Page 59 of The Maiden and Her Monster

The room was stale. She wondered how often people ventured up here. As she closed the door behind her, dust motes flew around, illuminated by the flame.

She held the light out, running her eyes around the room to find the towels. It was a small space. Wooden beams protruded from the ceiling and pressed through the ground, creating a zigzag maze in the room. She ran her hand across the wall, her fingers pressing into tally marks in the wood.

Malka briefly remembered that Nimrah had once called the attic of the shul Bachta home. Peering around now, though, it seemed unlikely it was this exact space. She could not imagine anyone living up here in such conditions—not even the golem.

The awareness of her was incessant. Malka should not have come up here. She could no longer distinguish whether her mind clouded with thoughts of Nimrah because of the bond or if it was her own treacherous heart to blame.

Malka ambled over to another door in the attic, which she thought might be a storage room. She set down her candle and reached for the doorknob.

Before she could, the door swung open with a woosh, revealing Nimrah on the other side.

Malka’s heart stuttered.

Nimrah’s face had contorted in a slew of emotions before it settled on a pained expression as she stared at Malka.

Maybe Nimrah had also been unable to distinguish the signals of the rooting spell from her own feelings. She had nearly said as much when Malka had led her into that alley, not knowing if the strength of the spell was perpetuated by the feelings she admitted to having.

In the doorframe, they were only inches from each other.

It would be so easy to kiss her again, to tangle her hands in Nimrah’s hair and drag her fingers to the apex of her thighs, where they had left off.

But she remembered what had followed. Knew now that even in that alley, Nimrah had known she would betray Malka.

And still, she had kissed her mouth. Had buried herself beneath her skirts.

Malka was bruised by the memory of her.

Nimrah’s low voice broke the weighted silence between them. “What are you doing here?”

“I was grabbing towels to dry off before the service,” Malka pressed her palms into Nimrah’s chest, pushing her away. “Why are you here?”

“The Maharal offered me my old room again now that…” she faded off, though Malka knew what she was going to say.

Their deal was over now that Father Bro ? ek had forsaken his promise, that Imma was doomed despite any true monster Malka could seize from the forest and plant at his feet. Her innocence did not matter.

“How convenient you had a place to welcome you back. Tell me, did it make it easier to betray me, knowing you could come crawling back to the Maharal?”

Nimrah swallowed. “Chaia told you.”

Her distraught voice revealed the truth of her betrayal. Malka imagined it like a berry between her teeth, the lie popping and staining her chin red.

“I needed you to admit it.”

“Malka, you must understand—”

Malka crossed her arms, fighting the warmth that spread from her name on Nimrah’s tongue. It was wholly unfair, to feel betrayed by her body, as well. “I understand perfectly well. You meant to scorn our agreement regardless.”

Nimrah sighed. She paced the small room.

It was simple—devoid of personality and color.

A bed sat shouldered against a wall, a small desk was littered with scrolls, a sheathed knife, and several guttered candles sighing ribbons of smoke with the last of their light.

Malka could hardly imagine her room without Hadar’s paper cuttings lining the wall and the glimmering wind chime hanging from her window.

Grief washed over her again, begriming like soot. All of that was gone. Hadar was gone. It suffocated her as if the grief were new again, but she could not be buried underneath its weight. Not now, when Imma’s life still hung in the balance. So, Malka turned her grief into anger.

“Destruction truly does follow in your wake,” Malka bit out, moving further into the room to lean against the edge of the desk, as if the wood itself could offer her strength. “Basám’s son, the Mázág sickness, my village… Hadar.”

Nimrah’s face fell. She turned away. From this angle, Malka could only see the stone of her face, illuminated by the candlelight while shadows hid whatever human parts of her remained. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand why you forsook me. What is one Yahadi life when you have the opportunity to save Ordobav from the tyrannical hands of the Ozmini Church? You made an impossible choice, yet so did I—when I stepped into Mavetéh’s arms and welcomed death’s cool touch on the slight chance I might be able to save Imma. ”

Malka rolled up the sleeve of her blouse and traced the scabbed lettering on her arm. “The promise of our deal is mutilated into my skin. You have forced me to carry a lie forever.”

“Then mutilate me in return.” Nimrah stalked forward, caging Malka as she pressed her palms to the desk. “Scar me. Command me. Force me to remember my deceit by carving it into my stone. I’ll allow it from you, only you.”

When Nimrah pulled back, the knife that had been on the desk was now unsheathed in her grip.

Measuredly, Nimrah sank to her knees. She ensnared Malka’s wrist and pulled her closer.

