Page 34 of The Maiden and Her Monster

The room stilled.

Bewildered, Malka stared at Chaia, or someone who couldn’t possibly be Chaia.

Maybe the strange plague had finally come for her, wrapping her in its thorny vines.

Maybe the hallucinogens in Mavetéh’s sap had corrupted her mind as it had so many others’.

The same way it had come for Eskravé’s men, paranoia seeping into their skin and hollowing their eyes.

It had been foolish to think Malka could leave Mavetéh unscathed.

She was so unmistakably similar to Chaia, honeyed hair tied back under her kerchief, eyes the color of light resin.

“Malka!” The bags fell from her shoulders as Chaia moved to wrap her in a hug. The scent of her overwhelming and familiar.

“Chaia,” Malka choked, words as difficult to shape as the roaring river which had swallowed her. “I thought you were dead.”

Chaia jolted back. “What?”

“Taken by…” She was scared to say it—as if voicing the truth would make the dream in front of her shatter. “You were gone one day and did not come back. We thought you were the next maiden taken by the Rayga.”

Chaia covered her mouth. “I… you never got my letter?”

“You sent…?” Malka choked on her words and shook her head instead.

Chaia cursed, her face paling. “Does this mean everyone—my family —thinks I’ve been dead this whole time?” Her voice tightened. “God, I’m so sorry, Malka.”

“Is it really you?” Malka’s voice was small.

She grasped Malka’s hand. “It is me, Yedid Nefesh. ”

Malka flipped Chaia’s palm over and ran her thumb along the familiar scar there. A sob rattled through her. “How are you alive?”

Chaia frowned at Malka’s arm. Blood had soiled the fabric and trickled down her wrist. The wound had become hot and tender under the puffy sleeves of her blouse.

“Are you okay?” Chaia tugged up her sleeve in fervent alarm. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Malka responded, resisting the urge to pull away. “Please, Chaia, what’s going on? How are you alive?”

Chaia sighed. “I will tell you everything. Sit, please.”

Vilém stepped forward, placing his hand on Chaia’s back.

Malka had forgotten about him. She slid into the wooden seat once again.

He whispered something into Chaia’s ear. She nodded and moved a curl out of his eye. He kissed her on the forehead. As he left, he shot Malka a sad smile.

Chaia rummaged in a drawer before reappearing with her hands full of jars and a fresh piece of gauze. Malka took note of her collection: a tincture of yarrow, applied topically to the infection, garlic as an antibiotic, and… goldenmase?

“What is the goldenmase for?”

“A little sweetness, to help wash down the garlic.”

“You’d waste goldenmase on me like that?”

Chaia shrugged. “Vilém makes a decent wage at the university. We don’t need to ration it as harshly as we did in Eskravé.”

Malka clenched. Something about Chaia’s lackluster reaction irked her. She said it so casually, but she had no idea how much worse conditions had become in Eskravé since she disappeared. She had not had to mourn herself like Malka did.

“How did you end up here, Chaia? With Vilém, in Valón.” Her voice dropped low. “And why did you not come back?”

“I needed to see for myself,” she said slowly, “what the Church was doing with our tithes.”

Malka closed her eyes, fingers clamping the bridge of her nose. “Of course, you did.”

“Nobody knew or would tell me anything, Malka. I had to find answers.”

Malka’s mind drifted to the knights in the tavern.

“And did you?” The question held a brutal heat.

“Yes.” She guided the garlic toward her with her knuckle, mouth thinning. “Thanks to the Maharal.”

Malka wasn’t sure her stomach could settle anything, but she took the jar and popped a clove of raw garlic in her mouth. She did not wash it down with the goldenmase.

“You left us thinking you were dead.” Chaia wasn’t taken by Mavetéh, mauled to death by one of its creatures. She wasn’t lost and unable to find her own way back. She had gone on purpose.

Malka gritted her teeth. Hurt pierced her worse than any boot ever could.

Chaia sighed in frustration. “I left to go find answers, but I didn’t intend to disappear. When I stole away in the back of a marketer’s cart, I had no idea I wouldn’t be returning. But what I found here… it’s bigger than me, Malka.”

A hot tear burned the raw skin of Malka’s cheek.

“But involving myself was not without its sacrifices,” Chaia admitted with a deep-set hollowness in her eyes.

Malka was livid, but relief threatened to wipe away any other emotion she felt. Chaia was here. Real. She had wished for this. Prayed. And Yohev had listened. They had responded.

The magic nipped at her palms again.

Malka remembered the nights she and Chaia had spent under the sky during Ordobav’s balmy summers, tracing their dreams in the stars.

She also remembered the unrelenting fear when Chaia’s parents had knocked at her door late at night.

They had spoken with Imma in hushed tones.

