The Maiden and Her Monster Meet in This Exclusive Excerpt From Maddie Martinez’s Dark Fantasy Debut

Maddie Martinez’s forthcoming debut, The Maiden and Her Monster, is many things. Part romance, part horror story, part folktale, part ode to the author’s religious tradition, it’s a story about storytelling, about language, and the memories we preserve. When a healer’s daughter strikes a deal to save her mother’s life, she must go in search of a monster. But what she finds is not what she expected, and the golem who agrees to help her has conditions of her own. 

Described as perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher and Naomi Novik, The Maiden and Her Monster is a thought-provoking tale full of Jewish folklore, political intrigue, and a slow-burn sapphic romance that touches on questions of queerness, duty, and the terrible cost of bigotry in a world that punishes anyone who might be seen as different.

Here’s how the publisher describes the story. 

The forest eats the girls who wander out after dark.

As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the wood’s curse has plagued her village, but the Ozmini Church only comes to collect its tithe, not to protect heretics with false stories of monsters in the trees. So when a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes an impossible bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest. If she brings the monster out, he will spare her mother from execution.

When she ventures into the shadowed woods, Malka finds a monster, though not the one she expects: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself, but only if Malka helps her fulfill a promise first and free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.

But a deal easily made is not easily kept. And as their bargain begins to unravel a much more sinister threat, protecting her people may force Malka to endanger the one person she left home to save—and face her growing feelings for the very creature she was taught to fear.

The Maiden and Her Monster won’t hit shelves until September 9, but as a special Pride Month treat, we’re thrilled to give you a sneak peek at this sapphic love story right now. 

Malka awoke with a start. She was promptly greeted by the raucous throbbing of her head, like galloping hoofbeats inside her skull. 

She was in a room—the roof woven from thick, rounded wood. In front of her, a fire roared in an open hearth, coating her skin with ash and soot. Its warmth drew Malka closer, and she grasped for the heat like she would an embrace. But her muscles were slow and awkward, movements jerky, and she lost her balance, rolling so close to the fire it burned her cheeks and the tip of her nose, the fierce sting of smoke blurring her eyes with tears. She resisted the urge to cough.

 “Was drowning not enough for you? Now you must add burns to your list of ailments?”

The woman’s voice was unfamiliar, but deep and warm, like it was made for the dregs of winter. Malka shifted toward it, the wood beneath her croaking.

“I feel terrible,” Malka said huskily. The rest of her body throbbed with as much pain as her head. Every muscle screamed in opposition to her movements, every joint swollen and whimpering. 

“Drink this.” The woman thrust a steaming mug in front of her. 

Malka blinked clear her tears until the woman came into focus. Her breath caught in horror. The woman had a body more stone than skin, vines for veins, with eyes the sable color of damp soil and skin a graying brown like the rocks on a riverbed. Thick black hair fell in waves down her back, settling on her tunic. Her face was half stone, and on her forehead, a word carved from the sacred language of Malka’s people. Three letters: אמת. Emet. Meaning truth.

Her unnatural appearance made Malka remember the Rayga, who had crawled out of the belly of a tree and decapitated a grown man. Aleksi’s head, separated from his body, tendons and blood decorating the ground. Václav, eyes going vacant as his head hit rock.

The icy needles of the river enveloped her again, the burning pressure in her lungs, her throat, her nose. Losing feeling in her legs. The murky water growing dim until she remembered nothing at all. A river that became a violent sea. 

She fought back a dry heave.

 Malka eyed the steaming liquid. Even the woman’s fingers, wrapped around the mug, were stone.

“Who are you?” Malka demanded, throat burning. “What’s in that mug?”

The woman’s lips thinned. “Fine, don’t drink it.” She slammed the mug on a wooden stump of a table, sending liquid splashing. “Be miserable.”

The woman crossed her arms and stormed away. In the wake of her steps, roots slithered from the ground like serpents. She busied herself in the small kitchen, crushing some herbs beneath a pebble.

It reminded Malka of Imma, preparing poultices in her workroom. Her throat constricted. “What is your name, monster?” 

The woman paused, rock midair, and met Malka’s gaze. Her eyes were impossibly dark. “You seem to have given me one already.” 

Silence lingered as the woman returned to her task. Malka took in her impressively tall frame, and with it, the deep shadow it cast on the wall behind her. Malka flinched at how abruptly it took her back to the river again. The Rayga’s shadow, dancing on the ice before it wrapped its arms around her.

She closed her eyes, evened her breathing.

“It’s . . . you caught me off guard, I’m sorry.” A beat of silence. “May I ask your name again?”

The woman raised her brow. “You may ask.”

A snarky response, but Malka could hardly blame her for her hard edges when Malka had already called her a monster. But Malka wasn’t convinced she wasn’t one, either. 

“What is your name?” 

The woman funneled the crushed herbs into a small glass and covered the top with a thin piece of animal skin and twine. “You may call me Nimrah.”

“And this is your hut?”

Annoyance curled her lips. “You have the same astuteness as your ginger friend. Yes, this is my hut.” 

