The Gilded Ones

by Namina Forna

  Once I’m firmly in place, Keita looks down at me, eyes worried. “Whatever you are, you can never return to Hemaira. You do know that, Deka? You can never return.”

  I blink up at him, careful not to move anything but my eyes. Even though he’s telling me to keep away from Hemaira—from him—he doesn’t flinch as he watches my body knit back together, doesn’t show any disgust, although it must be gruesome to behold.

  When one of my fingers twitches, he takes my hand, holds it in his own. I can dimly feel the warmth of his touch coursing through my body’s tendrils. I look up to find silent tears in his eyes.

  This is goodbye.

  “You’re too powerful, Deka,” he says sadly. “You always were. That’s why they killed you. That’s why they’ll kill you again if you return. You must never return to Hemaira, you hear me? Not ever.”

  Tears burn my eyes, and my lips tremble as I try to find a reply. Never return? Never see him again? Never see my friends, Britta?

  I’m so caught in my misery, I don’t notice the shadows entering the cave until a familiar voice sounds. “Oh, she won’t, young lord of Gar Fatu,” it purrs. “Deka will never return to the humans again.”

  A light whooshing fills the cave. I look up at the ceiling, where seven women are flying down on gryphs, gigantic beasts that look like striped desert cats except they’re covered in feathers and have wings sprouting from their shoulders. Each one is wearing golden armor and carrying an enormous glass lantern. Even from the water, I can feel the vibrations in their armor.

  It’s infernal armor, which means these women are alaki. There’s something different about them, however. I study them, my eyes narrowing as realization builds inside me. These women are older than all the other alaki I’ve met. Much, much older.

  Ancient, in fact, if their appearance means anything. A few of them look more than forty years old, which means they must be several millennia old—it takes us centuries to age one year, after all.

  The woman at the front is immediately recognizable in her white armor. White Hands. As she descends, mist curls up to reach her. It’s coming from the deathshrieks spilling into the cave, all of them spiked, all of them armored. All of them female.

  The thought resonates through me, and along with it, the horror of understanding what they are. What they were.

  “Keita,” I whisper warningly, but he has already noticed them.

  They’re all so tall. I easily spot Katya from the water, her red spikes blazing in the dim lights. Braima and Masaima accompany her, their pale, equine forms distinct among the much larger, darker deathshrieks.

  “Deka,” Keita answers back, alarmed. He edges closer to me, hand on his sword.

  White Hands smirks as she smoothly steps off her gryph and places her lantern on the cave floor. “As you no doubt understand by now, Keita, deathshrieks and alaki are the same creatures. Deka is ours. She has always been ours.”

  Keita glances at White Hands. “Ours?” he says, frowning. “You’re an alaki?”

  “An alaki?” White Hands laughs dismissively. “I am the Firstborn. Fatu of Izor, mother of the house of Gezo, true empress of Otera. I am your ancestor, boy. You and all your line sprang from my womb.”

  Keita’s jaw is slack with shock now—as is mine.

  “But you can’t be,” I gasp at her. “You can’t be an alaki.”

  “Why? Because you never sensed me with your intuition, as you did the other alaki?” White Hands smirks. “Your mother never felt me either, and she was quite intuitive for an alaki of such tender age.”

  A deep roaring sounds in my ears. “Mother was an alaki?” I rasp, my throat suddenly hoarse. “That’s not possible! She bled pure. I saw it!”

  “You saw what she wanted you to see—both you and your father.”

  Memories flash past; the last few days before Mother died. She looked so sickly, all that blood draining from her eyes and ears, all that red. Was it truly all false, everything I saw? I can’t accept it.

  But then…Mother was a Shadow. The thought sends a shiver through me.

  Subterfuge is their art, disguise their trade.

  “What happened to her?” I ask. “Is she truly dead?”

  For a moment, hope blossoms, tentative buds unfurling. Then White Hands looks at me with grim eyes, and my hope dies a swift death. “My deepest apologies, Deka,” she says. “Your mother is well and truly gone.”

  “How did she die?” It’s almost painful to voice the question, but I have to ask it.

  White Hands sighs. “She was making arrangements to save you from the Ritual of Purity, when she was caught by the jatu. They sentenced her to the Death Mandate.”

  A sob breaks free from my throat. The Death Mandate. If Mother’s final death was anywhere as hard to find as mine, I can’t even begin to imagine the agony she endured before she left this world.

  My tears are falling freely now, so I’m almost startled when White Hands places a hand to my cheek. “Take comfort in the fact that your mother loved you very much, Deka. Everything she did, she did for you.”

  The words burn through me. I don’t want to hear them—don’t even want to think them—but I have to push past my pain.

  It’s time to ask questions. Difficult ones.

  “Create you?” White Hands laughs, seeming taken aback. “Even I do not have that power. No, it was my duty to watch you, and I’ve done so all your life. Even before you entered Umu’s belly, I watched you. It was my duty, you see.”

  Duty? My mother’s belly? What is she saying?

  White Hands walks closer, her smile becoming something more fervent, more intense. She has the same look priests of Oyomo do when they read from the Infinite Wisdoms. The other alaki part for her, like subjects making way for a queen. Like soldiers making way for their general. Behind them, the deathshrieks silently watch the scene, giants towering above their much-smaller sisters.

