A haunting voice, a forgotten legacy, and a golem waiting to wake.
Welcome to ADAM, a bi-weekly serialized historical fantasy rooted in Jewish mysticism and folklore. Each installment reveals a new chapter in the unfolding tales of three Jewish women living during three different moments of history. The first is Gitele, a young girl in 16th-century Prague whose dreams unlock ancient secrets. In the coming weeks, you will meet Avital, a young woman navigating life in Mandatory Palestine with her sister after fleeing rising antisemitism in Europe on the cusp of WW2, and Ruby, a programmer living in San Francisco in the near future whose AI program, ADAM, is designed to combat modern-day antisemitism.  If you’re just joining us, you’re in the right place — start reading below, and catch up anytime using the full Chapter List.

If you’re curious about the inspiration behind ADAM, this article shares how the story came to be and why I’m telling it one chapter at a time. Thank you so much for reading and being part of this journey — it means the world to me.

I’d love to know what you think so far. If you have thoughts, questions, or favorite moments, drop a comment below — I welcome the conversation and am so glad to have you with me.

Chapter List

Chapter One: The Maharal’s Daughter

Chapter Two: The Witch of Döbling

Chapter Three: The ADAM Project

Chapter Four: The Golem of Prague

Chapter Five: The Fifth Aliyah

Chapter Six: Interface

Chapter Seven: The Arrangement

Chapter Eight: Under the Olive Tree

Chapter Nine: That Night OR The Incident

Chapter Ten: Unseen

Prologue

     16th Century Prague

     The sound had followed her out of sleep. 

     She heard it again, the low, unearthly wail that had haunted her dreams, her nightmares, since childhood. Only now it was somewhere nearby, manifesting in her waking realty. Gitele gripped the coarse blanket to her chest, staring up at the beams that intersected the ceiling of her dark bedroom. Despite the chill outside her frost-encrusted window, sweat beaded on her forehead. With a trembling hand, Gitele leaned over to light the candle on her bedside table. It took her several tries before she was able to strike a match. Her bare feet touched the nearly frozen floorboards as she stood, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders and lifting the candle holder in her trembling hand.

     Moving slowly to the door, she raised the latch and slipped into the corridor outside her room. The door to her father’s study was closed at the other end of the hall. She knew Papa would be mad if he caught her out of bed. Her mother was in her sleeping chambers, and Gitele knew that she wouldn’t hear the soft padding of her feet. But her Papa never slept.

     The flame fluttered and burned low on its wick. She lifted the candle closer to her chest and cupped the flame with her hand. The dim light of the full moon cast a beam through the sole window at the end of the hall, but Gitele hugged the shadows, staying close to the wall. The wailing came again, louder now, and she froze in place. Her heart raced. The sound had come from behind her father’s door. She knew she should turn back. She wanted to rejoin her sisters in their shared room, burrow under the blankets, close her eyes, and pray for morning.

     For as long as she could recall, her dreams had filled her with a sense of longing she couldn’t explain. She lived another life when she closed her eyes, yet she never remembered this second-life, a cross between nightmare and fantasy, upon waking. Now that she was reaching adulthood at the age of fourteen, she would have to put aside that longing and the fear that came with it. She knew she was to be married soon. She would have a home of her own and a husband and children at her breast. But she also knew that she often woke scared and shaking and on the cusp of understanding something imperative that terrified her to her core. For a few years, the dreams had subsided, leaving her hopeful they were a thing of the past. But now they had returned, the aching desire for something she didn’t understand even stronger than before.

     She moved once more. The sound was calling to her. It had been calling to her for her entire life.

     At the door to her father’s study, she reached out, her hand drawn to the knob by a will of its own. As she was about to turn the knob, a cold hand fell on her shoulder. Gitele jumped and almost cried out, but another hand closed around her mouth. Terrified, she looked up into her mother’s face. Her pale skin shone in the moonlight and her hair looked wild. Unlike the other women of their town, Gitele’s mother Perel had refused to cut her hair after marriage. Gitele hoped she, too, would be allowed to keep her own long locks when she became a wife. 

     “What are you doing out of bed?” Her mother whispered, releasing Gitele and pulling her back into the shadows.

     “I . . .couldn’t sleep, Mama.”

     “Dreams again, my girl?” Her mother asked. When Gitele nodded, a sigh escaped her mother’s lips. It was sad and deep, a breath that moved over Gitele’s cheek like a gentle caress. “I had hoped to spare you, daughter,” her mother said. “I had hoped it wouldn’t pass on to you as it did to me.”

     Gitele blinked up at her mother, confused. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

     “It’s time you knew,” Perel continued, taking her daughter’s hand and turning her toward the door.

     “Knew what?”

     “Everything will be explained after you see for yourself.”

     Perel put a finger to Gitele’s lips and leaned down to whisper, “What you see may frighten you, but you must remain silent. We don’t want to wake your sisters and brother. Do you understand?”

     Gitele’s heart beat a steady, loud rhythm in her chest. She gazed up at her mother with wide eyes, and she could see her own frightened expression mirrored back at her from the depths of her mother’s blue irises. “Do you understand?” Her mother repeated, and Gitele nodded mutely. Seemingly satisfied, Perel nodded and pushed the door open.

