A Thousand Steps into Night

by Traci Chee

things ended, whether you wanted them to or not, and rarely in the way you hoped. In such circumstances, the best you could do was tighten your belt and carry on.

“Come out, Tujiyazai. Come out to play.”

She didn’t need a curse to feed her malevolence, for she was a woman of Awara. She was something to be restricted, excluded, suppressed, subjugated, owned. She had anger enough to fuel her for a hundred lifetimes, to kiss a thousand more girls and make a thousand more shaohasu.

She may not have been all human. She may not have been all demon. But whatever she was, after all that had transpired, she knew one thing for certain: for the first time in her life, she was finally, wholly, unabashedly herself.

Over the wild blue countryside they flew, like a pair of heroes from some ancient tale or a constellation limned in stars, and not once did she look back, for she did not need to—she had the support of her loved ones behind her, and the big, beautiful world ahead.