A Thousand Steps into Night

Her attack misses. Miuko’s internal voice has changed now that she is a demon in body but not spirit. Before she sacrificed herself to become a demon, she experienced a voice that provoked her to demonic acts; now she finds she has a human voice to restrain her from committing murders that would make her a full demon. As she considers her circumstances, she realizes that the shaoha she’d met on the Old Road was herself. She struggles to decide whether she should mimic past events and curse herself once again, but deep down she knows she cannot rob her former self of all the discoveries and friendships she acquired by being cursed. As she finds her former self on the road, she transmits the curse through a kiss.

After the kiss, Miuko quickly hides, as she knows the doro yagra will come over the bridge and knock her former self into the river. Consulting her memory, she remembers the fire at her father’s guesthouse and resolves to prevent it. She finds her father at home and struggles not to go after the doro yagra, who is staying at her father’s inn. When she faces her father, he slams the door in her face, will not listen to her, and tells her she is not welcome. She moves to help him anyway, filling troughs with water and readying winter blankets to put out the fire before realizing her former self used the blankets before and it had not helped. She scratches into the ground a warning message that sounds more like a threat, “You will burn,” and goes to sleep by the temple gates.

As Miuko’s former self is being chased by Laido, she trips over her demon self’s legs, waking herself up. Her current demon self goes back to her father’s inn to try and stop the fire. As she arrives, however, Laido has already amassed the other priests, and they are warding her off with banners and warding spells. Much like her former self, Miuko goes into the inn to find her father. When she does, she entreats him to come with her, but as he refuses and tells her to leave, she realizes that she misunderstood him in the past: He was not addressing her former self when he was casting her out. He’d seen her as she was now and told her to leave. Though she understands that their past encounter was a misunderstanding, she believes her father should still be able to recognize her with her indigo skin. Caught up in the moment, she removes the gloves covering her blue hands and sucks the life out of him by grabbing hold of his face.

Snapping out of her anger, she apologizes to her father, who claims he isn’t her father. Miuko retorts in their common expression that he is her only father, but in this case, she does not know if she can forgive him. Though he realizes her identity because of the expression, Miuko is made to flee before he can say anything else. She runs to the forest, not knowing that even if she did become human again, she wouldn’t have a home to come back to. She begins to cry, and a small spirit by the name of Uhula finds her. Uhula asks after her sorrows, and Miuko tells her everything. The spirit encourages Miuko’s despair, pushing the idea that everything is useless and that Miuko is better off giving up. Miuko’s inner human voice does not allow her to believe Uhula, and Miuko tries to push herself up. Uhula reveals herself to be a despair spirit of many heads, and Miuko flees. She regains her composure, decides not to abandon Geiki, and resolves to go to the House of November to save it before it faces its end.

As Miuko makes her way to the House of November, she feels weak. She looks at her body and notices that she is becoming transparent. An old and feral forest spirit, or daiganasu, by the name of Nogadishao, finds her and tells her she is dying. She is a redundancy, he explains, a shadow that is being expunged. The only way to make herself whole again is to eat something, and in Miuko’s case, eating involves killing someone, which she will not do. Miuko asks for Nogadishao’s help and makes promises about the glory and reverence he will have if he helps her get to the House of November before tomorrow. The daigana is convinced and agrees to take her.

Nogadishao makes quick time, and he and Miuko arrive at the temple compound while it is still intact. He calls for the priests, and they assemble for him. When the head priest arrives, Miuko warns them about the oncoming tragedy, and they craft her two spells to bind and exorcise the doro yagra from the doro’s body. When they give her the cylinders containing the spells, she remembers that the doro yagra had a similar one and that he mentioned having an errand he had to run the night after the House of November calamity. Miuko realizes he is the source of the tragedy.

At dawn, Miuko searches for the doro yagra, and only when the priests begin attacking each other does she know he’s arrived. Nogadishao believes this is his time for glory and is about to engage in the fighting, but Miuko knows that the doro yagra’s power will affect him. Miuko forcefully tells Nogadishao to run away. He goes, and as Miuko enters the temple grounds, the doro yagra has corrupted the spirit of the mountain and made it into a demon, or yasa. It joins in the carnage. Miuko finds the head priest, who is unaffected because of his bespelled sash, and tells him to bind the mountain spirit while she goes after the doro yagra. As the head priest works on the binding, another priest kills him. All around Miuko, the November priests are dying, and she collects the sash from the head priest to hand it over to the December priests. She searches again for the doro yagra and finds him speaking with the young priest who killed the head priest. The doro yagra kills the priest, and Miuko attempts to exorcise him—only for someone to summon her. She is whisked away before completing the spell.

