A Thousand Steps into Night

That night, the doro yagra finds Miuko at the guesthouse. He guesses her purpose and disapproves of it. He thinks she will become lesser for her efforts. After he threatens to harm Geiki and burn the guesthouse, Miuko accepts to follow the doro yagra on an errand. No one is out in the village, and he confirms he knows that the villagers are there; they are simply too scared to wander about in the late-night hour. They travel along the road and hear a shriek. A girl tries to flee from her father, revealing herself to be a crane spirit when she attempts to fly away, but her father catches her and imprisons her. Miuko entreats the doro yagra to help, but he is unwilling. Miuko takes his scarf and disguises herself to scare the man and has him release the spirit. The man thinks she is his dead wife and begs for his life. Once more, the impetus to harm someone surges through Miuko, but she tempts it down. The man flees, and Miuko unshackles the crane spirit. When she flies to freedom, the doro yagra tells Miuko she should have killed the man, that she could have fear and respect and indulge in what she wanted if she became a demon. Though she isn’t sure what she wants and she still chafes at the expectations of Omaizi society, she knows becoming a demon isn’t it.

Geiki wakes Miuko, telling her someone has given them a horse to use for their travels. Miuko believes it is from the doro yagra, as no one else would be so generous with her. They leave Vevaona immediately, so Miuko won’t be discovered by the kyakyozuya. Since neither have ridden a horse before, they learn the hard way and quickly realize that Miuko needs to wear men’s clothing and Geiki must be in bird form. As they travel, Miuko is shamed for riding the horse and wearing men’s clothing. Miuko takes it in stride, and after a few hours, she feels a strange disturbance on the road made by ghosts. When they reveal themselves, all the ghosts are women. Frightened, Miuko and Geiki run away to the next town over and leave the ghosts behind them. The townspeople openly gawk at her and Geiki, and Miuko realizes that there is not one girl among the town’s population.

Miuko is once again admonished for wearing men’s clothes, but Aleila, an old woman who openly berates her, seems more concerned by the fact that Miuko is traveling alone (since Geiki is in magpie form). Her son, Laowu, rushes to her, trying to disengage his elderly mother from Miuko. When the crowd that gathered disperses, Laowu’s mood changes, becoming cold and angry as he adjusts Miuko’s appearance with a shawl. Geiki emerges and quickly interposes himself between them, claiming Miuko as his sister. Laowu leaves with a judgmental comment about troublesome girls who wander freely. Miuko has a bad feeling about the town and devises a plan to get to the bottom of its mystery.

The doro yagra comes to find Miuko once again, and they set off together to find the source of all the ghosts. As they make their way through the town, the doro yagra asks about Geiki and implies that the only reason he offers her friendship is because she saved his life. Miuko follows the doro yagra to Laowu’s manor, where the man is angrily discussing Miuko’s alleged sexual promiscuity with his mother. The doro yagra points toward a crawl space below the manor. Miuko enters it, and as Laowu’s argument with his mother intensifies, ghosts of girls emerge in the crawl space. All of them were murdered by Laowu, Miuko realizes, while his mother disposed of their corpses. When she returns from the crawl space, the doro yagra informs her that the kyakyozuya is nearby. A branch cracks, and Laowu goes to investigate. The doro yagra tells her to run and promises to draw them away. As she runs in the forest, her foot catches on something, and Miuko falls to the ground, losing consciousness on impact.

When Miuko wakes up, she’s in bed and realizes the indigo spot that began on her foot now reaches to her left hand’s fingertips. Laowu finds her and drags her away. Though the demon voice in her head tells her to kill him, Miuko refuses and instead screams for help. The men of the town storm in, and as they take in Miuko’s situation, they start to piece together the bigger picture: Laowu has been killing all the women in their town. Laowu defends himself, telling them they shouldn’t take the word of a girl over his, a man they’ve known for years. The kyakyozuya arrives and corroborates Miuko’s story. Miuko watches as Laowu blames his mother for making him as he is, and the townspeople converge on both Laowu and his mother, which Miuko does not find fair. She tries to save Aleila, but in the process, her robes are ripped and the blue of her skin is seen by all, including the kyakyozuya.

Miuko and Geiki run away into the forest. When they believe they’ve lost their pursuers, Miuko explains what happened with Laowu, his mother, and the two times she’s met the doro yagra. Geiki expresses his worry about their association. His concern irritates Miuko, and she confronts him about his debt to her. They argue, and Miuko’s temper gets the better of her. While Geiki fetches water, she hears the mob approaching. She fears for Geiki and decides to attract the mob’s attention away from him. As she runs, the doro yagra catches up to her on his horse.

The doro yagra offers to save Miuko from the mob and the kyakyozuya if she willingly comes with him. One of the hunters finds them as Miuko deliberates, and the doro yagra drains all the hostility from him. When she accepts the doro yagra’s proposition, he settles her on his horse and unleashes his power on the mob. He amplifies their hatred to such a degree that the men in the mob turn on one another and kill each other. Miuko is also affected, his power amplifying her own. Only the kyakyozuya is left undisturbed. The doro yagra whisks Miuko away as the mob continues to tear itself apart.

