The Gilded Ones

The emphasis on blood in the novel centers the experience of coming of age as a woman. Menstruation is a significant step in most women’s lives, and many cultures have rituals or rites surrounding when a woman begins her monthly cycle. Alaki, especially those living in small communities, cannot hide their nature once menstruation starts; even if they’ve avoided being cut, members of their community will see the gold menstrual blood on clothing, sheets, etc. Britta explains to Deka in the beginning of the novel, “Once we begin our menses, our blood gradually turns gold, an’ that makes our muscles an’ bones stronger. That’s why we heal so fast an’ are quicker an’ stronger than regular folk” (52). Deka’s mom, Umu, was also discovered through the “divine gold during her menses” (378).

Furthermore, the alaki’s gold blood can be exchanged for money and goods; women who bleed it can become piggy banks for the men. When Deka is held in a cellar under the temple in Irfut, “the elders bring out buckets, gold-lust in their eyes” (35). This, like selling alaki to brothels, is a way the patriarchy turns women into objects. Beginning with medieval Arthurian romance and spanning to modern series like Game of Thrones, a common theme has been women producing heirs, and Forna transforms this focus on progeny to the commodification of women as sources of material riches. Both the traditional theme and Forna’s interpretation of it center on reproductive organs.

However, White Hands gives the alaki another way to use their powerful blood: to become warriors. When the alaki at Warthu Bera are worried about showing their supernatural speed and strength to their male uruni, Deka uses voluntary bloodletting as a unifying act, cutting her palm and having other bloodsisters do the same: “Before long, all the girls are standing together. Bleeding” (151). This is a public expression of the private shared act of menses—both reveal their gold blood. Deka will repeat this act later in the novel, clarifying that their gold blood is divine, not demonic.

Deka, as the chosen one, has blood with even greater power than the other alakis’ blood. White Hands helped create Deka: “When the Gilded Ones wept and created the golden seed you sprang from, I was there” (369). This teary, gold, semen-like substance imbues its child’s blood with the power to waken the goddesses who have been imprisoned in divine blood. When Deka cuts her palm again, her “blood is doing what it was created to do: free the goddesses” (408). Blood unifies and liberates the women.

However, before Deka is a liberatory agent, she endures trauma and suffering, and she believes this experience positively informs her actions. She thinks, “Being raised in Irfut taught me what it meant to be a human girl [...] If I am to fight for women—all women—I have to understand how human girls think, have to have experienced the same pain they did” (378). This will remind readers of Harry Potter being raised by the Dursleys, but instead of living in a closet under the stairs, Deka is repeatedly bled out and killed in a cellar.