The Black-Eyed Goddess of Apple Trees and Farmers' Wives
Novelette 8,574 words Recommended by 1 award/anthology source
"Really, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Shamans drag away poor farm girls from the outlying provinces all the time (particularly in seasons of great calamity, as everyone insists we are in now). Even then their lives stray little from their previously charted course. They trade mud thatch and straw for cedar wood and oil, reborn as sworn sisters, plodding away the rest of their days with too many early rises."
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on BCS, where the author gets the click.