Page 68 of The Maiden and Her Monster

Nights later, when the hazy, berry-dark sky turned the air frigid and the city of Valón curled near their ovens to sleep, Nimrah found a note from the Maharal, asking them to meet him in the shul Bachta, on the spiraling tower.

When they climbed the tower, Malka viewed the city around them. It stole her breath. Lanterns painted Valón like dew drops on fresh leaves, shining bright against the night. She could see the Orlon clock in the center square, its gears grinding Sévren’s bones into dust.

To the south, she glimpsed Mavetéh’s consuming darkness, the lattice of canopies absorbing the night in a blanket of obsidian.

To think she had traveled through the woods weeks ago, yet all the terrors she had faced paled in comparison to those she witnessed in Valón.

She tried to think of where the shul Amichati sat buried half beneath the earth, waiting for someone to raise it from the ground.

“Thank you both for coming here,” the Maharal said. He wore his sapphire-colored robe, his silver beard glimmering in the moonlight. “I know how tough it has been, dealing with the aftermath of the Lé ? rey celebration. But this… this could not wait.”

“What is it, Rav?” Nimrah asked. Already, she was far from Malka, putting space between them. Malka could barely see her face in the shadow where she stood.

“Nimrah, there is something I must tell you.” The Maharal drew closer to his golem. “Something that has eaten at me for many years. Something I have already shared in pieces with Malka to save you from Sévren.”

Though Nimrah was in shadow, it did not hide the rigid tense of her shoulders.

“It is no coincidence the forest began to grow teeth when I tied you to the Great Oak tree. Only it is not as you think. It is not you who presses magic into the woods.”

“What do you mean?”

The Maharal’s chest rose and fell with a deep breath.

He peered at the stars, letting the moonlight cover his face in a pale, milky glow.

“In all my scholarship, I had read of a way one could use Kefesh to breathe life into this world.

Much in the same way we plant a tree and watch it grow or birth a child who grows until they can have a child of their own.

I began to practice my creation of you in the forest. Each day, I came back and logged the motions, the prayers, until I was sure they were right.

But I had formed a pattern, and Sévren, ever keeping his eye on me, soon became interested in what I did inside the forest. He had the Qehillah raided and took all the scrolls detailing my attempts at creating you, learning the prayers I uttered, the instructions I followed.

I wondered then if I should stop. But the next time I attempted to make you, Yohev let your existence be true.

When you opened your eyes, I knew I had created something beautiful. Something holy.

“So, I kept a close eye on him in case he chose to pursue something with that knowledge. For years he did nothing. Each day that passed without incident eased my worry. Soon, three years had come and gone. I was comfortable that he had set aside his interests, until one day I saw him walk with a woman into the forest—the same Ozmini bride they would put me in jail for supposedly killing. I followed him. In the same spot near the creek where I had practiced all those years ago, as detailed in the scrolls, he handed the woman a few belladonna berries and she ate them without a second thought. After she died, Sévren carved into her skin the same word I had used to create you: emet, truth. While I had made you from stone, he chose to make a golem out of someone human already. Maybe he didn’t think he could create a golem the same way I did, or maybe he was looking for a shortcut.

Either way, once he had finished, the earth grumbled, and for one moment, I was in shock it had worked—that an Ozmin could command Yahadi prayer.

But the woman began to mutate into something horrible.

Her limbs morphed together, stone jutted from her skin, and she breathed again a ragged, wheezing breath.

“The earth wailed, wind howling through the trees, trunks groaning. Yahadi magic was not for Sévren to hold, much the same way that commanding you, Nimrah, made him sick.”

Malka unconsciously traced the bruises on her arm from that night.

“The woman was in tremendous pain. It would’ve been a mercy to kill her.

But I was too weak to do what needed to be done.

I had not killed anyone, and I didn’t want to.

Even if her life was like this. So, I did what I thought was the next best thing.

I transformed her into a different type of life.

As I created life with you, Nimrah, I transformed that poor woman into the Great Oak tree.

I did not expect what she would do in that form—how hungry for bodies she would become.

The curse she as the Great Oak would cast over everyone.