Chaia hasn’t come home tonight. And then, Has another body been found?

Their village had sent search party after search party, stopping when the men drank through half their wheat rations in beer to deal with their fear.

“I said the mourner’s prayer for you, Chaia. I said it until my lips were dry and cracked, until my throat closed up. I said it almost a month ago to mark the year of the loss of you.”

“I did not mean for it to happen like this.” Chaia buried her face in her hands.

“They told me to cut contact with home, but I allowed myself one letter. To explain. But when no one from home ever sent a reply, I thought… well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, does it?

” She slouched in her chair. “They are watching closer than I realized.”

“What exactly have you gotten yourself into?” The need to hide and cut contact. Being watched. Worry crawled across Malka’s skin. “And exactly who is advising you?”

“ Yedid Nefesh, I want to tell you everything, I swear. May I at least treat your wound first?” Chaia’s throat wavered.

It was so unlike the Chaia Malka had known that doubt curled its tendrils inside her.

So many questions. So much hurt and betrayal. But she had never been good at saying no to Chaia. So, she relented.

Chaia set a hot cloth on Malka’s arm, loosening the caked poultice. As Chaia cleaned the old medicine, she gasped at the word carved into her skin.

It wasn’t just concern etched into Chaia’s face, but understanding. “I know what that mark means, Malka. What did you do?”

Malka shook her head.

“I don’t mean it accusingly,” Chaia rushed to add. “Being here has enlightened me on many things, including Kefesh. The Maharal had begun to teach me just before…”

“You’ve commanded Kefesh?” Any other time, this revelation would’ve shocked her. But Chaia was back from the dead, a defter magic than any Kefesh spell.

“I’m only a beginner.” Chaia’s thumb traced tenderly at the skin around the command. She stared at it, almost wistful. “How did you get this?”

Malka swallowed, then told Chaia everything across the burning flame, from the severing of Minton’s fingers to her encounter with Rzepka and the other Paja members.

She recounted how Imma had come across Rzepka dead, leading to the Church accusing her of using Rzepka’s blood for dirty magic.

How she made a deal with the priest and stole away into Mavetéh with Amnon, only to find the Maharal’s golem at the center of it all.

Chaia’s face grew wretched and pale. “I cannot believe you survived, Yedid Nefesh. ”

“I only survived because of the golem,” she admitted, though it pained her. “I can hardly think of what would’ve become of me otherwise.”

In Malka’s recounting, she explained the word carved into her arm, how it allowed Nimrah to leave Mavetéh.

She shared the deal they had made in detail and how it would free Imma from the Church’s unfounded accusations.

Malka omitted Amnon’s injury and the magic she had used to save him.

She couldn’t speak of it, not while she still did not understand the power she held.

“You think the Maharal’s golem is responsible for Mavetéh’s deadly turn?”

“It was her life being tied to the Great Oak tree that led to the corruption of the woods.”

Chaia mulled over Malka’s words. Outside, the sun evaded the shield of clouds, skidding its light through the window, casting Chaia’s face in a golden glow.

Another day was slipping through her fingers, and another night awaited Imma in confinement.

Chaia had not yet answered her questions.

Malka wanted to push for them, to draw her heels into the ground and refuse to move until Chaia explained everything.

But it would be selfish, getting answers for herself, when she had much more important bargains to fulfill.

“I need to find them, Chaia,” Malka said, regrettably.

“I think they’ll be at Eli?ka’s home. She’s a retired laundress. Vilém says he knows her, do you?”

Chaia nodded, forehead creasing. “I do, but it will be safer for Vilém to escort you. They don’t love it when the Yahadi women stay out late. I will go and get him.”

When Chaia appeared with Vilém, he smiled. “I don’t know why I did not put two and two together! Chaia talks about you so much. I feel as if I’m meeting a legend herself.”

Chaia shrugged as if to say, Of course I talk about you. A year had passed, but the connection between them was as easy as breathing.

Malka’s chest tightened.

Vilém took Malka’s arm in his. Before they walked out the door, Malka turned back. “Chaia… can I come back here, after I find them? There’s so much more to say, I…”

“Of course, Yedid Nefesh. ” Chaia responded with such tenderness that it made Malka ache. For all the time they had lost, for the ease at which they could fall back into each other. But most of all, for the fissure her grief had created between them.

“Before you go, take this.” Chaia unclasped the cloak from her shoulders with the sewn rota patch and held it out to her.

Malka wrapped it around herself, grateful to leave her fetid, sullied cloak behind. She relished in the soft scent of it, like rosewater, more familiar to her than any herb. It smelled like Chaia, and that made her throat go tight. Chaia was here, alive.

With one last look back at her best friend, Malka followed Vilém out the door.