Page 9 of The Maiden and Her Monster

“We’ve been so accommodating of your religion,” the priest continued. “Not only have you failed to meet your tithe, but you have taken an Ozmini woman to sacrifice. May she be with Triorzay now. You’ll die a death worthy of your sin and have no one left but the devil to beg for mercy.”

The words slapped Malka like needles pressing into her skin, each sharp point drawing blood.

She thought she was screaming, but no sound escaped her lips.

Aleksi’s fingers dug into her ribs to keep her planted.

Malka wondered if his fingers would bruise her skin.

If they would remind Malka of this moment, when she watched the knights drag Imma away, her scraped knees tracking blood in the dirt.

No matter how weak Malka felt, her hunger-whittled muscles no match for Aleksi’s strong grip, she couldn’t lose Imma.

Malka jutted her elbow in Aleksi’s side with all her might. He grunted and doubled over, allowing Malka to pull free.

“Wait!”

Father Bro ? ek turned, but it was Imma who found her eyes. They were resolute—the same brave face she had seen many times. She was going to let this happen. Let the Paja kill her and leave Malka and her sisters to light yet another yahrzeit candle.

“What if I can prove she was not the one who killed Rzepka? That we have no use for her blood?”

“And how would you do that?”

“This creature—what we call the Rayga—it is real.”

“Must I remind you, girl, of what happened the last time the Ozmini Church was taken for a fool?”

He didn’t need to. Malka could still hear the crunch of Minton’s fingers. “Let me bring you the Rayga, this monster. I will prove my mother is innocent, that we are not liars.”

The words settled in her bones like smoke, suffocating. But she couldn’t live in a world where Imma didn’t. Couldn’t let Hadar grow up without knowing her loving touches or gentle hands braiding her hair for the holy days. Not when their father had swaddled a wine bottle instead of his children.

Father Bro ? ek jumped from his horse and strolled toward Malka until they were a hair’s breadth apart.

She could see the creases along his mouth, the gentle scar he had across his nose, the raised skin puckering in the cold.

He smelled thickly of eucalyptus and the cedar oil the Ozmins used at their churches.

“If you say the Rayga targets women,” he eyed her up and down, “what hope should you have of bringing it to me?”

Malka faltered, for it was true. What hope should she have when the Rayga had taken any girl who wandered too close to Mavetéh?

“I will accompany her.” Amnon emerged from the amassed crowd; the sleeves of his fisherman’s tunic were still coated in fish innards. Malka wanted to kill him and his valor-driven tongue.

“No, you won’t,” Malka snapped.

“It’s the only way you have a chance, Malka,” he said gently as he approached. “Let me protect you from the Rayga. Men go on their hunts all the time, and they come back. If this is the deal you will strike, let me help you see it through.”

Malka recalled Abba, and the hollow bags under his eyes, how he reeked of the manta plant each night.

Men do not come back from Mavetéh, Malka thought. Only shadows of them do.

She didn’t want to see sense in Amnon’s proposition, but he was right.

No women who wandered close when night fell were safe.

She couldn’t fool herself into thinking Mavetéh wouldn’t consume her.

That it wouldn’t be her body next, chewed and splayed on the ground.

Yet the men had not been successful in their hunts, either. What choice did she truly have?

Václav bellowed a laugh behind them. “You know what they say about a man who speaks louder than the force of his punch? He is a dead one.”

“I am interested in their plight,” Father Bro ? ek said. “After all, if they are willing to risk so much, as they say, does Triorzay not demand we give them the benefit of the doubt?”

“Father—”

“If you bring this… monster back to me, we will see if it’s proof enough to settle our accusation. If you don’t show, well, then I’m afraid the witch will pay for her crimes with her life.”

Malka shook as disbelief gripped her. Imma was not safe yet, but she could be. And that was all Malka needed to be brave. “I will show you the truth of those woods. And prove my mother’s innocence.”

“You have until the eve of the Lé ? rey celebration,” Father Bro ? ek instructed. Three weeks. “Say it’s… in honor of Saint Celine.” His leer evoked a bone-deep shiver.

Malka didn’t want to see Imma’s sallow face, torn by the deal she had struck. But she could not leave her—couldn’t face Mavetéh without seeing her one last time.

Perhaps Imma knew what Malka wanted to see, and granted it, despite her true feeling. A soft smile, eyes shining. I love you, her eyes said from across the field.

With the might of every star in the sky, Malka mouthed back, throat so constricted she could hardly swallow.

The knights took Imma away. Malka watched her disappear beyond the clearing, leaving Father Bro ? ek and the rest of his entourage to settle the crowd.

Amnon’s father ushered him away to reprimand him.

He shot her an apologetic look, but Malka was no longer present.

The fog settled dense around her. It was like losing Chaia all over again—the schism when her parents came to say she had not come home, separating the life Malka had known and the life she had to now endure.