Miuko arrives at a doctor’s house, where a man is screaming at a woman. At the sight of him, Miuko feels irrepressible anger, and she lunges to kill him. As she remembers her failed exorcism, she stops herself from killing the man. She then realizes that she is nowhere near the Ochiirokai anymore, as the House of November’s fire is barely visible to her. Her summoner comes to find Miuko and asks if she has killed the doctor, who allegedly killed the summoner’s father. Angry at her lost opportunity to exorcise the doro yagra, Miuko tries to kill her summoner. The girl tries to escape, mentioning that they are close to Izajila, where Beikai lives. Miuko reasons she could use her owed favor and Beikai could transport her to the doro yagra. Miuko remembers the doro yagra’s words: Demons can enthrall a summoner when they deem their hatred unworthy of a kill. Convinced that she has no other choice, Miuko enthralls the girl and instructs her to go to Vevaona, give the horse to her former self, rescue Geiki from the forest, and tell him to fly to Ogawa Castle. Miuko realizes she’s taken this girl’s freedom, and she is unable to give it back until she completes her task. She asks for the girl’s name, Kanayi, and apologizes to her. The girl does not reply.

Miuko struggles with the distance, but she makes it to Beikai’s shrine. She calls upon them at their idol, but Beikai does not answer until much later. Beikai is also able to tell Miuko is displaced from her timeline, and when Miuko asks to be brought to the doro yagra, Beikai does not understand why she doesn’t simply leap back into her timeline. To do so, she would need the help of Afaina, the God of Stars, but Miuko also needs to send the spelled sash of the November head priest to the December priests. Beikai says she he must choose one or the other. Given that there is no guarantee that Afaina will help Miuko, she decides that Beikai must warn the priests. Beikai is surprised at her decision but does as they are told. Miuko notices that when she was last on the Ochiirokai at this time, there had been only clear skies, but now it is raining. The change gives Miuko hope.

Miuko sits at the shrine, unsure how to find Afaina. A commotion draws her attention, and she discovers baiganasu, monkey spirits, stealing Beikai’s offerings. They tease her and Miuko must restrain herself from harming them. As she explains the ultimatum Beikai gave her, the baiganasu sympathize with her. They bargain with her: If she helps free their sled for them, they will bring her to Kuludrava Palace, home to the January God Naisholao. Naisholao is currently holding an emergency council to find the November God, who disappeared. The baiganasu offer their life force so that Miuko will be strong enough to help them.

Miuko is shocked by the proposition and initially refuses it. The baiganasu insist it is a gift and that it won’t be a problem since she will only take a small amount from each of them. They bring her to the sled in the forest, caught under a large tree. All but the smallest baiganasu offer a finger to her hand for her to draw life from, and with her renewed power, she heaves the tree off the sled. The baiganasu rejoice, and their pack of boars returns to be saddled to the sled. Miuko and the baiganasu take off, and Miuko is awed by the landscapes they come across in Ada and Ana, the material and spiritual worlds. By the time she disembarks from the sled, Miuko is half-transparent.

The baiganasu accompany Miuko and explain how each floor has more powerful spirits the higher she goes. To reach the January God, she must go to the top. Though the spirits admonish Miuko for her presence in the January God’s court, Miuko bypasses the guards and makes for the stairs that will bring her to the upper floor. On the next floor, she encounters Nogadishao, who is infuriated with her and tries to attack her.

Nogadishao is under the impression that Miuko killed the November priests and he feels wronged for having trusted her. Miuko cannot reason with him and runs away through the window. She climbs to the upper levels, making it past the fourth and fifth floors from the outside with Nogadishao at her heels. When she manages to haul herself to the seventh floor with the baiganasu’s help, she arrives at a vaulted hall. Two bolts of light fly toward her and Nogadishao, and Miuko moves to take both and protect him. Miuko is thrown to the ground on impact, and then Naisholao, the January God, stands above her, asking what she has done with her palace.

Naisholao is not alone; she is joined by the February, April, and September Gods, and Miuko is too stunned to make a good impression. Nogadishao tries to make the gods punish Miuko for what happened at the House of November, since she was there when tragedy struck. Miuko takes advantage of his claim and tries to bargain with the gods: If they help her, she can help them bring back Nakatalao, the November God. Though Nogadishao tries to make the gods distrust her, Naisholao is willing to listen and transforms Nogadishao into a cricket to keep him quiet. Miuko recounts everything from when she first encountered the shaoha on the Old Road to how the head priest bound the mountain spirit in a rice bowl while the November God’s statue was ruined. She tells them that so long as they unbind the spirit and return it to its original form, the November God will return. The January God embraces Miuko and thanks her just as Miuko is being summoned once again. Before she is teleported away, she asks the January God to bring her to Afaina, and the January God accepts, giving her a bell to ring for her emissary.