  “When the Gilded Ones wept and created the golden seed you sprang from, I was there,” she announces. “When the jatu created the Death Mandate against our kind and wrote it into the Infinite Wisdoms to give it legitimacy, it was I who hid you in my belly. And when my sisters reunited in preparation for this war, it was I who found your mother—a young alaki on the verge of her transition, unaware of her divine heritage.”

  Divine heritage…

  Something about the phrase sends shivers through me, but I force myself to remain quiet as White Hands continues: “Umu began bleeding the divine gold at fifteen. She rushed to me in a panic, so I told her what she was, what had happened to the others of our kind.

  “She wept at my feet, asked how she could be of service. That was when I knew she was the perfect vessel. We waited till she was of age to carry you, and then, as she bathed in the Warthu Bera’s lake, I put your seed into the waters. Ten months later, there you were, shaped in both her image and that of the man she chose to raise you. The perfect mimicry of a human.”

  By now, my chest feels tight and I can barely breathe. Seed? Vessel? What is she saying?

  Beside me, Keita shakes his head. “You’re confusing her,” he says. “All this talk of divine gold and seeds. Speak in the language of facts instead of legends.”

  “Legend is what humans call the things they do not understand,” White Hands scoffs. “They call me a legend, and yet I existed from the beginning, from the time Otera was birthed from the warring tribes. I helped create this empire. Me, my sisters, our mothers…we’re the ones who made Otera what it is.”

  “Mothers?” I gasp. “You’re talking about the Gilded Ones—the demons.” All those temples we saw flash into my mind. Did she send me there on purpose, so I could see the statues for myself?

  “Demons?” White Hands dismisses the word with a wave of her hand. “The Gilded Ones were never demons. They were goddesses. They ruled Otera until thei
r own sons rose against them. The jatu desperately wanted to rule Otera, so they imprisoned our mothers and killed us, their sisters, along with all our children.

  “They thought they had succeeded in wiping us out, the traitors, but our mothers used the last of their power to thwart them. With their last free breaths, they rendered us alaki truly deathless by giving us the power to resurrect as even fiercer creatures—deathshrieks. And then they created the Nuru, the one creature that could exist between the alaki and the deathshrieks. The one daughter who could free them all.”

  Something shatters inside me. Now I understand why the deathshrieks always sounded so wounded whenever they said the word Nuru.

  White Hands wades closer, looks into my eyes. “You are the Nuru, Deka. You are the deliverer. It is your task to free our mothers. It is your task to free us all.”

  I suddenly can’t move, can’t breathe. The deliverer? Free them all?

  “That’s absurd!” Keita sputters beside me. “What do you mean, Deka should—”

  “It is not your place to speak, son of man!” one of the other armored women snarls. “You are not welcome here.”

  The deathshrieks bristle around me, angry snarls echoing in the cavern. “Murderer!” one calls.

  “The lord of Gar Fatu. He killed so many of us!” another hisses.

  They gather around him, their spikes rattling.

  “Keita!” I gasp, water sluicing from my body as I strain to rise.

  Keita quickly unsheathes his sword, ready to defend himself.

  “Calm yourself, Deka,” White Hands says, gently pushing me down again. She walks over to the armored woman. “Leave him, Zainab,” she says.

  “But he—”

  “He kept the Nuru safe at the risk of his own life. That alone guarantees his,” White Hands interrupts sternly. “Besides, he would never betray the Nuru.” She turns and looks him firmly in the eye. “Would you?” she asks.

  “No, of course not!” Keita replies. “She’s my—she’s my partner.”

  White Hands nods at this mumbled admission. “Indeed,” she says. She turns back to Zainab. “Even if not for that, he is one of my descendants.”

  Zainab growls. “You have hundreds of them. All of us do. We’re all mothers too. Grandmothers. Great-grandmothers.”

  White Hands is implacable. “You will not touch him. None of you will touch him.” She glances pointedly around the room at the gathered deathshrieks. “From now on, as long as the lord of Gar Fatu refrains from any mortal action against us, we will do the same for him.”

  Grumbles erupt across the cavern, but White Hands whirls to face those assembled. “This is my will as your general, and you will obey me!”

  The grumbles immediately cease; even the deathshrieks are no longer clicking in their language.

  White Hands turns to Keita. “You may leave now,” she says. “Take Masaima. He will see you safely to the army.”

  Keita turns to me, worried. “But I—”

  “Leave before my sisters tear you to pieces,” she commands. “Their patience grows short.”

  Keita quickly nods. “May I say goodbye to Deka, at least?” he asks.

  “Make haste.”

  Nodding again, Keita wades into the water, puts his hand to my cheek. “Deka,” he says softly, his eyes sad.

  I struggle to point my little finger toward him, smiling when he gently intertwines his with mine. “If I could move my hands, I would hold you,” I whisper. Then I admit, a low, soft whisper under my breath, “Keita, I—”

  He places his lips to mine.

