*** Finalist for 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Speculative Fiction category ***
When I was seven, my mother died. I struck a bargain with the Gods to bring her back to life.
For thirteen years now, I have served as a Harbinger of Death, coaxing dying wishes out of mortals so that the God of Death may grant them moksha, liberation from the cycles of birth and death.
The man about to die this evening claims he has nothing to offer me. He is dying a content man, a rarity in our world.
But when the God of Death arrives to lead his soul away, the man changes his mind about dying and flees, planting on me something that is not quite a dying wish.
I only know I cannot trust any God with this secret. And that I'll pay an unbearable price for this concealment.
Yet again, I underestimate how savagely the Gods can wound me. Even though one of them is supposedly my father who still doesn't know I exist.
Set in Burlington, Ontario, this contemporary fantasy novel weaves Hindu mythology and South Indian folklore into a quest for belonging across different worlds - the World of Mortals and the World of Gods, India and Canada, the past and the present, the world outside and the one within.
It is an offering to lovers of whimsical worlds and heartbreaking prose, and to anyone yearning to simply belong.