By dawn, they arrive at the doro yagra’s castle, and Miuko is directed to a room in a high tower. She sleeps, and when she awakens, she realizes that she has been locked in her room. As she searches for a way to leave, she comes across an incense box that contains a kitten made of black smoke, known as a tseimi. She eats and cleans herself, and sees that the fingertips on her right hand have now also turned blue. She thinks she will no longer be able to touch anyone.

The doro yagra enters her room and insists that she remove her socks and shoes to take a walk with him on the garden grass. He wants to witness her power and threatens to harm the castle’s inhabitants should she refuse. As they walk, he explains that before the Omaizi clan took it, the castle belonged to his family, the Ogawa clan. He tells her how, before the Omaizi executed him, he, Ogawa Saitaivaona, made a promise to seek vengeance on the Omaizi. For 300 years, he cultivated himself into a malevolence demon with that purpose, and once he was powerful enough, he evicted the doro’s spirit from his body and took over. He wishes to destroy their clan and empire, and he wants Miuko by his side. Miuko would rather have her freedom and not become a demon. The doro yagra asks if her desire for freedom has to do with Geiki and insinuates that he has done something nefarious to him.

Miuko finds herself once again locked in her room, and the doro yagra insists she wear a regal outfit for them to dine together that night. The doro yagra tests how releasing his power affects Miuko, and Miuko fights with him. When she holds his bare skin with her blue fingers, she believes him at her mercy. The doro yagra confirms she is only hurting the doro’s body—not the demon within it—and accelerating her curse, with the blue now up to her shoulder. When she releases him, she notices the carved names in his arms. He tells her they are the names of the victims he was summoned to kill over the years. He explains that whichever malevolence demon is nearest will respond to a summons, but the doro yagra tattooed a spell on himself that would make it impossible for people to summon him. They struggle once more, and the doro yagra kisses her full on the mouth. She hits him with a nearby washbasin and flees.

Miuko runs through the castle as the doro yagra gathers his guards to capture her. In a large and ornate room, she finds an unbarred window with a 50-foot drop to the ground. The doro yagra has her cornered, so she climbs on the window ledge and awkwardly makes her way down to a lower roof. She spots a large tree in the distance and jumps for it.

Miuko realizes quickly that her strength is not enough to propel her to the tree, but just as she is about to fall, Geiki, in his giant bird form, catches her. As they fly away, he explains to her that a golden cube he found sucked him inside of it, and Miuko knows the doro yagra left it to trap Geiki. An oddly vacant-looking girl told Geiki to go find Miuko at the castle. Miuko thanks him for saving her.

The next morning, they arrive at God’s Teeth, the mountain range where the House of December is located. When they land, Miuko absolves Geiki of his debt to her, but he insists they are friends and wants to stay with her. She worries he will be troubled badly by the priests of the House of December, considering how the Nihaoi priest treated her. Geiki stays, and at the spirit gate, they hold hands while December priests come to meet them.

The priests of December are surprisingly welcoming, and Meli, a young priest, takes charge of Miuko and Geiki. Overwhelmed, Miuko begins to cry, and as she and Meli talk, she realizes she still has the tseimi’s box in her robes. She releases the cat, and it quickly makes friends with a tabby in the garden. Within minutes, the tabby cat turns up dead, and Miuko and Meli know the tseimi is the culprit. Miuko quickly calls the tseimi to its box, and Meli gathers the dead tabby. Miuko fears reprisals for what occurred, but Meli believes her when she says she did not know what the tseimi would do. Miuko meets the head priest, Hikedo, and explains her quest and the impending danger of the doro yagra to him. She tells him only the kyakyozuya was immune to the doro yagra because of his vermillion scarf, but scarves like his were made at the House of November, which is now in ruins, leaving all of them with little protection. That evening, as Miuko, Geiki, and Meli talk, Meli explains how she became a priest and how her parents believed her to be a boy. She came to the House of December, and they accepted Meli, and Miuko feels that same acceptance.

The priests attempt multiple rituals and spells to try and help Miuko, and though it has slowed the indigo’s progression, it has not cured her. On the third day since she’d arrived at the House of December, the doro yagra has almost reached them. The priests prepare for the confrontation, but Miuko knows that they will not be able to overcome the doro yagra and decides she must leave. To distract her, Geiki takes her flying to an abandoned gate. They sit atop the gate and chat, and stay together for a long time that night.

The next day, Miuko finds Geiki packing for a trip. He has been asked by the head priest to go to the library, Keivoweicha, and search for ways they might defeat the doro yagra. Geiki tells her he has no choice but to leave and asks her to be there when he returns.

Miuko cannot stand the way they part, and she decides to chase after Geiki. She makes it to the spirit gate, only to witness the kyakyozuya, accompanying the doro yagra, shoot Geiki out of the sky. Miuko runs to Geiki, but he has been captured by the kyakyozuya, who will not listen to her when she tells him the Omaizi heir is possessed by a demon. The priests come running, and Meli points out that the curse has now claimed half of Miuko’s face. The doro yagra gives Miuko a deal: If she comes with him willingly, he will spare Geiki and the priests. Miuko understands that she does not need to be human to save them. She takes the knife Meli carries and carves “Tujiyazai” in her arm, effectively summoning herself to kill the doro yagra. As the curse consumes her fully and she becomes a demon, she is teleported—but not to the doro yagra. She is sent back to the Old Road in Nihaoi.