  Sparks immediately explode across my skin. I barely notice the annoyed snarls of the deathshrieks, the growling of the armored women—all I feel is the thundering of my heartbeat and the whisper of his body against mine. My entire being is warm now, despite the coolness of the water.

  Keita tastes like star fruits and fire.

  Keita tastes like home.

  The kiss is suspended in time, magic coiling between us. A moment I will treasure forever. When he finally lifts his lips, there’s wonder in his eyes.

  “I always wanted my first kiss to be with someone special,” he whispers. “I always wanted it to be with you.”

  Tears sting my eyes. “I’m glad it was you, Keita.”

  “Me too,” he whispers. He squeezes my hand one more time, then climbs onto Masaima. “Goodbye, Deka. Perhaps I’ll see you again one day.”

  Just like that, he’s gone, riding out of the cave on Masaima as the deathshrieks and elder alaki snarl at his exit. I’m all alone again.

  It’s all I can do not to weep, but I force my sadness into submission. There are other, more pressing things to think about. A thousand questions I must ask. If I’m the Nuru, the creature created to free deathshrieks and alaki, how do I go about fulfilling my purpose?

  And what about White Hands? If everything she said to me was true, why did she allow me to commit all those atrocities against deathshrieks? She and Mother could have prevented everything that happened by just spiriting me away at birth. Why allow me to be raised by humans in the first place—to suffer through so much pain, when I could have been here with my own kind all along?

  The questions weigh heavily on my mind, but I do not have time to ponder them further. Exhaustion has overtaken me, and it’s not long before I succumb to it and fall asleep.

  * * *

  When morning comes, White Hands is still at my side, a few of the other deathshrieks surrounding her. They all stand in a circle around me, hands connected, throats rumbling. The sound vibrates through my body, sparking yet more connections. I can feel my limbs knitting faster, my tendons attaching and strengthening, and I’m grateful for it, grateful for all the care they’re giving me. The emperor’s army is only four days away.

  Even though the other soldiers will take much longer than Keita and I did to get here, since they’re lacking animals as swift as Ixa, the very thought fills me with worry. Britta and the others are still there, after all. I can only hope they’re not being punished now that I’ve been deemed a traitor. I can only hope that Britta’s still healing—that she hasn’t succumbed to her injuries or something even worse.

  Like the Death Mandate…

  I push away the awful thought by returning to the question of my origins. What does being the Nuru mean, exactly? How exactly will I free the goddesses? I know they’re at the top of this mountain, hidden in a temple like one of those that the deathshrieks nested in. That’s why the deathshrieks kept gathering at temples, why they massacred Keita’s family when they found them here. This is their most sacred site: the resting place of their goddesses. The primal resting grounds were only ever a myth White Hands created so the emperor would gather all his armies here.

  I suppose it makes things easier for me. While I’m freeing the goddesses, the emperor and his army will be too busy fighting. But what happens once I free them? I still have no idea. I don’t even know what the goddesses are like—what the truth of them is versus what people have told me.

  I turn to White Hands. She’s now standing hand in hand with Katya and thrumming. “White Ha—I mean, Fatu,” I say, correcting myself so I use her true name.

  White Hands smiles. “White Hands will do. Fatu is an old name, one people have long forgotten to fear. White Hands, however…” She clicks her gauntleted fingertips together. “It is a name that will soon not be easily forgotten. Besides, it is my greatest honor to have been named by you.”

  I shiver. There’s something in her eyes, a look that tells me she truly does feel this way.

  “Why is freeing the goddesses so important? What will change if they come back to this world?”

  “Everything,” she replies. “Everything will change.

  “The emperors of Otera have oppressed our kind for too long. Proclaimed us demons. But
now their turn has come. Once you wake the goddesses, they’ll make Otera what it once was: a land of freedom, a land where men and women ruled equally, where women weren’t abused, beaten, raped. Where they weren’t imprisoned in their homes, told that they were sinful and unholy.”

  She looks down at me, her eyes serious. “You will help us bring those joyous times again. You will help us win freedom for all of us—every last woman in Otera, even the ones who aren’t alaki.”

  Freedom for every woman…

  I shiver as I remember Gazal’s fear of water, Katya’s longing for home, the tears in Belcalis’s eyes as she reminded me to never forget. All of them so different, and yet all fighting a world where they were unwanted, lesser than, despised.

  Freedom for them—freedom for us all. I let the precious thought flow over my mind as the deathshrieks resume their thrumming.

  It takes two days for my body to heal completely. All the while the deathshrieks surround me, throats rumbling. They never eat, never sleep, just remain attentively at their task. By the time I rise on the second day, I feel stronger than I ever have. It’s just as well. The army is at the foot of the mountains, the stronghold of the deathshrieks. The final battle is about to begin.

  “It is time,” White Hands says, motioning for me to emerge from the water.

  I do as she commands, marveling at the new strength of my muscles, the power I feel in my bones. When I twitch, golden veins flash just beneath my skin. I can see them threading across my hands. Despite everything the official at Jor Hall said, my gilded sleep has destroyed the gilding that once covered my hands and arms. Perhaps this is part of what being the Nuru means. I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt before.

  I know my path now. I know my purpose.

  After all, White Hands was very careful to explain it to me.