Page 30 of The Maiden and Her Monster

“We’ve reached the end of the Great Oak’s roots.”

Nimrah’s face strained, the veins on her forehead pressing tautly against her skin. They were rigid and murky, like pine needles. She closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders before dipping low. She began to trace her hands along the jagged ground, like one would feel for an object in the dark.

“Here,” she said, her hand finishing its search. “Stand back.”

The deep green veins bulged through her skin as the ground began to shake. With a crack, the earth split like the scoring line of cooked bread. Underneath, the petering end of a woody root revealed itself. And written on its surface, the Maharal’s carving: shoresh.

Every use of Nimrah’s magic made Malka uneasy. Terrified of the power the golem could wield with the slightest raise of her fingers, the barest clench of her hand.

Nimrah motioned to Malka expectantly. She hardly appeared strained from her exertion. The only sign she had raised the root was the dirt still caked to her palm. “Come.”

Malka took a hesitant step forward, peering closer at the etching.

“Your dagger.”

Malka blinked. “What?”

Nimrah raised her brow. “Your part of the deal, remember?”

Of course, Malka remembered. Only now that the time had come, fear seized her. She brushed her hand against the hilt of Abba’s dagger.

“You are free to walk away.” Nimrah tossed her arm away in a flourish. “Our deal is not a blood bond. But if you do, I cannot guarantee your mother’s fate.”

Malka had already called Kefesh, commanding it in the palm of her hands. She should have less to fear, yet it still struck her. Using Kefesh and being rooted to Nimrah. Two unknowns. Two chances to become Tzvidi or Abayda.

But she was so close to fulfilling her bargain. So close to leaving the forest she had thought she’d die in. She took Abba’s dagger from her hip and tightened her sweaty palm around the hilt, dropping to her knees beside the exposed root.

“Remember, exactly what you did when you healed Amnon,” said Nimrah. “That same mindset. Change the command: root to rootless. ”

Malka nodded, imagining the holy words. She lifted the dagger and around the command, she began to carve a new one.

When she was done, she was breathing heavily. The heady glimmer of Kefesh sparkling in front of her, like the dancing spots when she stared too close to the sun.

“Now hand it to me.”

Nimrah’s command tore her from her daze, grounding her once again. Gratitude was certainly a foreign concept to this golem.

Flat-lipped, Malka stretched out the dagger, but Nimrah clasped her wrist instead, yanking her forward.

Malka gasped as they brushed close. Shock passed through Nimrah’s eyes, like she had forgotten her own strength. And now they were close, too close. Malka watched the slight bob of Nimrah’s neck.

Nimrah cleared her throat and jacked up Malka’s sleeve. She pressed the flat side of the blade to Malka’s arm.

“Now on your skin,” Nimrah said, slowly moving the dagger across her skin in the shape of the same word that occupied her own arm. “You’ll trace it like this.”

Nimrah’s hold on the weapon resting coolly on her skin should have scared Malka, but she couldn’t look away as the silver of Abba’s blade dragged softly across her arm, gooseflesh appearing where the metal touched.

Malka found herself breathless again. “We’ll undo it the same way I just freed you from the Great Oak?” She did not expect her voice to be as groggy as it was, as if Kefesh was a powder she had swallowed dry.

Nimrah’s face was neutral as she nodded and let go of her grip on the knife. Then, with a softness that surprised her, Nimrah asked, “Are you ready?”

With a swallow, Malka tightened her fist on the hilt. She twisted the blade, setting the tip onto the thin skin of the inside of her forearm. A drop of blood welled.

She had to do it fast to keep ahead of the pain.

She began.

It was a searing sting—the kind that made it hard to think, hard to breathe.

She resisted the urge to tighten her hand into a fist and lose more blood.

When Malka had helped Imma sew sutures into skin, they would rub clove oil onto the skin to help reduce the pain.

Malka wished she had some now, as the blade shaped the word.

The first letter, then the second.

She gritted her teeth, and tasted metal. Malka stared at the gaping wound she self-inflicted on her arm, bleeding like the larch tree’s putrid sap, which trailed down the bark, following the rivulets like a maze.

“Your prayer!” Malka heard through the haze of pain.

Malka evened her breathing. This injury couldn’t be for nothing. She closed her eyes, trusting herself to know the lettering of her holy language. She had already severed the command to the Great Oak; she could do this.

She went back to the safe space she had found when she healed Amnon.

Where prayer was the only thought on her mind.

Where no harm could find her. Where Hadar sat waiting for Malka to crawl into bed and hold her snug.

Where Imma kissed her forehead and smoothed her hair around her ear.

Where Chaia had walked back out from the forest, not a bruise coloring her skin.

She got lost in it, this holy place where miracles became real.

“It’s done.”

Malka opened her eyes, dizzy from her escape. Her arm throbbed. Thick heartbeats racked through her as blood trickled from the wound. She was faint from the pain and stumbled. Nimrah’s hand steadied her.

“How do you feel?” Amnon asked.

A sudden brightness and heat, as if she had jumped into flames. A heady fullness and a sharp saturation of feeling. No matter how she described the sense of it, Nimrah was always at its center. Malka was keenly aware of her, of every touch of her fingers as she wrapped the poultice around her arm.

“Do you feel it, too?” The question slipped out; so small, so breathless.

Nimrah only twitched her jaw in response. “Let’s go,” she said, before she collected her bag and left them in the clearing.

Malka closed her eyes, soothing the hot rush of anger. Into her own skin she had carved the letters that freed Nimrah. She’d always have the scar, no matter how many salves she applied. And Nimrah didn’t even have the decency to care.

Imma’s face came to mind. Her deepest contours, thin mouth, and the kindest eyes Malka knew a mother to have. Anything was worth it, for her. Anything was worth it, to Malka, for the chance to return to her life how it once had been. A life she recalled in the quiet when darkness most haunted her.

Malka wiped the side of her mouth with her thumb. It came away a dirty red from where she had bitten her lip and bled.

Later that night, she would dream of the Rayga.

Nimrah, standing in the snow, wind waving her hair into a halo around her face.

Smiling devilishly at Malka before curling into herself, becoming the mangled deer which had torn skin from Amnon’s shoulder, her legs sprouting into chicken’s feet.

Returning to her normal form, her teeth saturated with Amnon’s blood, his flesh sinewy between her canines.

Stalking toward Malka, doublet shining with blood, and pressing their lips together, tangling her hands in Malka’s curls.

Malka opening her mouth, gasping or moaning, or a mix of both, and tasting Amnon’s flesh, his blood.

She’d awake and vomit, dry heaving until her nausea settled.

“Alright?” Amnon would ask, but her eyes would be on Nimrah, falling to the same lips which had been stained with Amnon’s blood in her dream. The lips that had pressed to hers. Heat would pool in her stomach and shame would color her cheeks.

She would not go back to sleep.