Malka’s heart leapt. “Amnon? He’s here? He’s safe?”

“He’s asleep,” Nimrah said, nodding toward the back of the room where Amnon sat hunched against the wall, his head perched to the side and mouth agape as he breathed evenly. “His only harm is how much he worried over you.”

The dirt and soot from the fire was cleaned from his face, though a bruise had discolored his forehead. He had a red mark across his cheek where the branch had slapped him.

 “Did he bring me here?” Malka asked, her tensed shoulders relaxing. She hadn’t realized they’d been so rigid.

 “No, I brought you both here.”

Malka waited for her to continue; either to explain how she had found them or how they had managed to survive the Rayga attack in the first place. But Nimrah didn’t. She kept at her work in the kitchen as if Malka were not there. 

Malka cleared her throat, but Nimrah did not so much as shift her gaze or raise her brow.

She frowned.

 “Malka?” Amnon’s groggy voice broke through the silence.

Malka’s heart clenched. “Amnon?” 

Amnon rose from the ground and hurried toward her, bending to his knees to better study her. He beamed, though drowsiness still softened his features. “I’m so glad you’re awake. I was so afraid you were in that icy water for too long.” 

He squeezed her arm.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asked Amnon since Nimrah was not keen to answer her questions.

Amnon’s face fell. “A day.”

“A day?”

“You are lucky to be alive at all,” Nimrah interrupted, deeming Malka finally worthy of a response. She threw some more wood into the fireplace. The flames yawned and growled. “These woods are not kind. Especially not to girls like you.”

 “Girls like me?”

Nimrah quirked her brow, bending to match Malka’s gaze. “Yahadi girls. You are a Yahad, are you not?”

Malka fumbled for her necklace and was relieved to find it pressed against her chest. “I am.”

This close, Malka could see more letters from the Yahadi ancient alphabet carved into the stone of Nimrah’s arm. The skin on her body unmarred, as far as she could tell.

 Amnon cleared his throat. “Nimrah saved us, Malka. I don’t think we would be alive without her.”

 Malka remembered a hand around her arm before she went unconscious. She peered at Nimrah. “You pulled me from the water?”

Amnon added, “She subdued the creature, Malka. Without any weapons.”

“How—” Malka tried to stand, but her muscles seized, ankle searing with hot pain under her weight. She fell back, running her palm over her swollen joint to soothe it. 

“Did you drink Nimrah’s tea yet?” Amnon’s face paled when he noticed the black-blue decorating her foot.

Malka shook her head, eyes catching on the table where the steaming mug sat untouched.

Amnon held it out to her. “You’ll feel better if you drink this.”

She hesitated, curling her hand into a fist instead.

Amnon ran his knuckles over Malka’s cold cheek. “It’s fine, Malka. I drank some earlier. It healed my wounds faster than any of your Imma’s poultices.”

 Malka eyed him suspiciously. Tea was a wonderful treatment, but it could not heal broken bones and fade bruises. But the aches had worsened in the time she had been awake, and the pain clawed at her. Frostbite had provoked grueling and painful blisters on her hands and toes, making any movement laborious.

Relenting, Malka wrapped her stiff hands around the mug and tilted it to her lips.

She would know the bold taste of sage anywhere, earthy like eucalyptus, the bite of pepper and sour lemon on her tongue. But there was something else underneath the herb—a tang she couldn’t place.

The tea worked as soon as she swallowed it, warmth spreading inside of her. Her muscles loosened, her foggy mind began to clear, and the aching in her head and body dulled.

Her mind sharpened enough for her to realize she was dressed in a man’s tunic.

 “Did someone undress me?”

Amnon blushed. “I . . .”

 “I did,” said Nimrah, a smirk playing on her lips. “Would you rather I had left you to freeze in your soaking clothes?”

Malka flushed. 

Nimrah tilted her chin toward the fire where Malka’s clothes were strung up with twine. “They’ll be dry soon.” 

“We were as good as dead,” Malka emphasized. “How could you possibly have saved the both of us?”

 “Eat first, then you may interrogate me. Since you seem so determined to ask every question that crosses your mind,” Nimrah said. “Whatever you had in your stomach was emptied on my shoes when I dragged you from the river.” 

Malka’s protest died on her lips when her stomach cramped sharply. Her last meal had been the trout Amnon caught. Inevitably, her thoughts drifted to Václav and Aleksi, whose bodies now lay rotting on the forest floor.

 Václav’s death was Malka’s fault, but she wasn’t ashamed for defending herself. Though she wouldn’t forget him, either, or the hatred in his eyes as he bruised her leg in his grasp.

And then, there was Aleksi.

She wondered what would become of his body, left without a proper burial. Did the Ozmins have creatures like the dybbukim to worry about? Would Aleksi’s soul wander in search of a host to relieve his torment?

 Maybe his soul had made it to his expected afterlife in Vasicati. Or maybe the forest took it instead.

The Maiden and Her Monster will be released on September 9, but you can pre-order it right now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB