Birth: Hearth and Bard Short Stories

By M. L. Farb

Shisei has found her place as a mask-maker and eagerly awaits the coming of her first child. But complications arise and even with the help of her sisters and the midwife, she might not survive.

Shisei must draw on the wisdom of her husband, the trickery of the kitsune, and her own ability to create illusions to beat death.

BIRTH is a novelette that takes place after the events in the novel FOURTH SISTER.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. L. Farb
• Release date: Jan 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215881965

Book preview

Birth

BIRTH

A FOURTH SISTER NOVELETTE

M. L. FARB

Birth: A Fourth Sister Novelette. Copyright © 2021 by M. L. Farb.

Morgan Horse Publishing

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Editing by Annie Douglass Lima

Cover design by Wynter Designs

Contact the author at [e-mail]

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Story Notes

About the Author

1

Honored Jiyuu,

Takumi and I rejoice in receiving your letter. When you sailed away at the beginning of the monsoon, I feared that you’d be lost at sea.

Our family is healthy and growing. Another grandchild joined us this season, making our descendants twenty-two. When I include my sisters and their descendants, we number near a hundred. The kami have truly blessed us.

I must thank you again for the herbal cream. It soothes my arthritis.

Takumi makes all our masks now. My hands look more each day like the gnarled roots of a bonsai, but my mind is not crippled, so I create images in the grey world and describe them to Takumi. He has a talent for taking my words and forming them into the images I see.

My uncle won’t let me be melancholy over the loss of my hands. If I start to grumble, he gives me something much more interesting to complain about—ashy footprints on the ceiling or every coin strung under the eaves. My grandchildren love when he plays his tricks, and willingly clean up