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There is a tale all birds tell, a tale Diaval heard when he was very small, a hatchling bedded down in the nest. There is a tale, and it goes this way – once there was a bird, great and good, who carried the rains down from the sky and watered the thirsty flowers, and sheltered the ground things under her wings.
She was beloved, and powerful, and just. But then the bird fell in love with a fox, and one night while she was sleeping, the fox bit her wings clean off. That is how the fox is so fast, and so cunning, and why he so often spits feathers. That is why little birds must fear him.
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The first night after the storming of the castle, the second night Maleficent has her wings back, Aurora slips from the castle and runs barefoot over the border between her lands and the Moors. Eventually, tired and sore, she climbs into a tree hollow to hide.
Maleficent finds her after thirty seconds.
“Dear one,” she says, giving it the same little mocking slide she gives beastie, which makes Aurora smile, “you cannot possibly expect to live the rest of your life hiding in a tree, even if it is quite the loveliest yew on the Moors.”
The tree giggles, flattered.
“You can’t make me leave the Moors,” Aurora returns, her voice echoing through the trunk, and winces as soon as she’s said it. She sounds so childish. There’s something – there’s always been something – about her godmother that makes her want to seem grown up, and regal, and composed, and oh, all those things she’s never been very good at.
There’s a soft rustling sound as Maleficent spreads her robes across the grass and settles at the foot of the tree.
“No,” she agrees mildly. “Nobody can make a queen do anything.”
It hangs in the air around them, like a discordant note struck on a piano. Queen.
“I only wanted –“ Aurora says, trying to steady her voice as it breaks, “- I only ever wanted to live with you. That was my wish. Back when I thought you were my fairy godmother. It was all my wishes.”
There’s a long silence. Aurora buries her wet face against her knees, and tries valiantly not to sob. Beyond the tree, in the Moors where Aurora will never live, the nightly chorus starts up – fairies, frogs, flowers, fish, all serenading the closing of the day.
When Maleficent does speak again, it’s to the tree.
“You really do have the most beautiful snail’s silver patterns on your bark, Yew,” she says, her tone light, conversational. She pauses a second, then, and Aurora is tempted to abandon her hiding place just so she can finally see her godmother’s expression.
“You’ve never even tasted snail’s silver, have you, Aurora?” Maleficent asks, as though she is commenting on something as unremarkable as the weather. “Oh, there is so much you don’t know. So much I have to teach you. Of course, it will be rather more difficult if you persist in living in this tree, but I do suppose we can devise some sort of system. I can send messages with Diaval. Maybe I can rig something up with ropes and pulleys. You can send smoke signals.”
Aurora can’t help it, she laughs. It rings through the whole tree, and the yew shudders as though it tickles. When she pokes her head out through the hollow’s opening Maleficent’s expression remains entirely neutral, as though she expected this, as she expects everything.
“The moment your back is turned I’m diving in to live at the bottom of the lake,” Aurora sniffs as she climbs out, filthy and exhausted.
Maleficent smiles as she always does, like daggers.
“That’s my beastie,” she says, fond.
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There is a tale the children of the kingdom tell, whispered by the older ones while they bend over the fruit in the fields, trying to make the hours pass faster for the little ones, rosy-cheeked and weary. There is a tale, and it goes this way – once, there was a dark and terrible woman, a witch, all in black. She was so huge that when she spread her wings to fly, she blotted out the sun. All were afraid of her, and when she walked, the kingdom’s fields died beneath her feet.
At the sight of the little ones’ horrified open mouths and their rapt faces, the older children smile, quick and reassuring.
But then our Queen came! Queen Aurora struck the witch through the heart with a golden sword, and all was well. The sun shines most all of the time, doesn’t it? There, you see. All is well.
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Aurora is queen, and she goes to meetings with the Trade Minister for Agriculture with her feet bare, and she learns to fence, and very quickly becomes better than all the pages. Aurora is queen, and she starts at A in the palace library and works her way down, marking the pages about witches and magic to laugh about with Maleficent later. Aurora is queen, and she sticks her fingers into the pot to personally taste the jam being made in the kitchens, and wears her crown haphazardly tangled in the hair that reaches almost to her knees, now.
Aurora is queen, and Diaval leaves gifts on her balcony every morning – a piece of seaglass enchanted to show her Maleficent whenever she wishes; a compass to wear around her neck under her clothes that will always point Aurora to her godmother (with the distance between them noted in shimmering gold figures, measured in Aurora’s footsteps); a crown made of Moor flowers for when her own is too heavy.
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There is a tale the young maidens of the kingdom tell, heads bent over their needlework, or gathered together at the river’s edge, washing clothes against the rocks. It goes this way – once there was a woman who had something taken from her by a foolish, deceitful man. The loss grew within her until it was a thorn in her side, silver and sharp, stealing her breath as fast as she could gasp it. There was only one girl in the entire kingdom with hands small enough to slip between her ribs, and pull it free.
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Even after she’s read well past A in the library, Aurora is drawn back to it, to the start, again and again. There’s astronomy there, you see, and so she spends whole afternoons reading about the movements of the planets, and the Greek stories of the constellations, how the stars remain static. How night segues into dawn, and how there wouldn’t be one without the other, how the sun and the moon guard the earth between them.
When she next comes down onto the Moors, clutching a heavy bag of books, Maleficent only says come then, my queen. I have something to show you.
The grass is slick with dew and Aurora almost slips as she hurries, giddy, after her godmother. The sack of books bumps against her knees with every step. They go all the way to a private glade, almost in darkness even in the heat of the day, and push aside the hanging willow fronds, ducking their heads.
Inside there is a flower which isn’t in any book Aurora has ever read. It has a head like the sun, thick velvet petals so bright they seem ablaze. They’re falling steadily already, blooming and then dropping away to make a growing golden carpet over the ground, and then blooming once more as though from nothing, replacing themselves immediately, like a waterfall.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Aurora whispers, awed.
“The gilded arantha flowers once a decade,” Maleficent says, her hand outstretched towards Aurora, to draw her closer. “I thought you would like it.”
The two of them lie down in the vermillion sea and Aurora holds the astronomy books aloft over both their heads, made weightless by Maleficent’s magic. Aurora explains how she understands the planets, and time, while the petals reflect the light all around them, gilding them, recasting them both in perfect gold.
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There is a tale told only down in the palace kitchens, murmured by the stable grooms into the ears of the horses, written into every sighing brick of the castle, into the strange silver glimmer that has remained since the stones were touched by magic, one night years ago. There is a tale, and it goes this way – Queen Aurora’s bed lying empty as though she has sleepwalked, the gauzy curtains fluttering out over her balcony, into the night. And then, some hours later, strange birdlike twin shadows swooping home, against the dawn.