A Thousand Steps into Night

by Traci Chee

“And,” Tujiyazai added, “if we tired of things, we could simply destroy them. You were built for that, I think.” “No!” Miuko cried. She was not a demon. She was not Lady Death. She was not the stuff of legends. She was a girl from Nihaoi. Her life was small, perhaps, and at times ill-fitting, but it belonged to her—the failing village, the guesthouse, her father—and she refused to abandon it for promises of power and importance.