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There was music in the Moors for the first time in Diaval’s memory. The summer solstice was well under way, and all around the lake, the fair folk were illuminated by small— but enchanted, fires.
Because honestly if anyone wanted to see any more fire, it probably wasn’t them. But there was music, the toads played little melodies in the mud, the pixies danced on the water tops, Aurora danced with Balthazar and Prince Philip, and he and Maleficent watched it all from a distance. Though, at this point, he knew it was by choice.
“Diaval,” Maleficent asked.
“Mm,” he said, frowning. Her hair was much thinner than her feathers, and he was regretting his big, at-the-moment human hands.
“What exactly are you doing, foolish raven?” she asked. “You keep yanking on my horns.”
“Well, they shouldn’t get in my way,” he said, though he put his dry humor into his voice. “It’s difficult to do this as it is, I’d imagine, let alone when you have giant horns sticking out of your head.”
It was entirely possible that Maleficent could turn around to look at him and eye the flower crown that Good Queen Aurora had woven and placed on his human head. The lilies clashed with his dark and mysterious exterior. He’d ignore the look on her face, he was sure. The braid he had woven was as complicated as it was messy, as Diaval had been at it for more than an hour. But Maleficent’s hair was long and silky, and, very much like her wings, he couldn’t get enough of it.
The light from the full moon suddenly disappeared, leaving his hands in almost darkness. Diaval frowned and looked up, and noticed the small, magical cloud that hung above their heads. “Stop that,” he said. “This is hard enough, Mistress, I don’t need you being mischievous.”
Maleficent’s shoulders heaved up and down in a sigh, but the cloud dissipated. “I’m still unsure as to what you think it is you’re doing in the first place.”
Well that was simple. In his old life, this was called preening. And preening was what one did for someone you cherished as much as he cherished Maleficent.
Not that he cherished her more than was appropriate for a faerie and her familiar. No, over the years he’d just grown fond of her. Fond, yes, that was a good word for it.
Though he wasn’t too sure a raven could be fond of someone. Sure, there was a certain amount of fondness you attached to someone who didn’t swing at you with wooden sticks and stinkin’ smelly dogs or who fixed a bothersome feather.
Okay, so the word wasn’t ‘fond’.
But Diaval didn’t know the middle ground between ‘fond’ and ‘love’.
Except, even as he thought on it, one of her wings spread out and smacked him in the nose.
“Was that really necessary,” he asked, her braid still in his hands, but his crown of lilies hanging over his eyes.
He sat behind Maleficent on a tree’s root that Maleficent had shaped specifically for them to rest upon, her wings spread out comfortably on either side. Not that he’d noticed, but there was perhaps two inches between them. It was the closeness that made him nervous, because ever since she’d gotten her wings back, he couldn’t keep his hands out of them. And that apparently also included braiding her hair.
“I thought it was rather funny,” Maleficent said, looking over her shoulder at him and eying the flower crown upon his head. “So, yes.”
With a dark look, Diaval carefully straightened it. His crown from Good Queen Aurora.
Ravens didn’t get flower crowns from Queens, so this one was going straight off his head and into his nest up in the tree where it would be kept safe.
“It suits you,” Maleficent said, her eyes glinting gold.
He was trying very hard not to touch her wings, all the while questioning why his fingers tingled so much. It wasn’t even the right season for nesting habits, which were bothersome enough when you spent half your time as a raven and half your time as a man and occasionally became a dragon. Was it some human affliction? There was no one he could even ask, except for Aurora, and that just seemed like a terrible idea.
“Oh, very well,” Diaval said, fed up, tossing the braid in his hands aside, and carefully swinging his human leg over the tree root so he could stand up. “You’re just going to ruin my fine work when we fly later, so the point at this moment is moot.”
He felt the familiar tingle down his raven’s spine and turned to see magic he knew very well coming to life in front of his feet, even though Maleficent was still behind him.
“Don’t,” he started, pointing at the magic in warning. “Don’t you dare, I’m as clean as I’ve ever been in this form.”
The golden dust shifted and floated and seemed to stare at him as it hovered in midair and disappeared, but not before it hefted up a bit of water from the creek and spit it out at him.
The stream water dripped down Diaval’s forehead.
He blinked, clamping his mouth shut so that the water weaving little rivers down his cheek wouldn’t sneak in, all the while hearing Maleficent’s gentle laugh in the background. He slopped over to the creek and sunk his hand in fast enough so that when he turned back toward Maleficent, she had enough time to say, “No, you wouldn’t.”