     Fortifying herself, Gitele stepped over the threshold into her father’s study. She was met with a cold draft of air that chilled her to the bone and filled her with a sense of foreboding. An omen, she thought. The room was dimly lit by a myriad of thick candles dripping with wax. They were stacked on the surface of her father’s desk and tables where his scrolls and parchments, filled with his writings and meditations on Jewish mysticism, were spread. They lined the bookshelves that housed his most sacred texts, and nested on the sills of the windows that faced the Jewish quarter. In their flickering light, her father stood at one of his worktables, his back to her. Upon hearing them enter, Gitele’s father turned in surprise. His face, normally so gentle and kind, looked cold and alert. When he pointed at her, his hands were covered in a dark substance.

     “What is she doing here?” He hissed, and Gitele shrank back against her mother. This was not her father, the Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague. This was a stranger with a dangerous look in his eyes. 

     “She’s having the dreams again, Judah.” Her mother said. “It’s time she knew the truth.”

     Her father’s eyes narrowed as he examined his daughter. Around his waist, he wore an apron that he wiped his hands on before walking to them and kneeling in front of Gitele.

     “Yes,” he murmured, scrutinizing her carefully. “Yes, perhaps she is the key.” 

     “Papa?” she asked in a small, confused voice.

     “Come, Gitele,” he said. He placed his hand on her cheek and she felt a shock course through her body. She gasped and reached up, touching the place where his fingers had touched her flesh. Her own fingers came away sticky, covered with a thick substance that smelled of the earth near the riverbank after a rain.

     The Maharal led her toward his worktable. She felt the pressure of his hands on her shoulders as her feet shuffled across the cold dark floor. Lifting an oil lamp from a side table, the Maharal stepped out from behind her and raised the lamp, illuminating what appeared to be a large misshapen mass wrapped in a heavy cloth. Gitele’s gaze dropped from her father’s face to the table, her eyes scanning the shape that took up the entire length of the table. She blinked, not sure what she was seeing, gripped by an irrational fear.

     “What is that, Papa?” She whispered.

     Rather than answer, he slowly pulled back a corner of the cloth to reveal what appeared to be a man made of clay. The shape of the head, shoulders, chest, torso, and arms were visible, sculpted to the finest detail, so Gitele could see the veins running the length of the arms, the slight protrusion of an Adam’s apple in the neck, the lines around the unmoving lips and creases around the closed eyes. But unlike a human man, the figure was a solid gray, the color of mud, smooth and glistening in some parts and dry and caked in others. It appeared to be a sleeping statue made by the finest artist.

     But there was something about the figure that turned Gitele’s blood to ice. “Who made that, Papa?” She asked, unable to look away. Her father knelt before her and took her hands in his. She blinked, his touch releasing her from her trepidation, and she turned her wide eyes to meet his.

     “Your mother says you are having the dreams again,” he said softly. “Is that so?”

     Gitele nodded silently. 

     “When did they start?”

     “I don’t know,” she swallowed, thinking back to the nightmares that plagued her sleep. “Perhaps a month ago? Perhaps a bit longer?”

     Gitele’s father looked over her shoulder now at her mother, a sudden excitement animating his face.

     “Tell me about them, Gitele,” he urged, squeezing her hands gently.

     “But they frighten me,” she responded, shaking her head. “I don’t want to . . .”

     “It is important,” her father persisted, pulling her closer so she could feel his breath on her face. Seeking comfort in his warm, encouraging smile, she nodded. “There is a voice,” she began, swallowing again. “I can’t understand what it is saying, but it is calling to me. I am surrounded by darkness, and I sense that if I can find the speaker of the voice, I will be able to see again. I want to see what’s around me, to be rid of the blackness. The voice beckons to me, and I want to cry because I move but nothing changes. And then the voice gets louder, but there are no more words, only a moaning, a wailing, and it’s terrible. The wailing creature wants to be known, to be released somehow, and I can’t get to it, and I want to . . .”

     Her voice trailed off and she could feel tears on her cheeks. She was trembling. “Papa, what does it mean?” She whispered fearfully.

     The Maharal suddenly pulled her forward, wrapping her tenderly in his arms. “Hush, my child,” he soothed as she began to sob. “I know you are frightened, but what you are experiencing is a wonder, a gift. Your mother understands because she’s had these dreams too.”

     Gitele turned in surprise to look at her mother, who nodded gently and came to stand behind her father. 

     “You have, Mama?” Gitele whispered, for the first time feeling a sense of hope, of relief.

     “Yes, Gitele. I have had them since I was a child, just like you.”

     Gitele considered her mother, a woman who had only ever exhibited strength and calm. A woman who shone brighter than any other woman in their community. “I came to realize there is a meaning to these dreams, a miraculous meaning. It may seem scary now, but when you learn to harness the voice you hear in your dreams, you’ll realize how much power you have. Let us show you.”

     Gitele allowed her parents to lead her back to the worktable where the still figure lay. Her father pulled back the rest of the cloth, revealing the naked body of the clay man. 

     “What we are going to do must never be known by anyone outside this room. You must never speak of what we show you tonight. It is imperative that you heed my words,” the Maharal said in a low voice. “Do you understand?”

     Gitele nodded mutely. She watched as her parents exchanged glances, then her father looked back at her, his lips a thin line on his aged face.

     “Very well, my dear,” he said softly. 

     And then her father began to chant.

Melissa W. Hunter is a local author and contributor to Cincy Jewfolk. Her award-winning debut novel What She Lost, is based on her grandmother’s life as a Holocaust survivor and was published by Cynren Press in 2019. Her most recent book Eight Wishes, is a heartwarming Hanukkah romance. Along with her friend Andrea, she hosts the podcast The Kibbitz on Cincy Jewfolk. To learn more about Melissa and her work, visit Melissawhunter.com.