check on the book to make sure he had the right one. One peek inside and he would be able to confirm. And, oh!, how he wondered what knowledge the book held. Maybe the book revealed how Yosef’s wife would come to him.

He reared at that thought and scrambled out of the bed.

Surely, Yohev would not mind if he caught a glimpse of what was to come.

“Gingerly, he removed the book from the bag and held it above him, running his fingers over the smooth leather. Holding his breath, he put the key in the lock.

“What would he see in the pages, he wondered? Would they tell of his wife’s beauty, or perhaps of his children’s likeness to him? Would they have his bushy eyebrows, or his rounded nose?

“The key clicked, and the pages fell open.

“For hours, Yosef read. Inside the book were stories of the universe, how language made the stars, the moon, and the sky; how letters built mountains, rivers, and plains. The sounds he shaped into prayers were the same sounds used to make the rain, the snow, and the clouds.

“So engrossed was he in the book, Yosef did not see the sun set behind the mountains. A breeze blew through the room, fluttering a few pages of the book in its wake.

“ You disobeyed me, the breeze said.

“‘Forgive me,’ Yosef said, still reeling from the words he had read. ‘But I had to see. Is this how You created the universe, Eternal One?’

“ Yes, the wind answered. But it was not for you to know. You broke our agreement, Yosef, and thus, I can no longer give you a wife.

“With another whip of wind across Yosef’s face, Yohev was gone.

“Yosef cried as Yohev left him. He still felt broken, still craved a wife.

He wanted desperately to hear the laughter of children in his home.

His head filled with the mystical knowledge he had learned from the book, Yosef spent the rest of his days trying to conjure a wife for himself.

He attempted day in and day out, until he was too old to move from his rickety cot.

“But word had spread of Yosef’s knowledge, and people began to visit his home in hopes of learning what Yosef had read from Yohev’s secret book.

Time after time, Yosef turned them away, his only desire to create a wife.

Even as he grew old and frail, lingering on his deathbed, he did not stop whispering the words he had read in that book long ago.

“So, the people gave Yosef a new name. Abayda, meaning the hoarder of knowledge. And with that name, Abayda spent his last moments tossing and turning on his bed, until the creaking of his cot stopped, and the incessant prayer he whispered day after day died on his lips.”

Malka swallowed, her voice dry from narration.

“You feel like Abayda reading from Yohev’s secret book?” Amnon asked.

Malka nodded. “I feel like I know something I shouldn’t. Something forbidden. Something that will drive me into a craze if I don’t anchor myself.”

“The Maharal says there is another story told of Abayda the Mystic,” Nimrah said.

“Where Yohev had Yosef study the book to better understand and command the universe. Where Yosef’s ability to perform magic was a way of getting closer to Them.

Where Yosef lost his desire for a wife and took knowledge as a lover instead. ”

Malka gritted her teeth but did not respond. She hated how Nimrah twisted her stories.

“Did you, Malka? Feel closer to Yohev?” Amnon asked.

Malka wrapped the flame pendant in her hand, the metal cold against her fingers as she pressed her thumb along its points. Yes, she thought. And I will never be the same. But she dared not speak those words aloud.