It took time, years, but she soon realized her tears could turn into poisonous fruit hanging from her branches, and each time she sobbed, they would spread throughout the forest.”

Nimrah furrowed her brows. “But the waral fruit began to appear only after I was rooted there.”

“When they sprouted, maybe. If you recall, it was an unusually long winter before the spring finally came. Already her work had begun, shifting the forest. Rotting it. The seeds had been planted, only waiting for the blooming season. I did not realize this when I tied you there on the first of spring. That you would blame yourself when they began to grow.”

Each piece of the puzzle was slipping into place.

Only, this realization did not come as much of a surprise to Malka as it did to Nimrah, who had grown pale across from her.

Malka had tried so hard to blame her for everything, desperate to fit ill-shaped pieces together.

Maybe she had not known exactly how Kratzka ?ujana became Mavetéh, but it made increasingly less sense that Nimrah was its maker.

How she was not safe from the creature attacks, the remorse she felt for those she harmed.

The continuous haunting of the forest even after Nimrah had left it.

Malka’s evolving understanding of Kefesh.

The Maharal’s confession only confirmed what part of her had already known. Nimrah was not the source of the curse.

The Maharal closed his eyes. “I knew my mistake immediately. By transforming that woman into the Great Oak tree, I had used Kefesh to create life. So, I knew I was no longer able to destroy it if I wished to live.”

“What do you mean,” Nimrah pushed, “if you wished to live?”

“Another secret I kept from you, so you did not have to bear its weight.” His eyes met Malka’s. “The price of destroying life made by Kefesh is the death of its murderer.”

Shame filled Nimrah’s face, and when she spoke, her voice was meek. “Why must you have created me? If this is all the trouble my creation has caused.”

“Oh, Nimrah. You do not understand how desperate I was, how helpless I felt when the raids on the Yahadi Quarter began to increase in scale and frequency. I had long since studied the art of Kefesh, from the time I was small, when I was born knowing Yohev’s true name.

To hold such a great power in your hands, a power tied into the creation of the universe, and still have to stand by while your people were pillaged and killed…

the same people who sought you to help guide their hopes and prayers.

Imagine having all the power you could hold, and still having none at all.

If I could not help my people and keep them safe, I wondered if I could create something that could.

” His eyes glinted with love. “ Someone who could.”

“It can’t be a coincidence that the forest has been searching out girls?” Malka intoned the thought as a question, reworking what she knew through the lens of this woman-turned-Great-Oak.

The Maharal nodded. “I fear it’s true. Kefesh is already a delicate thing.

It is power, but power granted by Yohev.

Creating life is one thing. Mothers bear children and bring life into the world.

But death… to bring someone back from the dead, is only a power Yohev may hold.

And this woman did not come back how she was.

It threw off the balance of the earth. I believe the woman is searching for herself as she once was, in all the women her creatures take.

Her tree form has only given her more strength, as the waral fruit germinates and creates more monsters. ”

“Is she the cause of the sickness, too?” The last piece of the puzzle, the last question.

The Maharal’s expression wavered. “It’s true the sickness comes from the poison of the waral fruit.

Either through a rabid creature’s bite, like Amnon, or consuming anything the waral fruit has touched.

But I don’t believe the woman is responsible for the worsening spread of the Mázág sickness.

That, I’m afraid, is the work of greedy men. ”

“What do you mean?”

“As more and more orders were given to build and revive things from the golden age of King Manek’s rule, the more Valski’s men had to go into the forest to retrieve materials.

The more trees had to be cut for wood to be shaped into frames for King Manek’s portraits, more stone to be shaped into statues.

More food for feasts that secured the court’s faith in Ordobav’s strong leadership.

The more they attempted to hide the sickness with opulence, the worse the sickness became. ”

It made sense, then, why the increasing sickness in Eskravé juxtaposed the frequency of the Paja’s tithe collections. The Paja did not only bring their brutality with them on their missions, but also their disease.

“Instead of letting me help, you tied me to the one who created this mess. You made me think Mavetéh was my fault alone,” Nimrah said, rigid as a statue.