But this was different. She would make it different.

“Malka,” Father Bro ? ek called. Reluctantly, she met his piercing stare. “Remember the grace Triorzay has granted you. And remember what it means to disgrace the Ozmini Church.”

Malka forced herself to nod, the priest’s words a spider crawling up her neck and tingling the back of her ears.

She didn’t know how long she stood there. When everyone was gone, she was still there, staring at the stained, melting snow.

When the villagers had accepted that Chaia’s disappearance meant she was dead, Malka had sat in the field they frequented until her feet were numb with mild frostbite and her fingers fattened.

She didn’t know why she had gone there. To feel the memory of her in the wind or hear her laughter in the flow of the stream.

To hear her best friend adorn her with her nickname one more time.

Yedid Nefesh. Beloved of the soul, it meant.

That’s what they had been to each other.

Perhaps if Malka stayed in the clearing long enough, she could reverse the moment when Imma had stumbled across Rzepka.

She imagined her mother, ever the healer, dropping to her knees to examine the body.

Getting blood on her hands attempting to find a pulse.

Freezing when time played its cruel joke and the Paja appeared before her.

It was no use, yet she stayed until the cruelty of frostbite began to nip at her hands and feet, forcing her inside.

That night was full of stars spilling across the sky so brightly, Malka could count them from her bedroom. Perched on the windowsill, knees drawn to her chest, she pointed to each one, whispering their names. Those would be the stars to guide her, after all.

Danya called to her as she shuffled from her bed, the darkness silhouetting her lanky frame.

When Danya joined Malka on the window perch, it hit her how grown her sister had become. Her strong nose and deep-set eyes—features they shared but wore so differently—gleamed in the moonlight.

“You’re going through with this deal, aren’t you?” Danya whispered, careful not to wake Hadar.

News of Rzepka’s death had already crawled through Eskravé’s streets, Imma’s arrest on every whispering tongue. Exactly what had happened when Chaia had gone missing. Those whispers haunted her still.

I must lose a child or a wife, Abba had said about the deal Malka had struck. Wherever God is, They are not here.

Yet, he did not stop her. Instead, he slammed the front door behind him. Outside, a glass bottle shattered. He never did have a backbone where it mattered.

She could not help Chaia anymore, but she could save Imma from a similar fate. “I must.”

Danya rested her head against the window. “I know you believe you must.”

Her sister was pragmatic, always balancing options in the furrow of her brow, the purse of her lips. It didn’t surprise Malka that Danya weighed her decision to hunt down the Rayga.

Malka reasoned, “If I don’t try, Imma will die. Do you think we’ll be happy here with Abba? How long do you think it’ll be before you’re the next victim of his wrath?”

The pale pink of Danya’s nightgown glimmered as she sighed. “It’s too late for that.” She rotated so Malka faced her back, then lifted her dress up to her shoulder blades.

Dread pooled in Malka’s gut. Bruises faded to shades of purple lined her back, stark against the milky wash of moonlight illuminating her skin.

Malka touched the bruises softly, as she had traced her own many times. Hot anger pricked her throat. “You know why I must go. The Rayga hunts made him like this. If the Rayga is killed, maybe we can go back to how we were.”

Danya shrugged the nightgown back down. “Malka, we can never be like we were. Those people who come into our village demanding payment because we don’t believe in the same God?

They’re not going to disappear. They’ll keep collecting payment from us until our resources are dry and we are drained of hope and prayer. Until we are nothing but dust.”

“We must replenish our hope,” Malka said. “Believe in me, Danya. Please. Let me take this chance to free Imma. To rid Eskravé of this plague of dead women. To give Hadar the chance to grow up unafraid.”

Danya’s lips wavered. Malka thought she might fight back, unravel her plan with ways Malka could fail. But instead, Danya held her hand, a strangely intimate gesture for her sister. She squeezed it and settled their joined hands on her knee, turning back to stare out the window.

Tomorrow, she didn’t know what would come.

She wouldn’t prepare poultices for Imma or deliver medicines as the sun rose.

She wouldn’t hear the curfew bell crawl into her skin like a burrowing screwworm or watch the last of Eskravé’s villagers scurry into their houses.

She wouldn’t see the men gather for the Rayga hunt and squint to find Abba among them.

Instead, she would become the Rayga hunt, spending her days searching for a creature in the shadows. If she survived long enough. No other girl had lasted the night.

And finding the creature was only half the battle. Then, she had to bring it to the priest.

She swallowed her fears, her worries, and her doubts.

It was a practiced art she had begun the first day Abba came home from the Rayga hunt and passed out drunk.

Malka had scooped a toddler Hadar in her arms and played with her while Imma saw patients.

She had settled Hadar on her hip and cleaned Abba’s sick from the floor.

Malka always did what she needed to do. And she would do the same now.