My Lansara (aka pseudo-Hindu) short “By Bargain and by Blood” is in the 108th issue of Hub Magazine, courtesy of the awesome Lee Harris. Here’s a snippet from the beginning:

The blood empath came when my niece was eight.

I should have suspected something like that–but my sister Aname had told me little about the begetting of her daughter, little beyond her certainty that everything would turn out right in the end. Her death in childbirth had left my questions forever unanswered.
Nevertheless, when Aname told me about her child to come, she spoke of a bargain struck. And thus I should have known someone would come to honour it–that someone would walk through the rice paddies and the forests until he reached our jati, our small community isolated from the affairs of the world.

But, just as you know about death but do not think about it, so I did not think about him.

A mistake. Perhaps I would have been better prepared, had I thought of his coming.

Read more. (free download at the Hub website)

Many many thanks to Marshall Payne for his help on this one, as well as tlmorganfield, tchernabyelo, and everyone else who took a look at it on Liberty Hall (the crits date back to before I got smart enough to record who had critted my stuff for later thanks). And to Lee for prodding me into submitting it and accepting it for publication.

(and arg: D-4 until release date…à