So close that if Malka bowed her back only slightly, Nimrah’s lips would brush her chest. Her chin tilted up to meet Malka’s gaze, eyes begging for absolution.

Nimrah began to wrap Malka’s fingers around the hilt.

Malka tried to jerk her hand away, but Nimrah would not let it budge. Nimrah guided the blade to her neck.

“All I ever wanted was to protect the Yahad. How do you think I feel having let them down so many times? Having let you down?”

Malka hated the spark of compassion which seized her. She, too, knew what it was like to fail at protecting the people she loved most.

“When Chaia came to me with one last opportunity to show my worth as a golem—to protect the Yahad when I have failed in all other ways—I took it. You heard yourself what it would mean to bring religious freedom to Ordobav. What kind of place it could become if people are truly free to practice their religions, without a tithe, without a badge they must wear on their clothes. Without a church that seeps its way into commerce and politics.”

The knife wavered in Malka’s hand. Nimrah tightened her hand to steady her hold.

“I’m not doubting that, Nimrah.”

It was the first time Malka had voiced her name, the shape of it in her mouth intoxicating, potent with meaning.

Nimrah’s eyes darkened.

“Do you think I don’t also long for that future?

” Malka continued. “That I will not do all I can to help obtain it? I am angry. Angry I was betrayed by the people I care about. Tell me, how would you’ve cleared me out of your way when I demanded we begin our journey back to Eskravé?

A kick to the head, like the Ordobav guard whose scar I will wear forever? ”

“Don’t say that.” Nimrah leaned in, causing bright red blood to well from her neck as the blade pierced her.

Malka tried to pull away, but Nimrah held her tight. “What should I say? I wish I had never pulled you into that shadowed alley. I wish I had never kissed you.”

Nimrah’s face chilled, her eyes deep pools that swirled with hurt like the most poisonous colored waral fruit. “Punish me,” she growled. The room shivered as she spoke. “Drive the blade into my skin for my betrayal, for the failure of my creation.”

She had thought Nimrah angry at the words Malka spat as weapons. But she recognized it now as anger at herself. It was the same look that had crossed her face when she told the story of her exile—the same plummy glaze which meant she was deep in her thoughts, living in the failure of her actions.

Nimrah was a creature of Kefesh. She couldn’t die without her murderer dying, too. But Nimrah didn’t know that.

Whatever role she had played in Mavetéh’s turn, Malka had never predicted this of Nimrah: a woman, on her knees, begging for punishment.

It didn’t matter now. Malka had promised herself she would not be distracted again. Malka shoved Nimrah’s hand away, which had gone slack around hers in waiting. The knife clattered on the floor.

“Whatever had bloomed between us is dead,” Malka declared. “You will kill the archbishop, I will save my mother, and we will go our separate ways. I will forget about you, and you will forget about me.”

Nimrah stared at the blade. Its sharp edge was swathed with her blood. “Is this how it shall be?”

“I want no memory of you,” Malka said to drive in the point.

Nimrah pounded her fist on the floor. The wood creaked in anger, vines slithering through the cracks in the floorboard.

She bent low to pick up the knife from the floor.

She wiped her own blood from it on her tunic.

She felt dangerous. Like the Rayga Malka had always imagined, pupils wide and anger flaring.

Then, it slipped away. Nimrah once again donned the mask she had so treasured, so strategically crafted.

“Fine,” the golem said coolly.

Malka could not handle anymore. She slammed the door as she left, leaving Nimrah on her knees.

“Do it,” Malka said. “You owe me this much.”

In the dark quiet later that night, Chaia settled the blade between her thumb and forefinger. “Are you sure?”

Sure? Malka wasn’t sure of anything. She had been lied to, betrayed. Forsaken by multiple bargains. “I want no memory of her,” Malka gritted, because it’s what she had told Nimrah, because it was the truth. It was too painful, this constant reminder. This chain.

Pain seared as Chaia began to carve around the word, which had barely begun to scar. Around shoresh, the word which rooted them, she carved in the letters to make the word rootless. A new command made from an old one. The same she had used to free Nimrah from the Great Oak.

Their connection broke in a scouring wave, and Malka grimaced as her body adjusted. She shivered at the cold. Had it always been this cold without their connection?

“I think it’s done,” Chaia said, staring at the bloody mess of Malka’s arm, face pale.

Malka was certain. All that remained was the haunting of what had once been. A sharp grief burying itself inside of her. The unwanted tang of memory.

She wondered if Nimrah felt it, too. If she knew what Malka had done.

“Good,” Malka said, breathless.