Before he hefted a glob of particularly blobby mud at her pretty head.
What ensued was possibly the bloodiest mud battle that had ever happened in the Moors, but only because after one beat of her wings at him, Diaval went flying into the mud vats and scraped his hand along a rock that had quite possibly been waiting for this very moment its entire life. Even sweet Aurora had not come out of the battle unscathed, but with a bit of faerie magic, her good golden gown was whole again. Diaval only managed to stumble into the vat and fall back to his knees, slipping and sliding on gangly very human legs. Finally, Thistlewit tugged on his collar and he was able to escape, his hands scraping the mud off his human face with a dark frown.
“You did know what you were starting before you started it,” Maleficent said on the tree root, looking every bit the queen she used to be. He’d stop and double take, except for the small smile that made creases underneath her eyes.
“If you want to fight fair,” Diaval said, while shaking his hands and whipping mud everywhere. “You’d turn me into that dragon again, then see who gets to swim in the mud.”
Maleficent’s magic dragged up water from the lake and poured it down his back even as he noticed it, washing most of the mud away, but also managed to drench him from head to toe.
“Oh, yes,” he said, dripping. “That’s so much better.”
His mistress rose from the root and came toward him, the longest feathers of her wings dragging on the ground, which just meant he’d have to clean them later, too, while she blew golden dust onto his clothing that he felt get lighter.
Begrudgingly, he nodded in thanks.
“If there’s mud on my coat,” he paused and smacked his hands together to shake the remains of the water off. “You are going to clean it, because cleaning feathers that aren’t attached to you is surprisingly difficult.”
“It’s only mud,” Maleficent said.
But a hand smoothed his hair back from his wet forehead. Diaval rested the weight of his head against it and leaned into the touch, enjoying it.
Without even meaning to, he closed his eyes and brought his own hand up to catch Maleficent’s as she tucked another strand of his hair away. His human hands were rough, still stubbornly clinging to the thought that they were really claws and not really hands.
But Maleficent’s hands had always been fair and cool to the touch. He knew this from when she flicked his nose to shift him, or ran a finger down his wing as he perched on her staff.
And, he’d never tell her, but that one little touch calmed him a great deal.
He hummed deep in his throat, but then his eyes snapped open, because it took him a moment to realize what that sound had sounded like. After a moment of horror and trying to keep said horror off his face, thinking, why do humans blush, how humiliating, Diaval said, “Forgive me.”
He turned his gaze away.
Blushing really was awful. All the heat underneath his skin merged into one very visible area on his pale face, and Maleficent, who was even paler than he was— though not by much, didn’t have so much as a freckle.
Even his ears went pink, he could feel how they grew hot underneath her scrutiny.
What were the chances that the Moors underneath him would just collapse into a mud sink and kill him?
But Maleficent’s mouth hung slightly open, staring at him in a way that made him nervous. She swallowed, but then. “There,” she said, clearing her throat. “All back the way it was.”
His clothes were drying even as he thought about it, yes, but his hair remained damp.
She was still staring at him, and he couldn’t decide if she looked like Knotgrass when Thistlewhit had stolen her mudpie or a frightened deer.
Neither of which was an option he particularly liked?
Maleficent dropped her hand and took a few steps back, like she had just realized that his skin had burned her hand.
“Mistress?” Diaval asked, trying to close the distance again, not understanding what had just happened.
“Diaval, don’t,” Maleficent said, holding a hand up to stop him.
“What’s the matter?”
He stepped forward, she stepped back. He saw this and immediately skidded to a halt and backed away, terrified that he had done something unforgivably wrong.
That unpleasant thought made his small raven’s heart beat so loud he could hear the drumming inside his head.
“Stop, please,” Maleficent said, turning away from him.
He followed at a safe distance, confused.
“Mistress?” Diaval asked.
“You’re a raven,” Maleficent said.
He stopped and tilted his head slightly to one side. “I’m aware.”
“You’re a raven,” Maleficent said again, as if trying to explain to a young child. “No matter what form I change you to, you will always be a raven.”
He knew that. He did.
But that didn’t change the fact that, somehow, somewhere, he’d believed he had become something more than that. A mixture between the two. Was that all that he was? Would he disappear back into a raven’s mind once Maleficent dismissed him, would he lose his human form completely? Had he outlived his natural lifetime and would then die of old age?
Her back was to him, wings tense and held stiffly as close to her body as he knew they would go. He’d done something terribly wrong to upset her so.
The only problem was, he had no clue what it was.
There was a long moment of silence as he tried to think of what to say, and the warm solstice air moved the leaves and the flowers around them. Diaval’s heart was in his throat.
It’d been so long since they’d had a problem that he couldn’t fix, and that burned somewhere in his chest. “You’re wrong, Mistress.”
The words barely carried across the space in which they stood.
“I don’t know what I am,” Diaval said. “But I remember what I was, and I am so much more than that now.”
“No, Diaval,” Maleficent said. “It’s easier to turn a simple thing into something bigger than it is to turn something bigger into a simple thing. My magic can do much, but it cannot make you like the rest of us.”
Diaval swallowed. “But I never wanted to be.”
“Diaval,” Maleficent said, exasperated. “When I am gone, you will go back to being a raven. Just a raven.”
He swallowed. He couldn’t even fathom— No. He wouldn’t. Ravens were small to him now, safer, simpler, a place of refuge for when human problems and human thoughts became too difficult for him to know how to handle.
“Oh, indeed,” he said, struck dumb and bordering on hysterical. “They won’t have me. They know even now that I’m not like them, that I’m closer to demon than I am to raven.”
He wanted so much to close the distance between them and take her hand in his and try to catch her eye, but he wouldn’t. Everything about her posture warned him to stay away.
And ravens knew danger when they saw it. It’s how they managed to live so long in woods full of hawks and wolves and bears.
“I,” Maleficent said. “I can’t, I can’t again.”
“I’m sorry,” Diaval said, truly and honestly confused. “Have I missed something?”
“Diaval, you cannot know the pain of loving as we do,” Maleficent said, turning around to face him.
He stepped back and stumbled, hurt, because the words came so far and away from what he had been expecting her to say that it blew him off his feet. Maybe it was the summer lake water, maybe he’d simply been human for too many days straight.
Either way, he felt like he was at his wit’s end, and that never happened to a raven.
“Diaval,” Maleficent started, voice full of apology, holding a hand out.
“No, I have!” Diaval insisted, dragging his hands through his very human hair. “Ravens aren’t supposed to know these complicated philosophies, but I have loved you from the moment you gave me a mind to know it with!”
Maleficent went silent, and he went silent, and Diaval had the horrid feeling that he had said exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. He also hadn’t meant to admit that particular feeling that burned a hole into his heart, because it was painful just sitting there and gathering dust, let alone out and about and doing damage.
“I,” he started, but his mouth sealed itself shut at the look on Maleficent’s face. It was nothing short of betrayal, hurt, and a thousand yard stare that he’d seen her use often when she had been reminded of Stefan and her wings.
And he wanted to die all over again.
He hadn’t wanted this, he hadn’t wanted this at all. He couldn’t explain that a raven didn’t just form an attachment for two decades without it being meaningful, he didn’t know how to explain that to him, they were mates.
And ravens mated for life, he didn’t have a purpose without Maleficent.
“Forgive me,” Diaval whispered, hurting. After a moment of trying to find a voice that wasn’t a squawk, he said, “I’d like to be a crow, please.”
Maleficent raised her hand, unblinking, unfeeling in the way that she was when she retreated into herself when she was hurt. But after a moment, she stopped, mouth opening only just the smallest bit.
Perhaps she’d realized that he’d called himself a ‘crow’, which was not something any self-respecting raven would ever call themselves.
“I thought you liked being a bird,” Maleficent asked gently, as her hand lowered.
“Not as much as I used to,” Diaval said.
A strange expression that he didn’t recognize flashed on Maleficent’s face. It was only there for half a moment, because when he blinked, it was gone.
All he wanted to do was vanish, to never return to the Moors, or to Maleficent, who was just going to tell him he was simply a raven.
And the more he thought about it, the more that was a future he wasn’t willing to live with. It had to be one, or the other. A familiar: half man, half raven, or a raven. Just a raven. A raven that couldn’t speak or throw mud or braid hair or clean faerie feathers. He waited for the change to come, and when it did he felt only relief. He flitted off between the summer trees and felt better, smaller, because even if his human heart and his head were complicated, raven things were simpler.
Diaval spent days like that. He flew back and forth between the Moors and the old cottage in the Glen where he’d helped Aurora grow, even passing between the borders of Aurora’s kingdoms and others until his wings refused to fly anymore.
Several times he felt Maleficent’s calling to him, but he resisted each and every time.
He circled far and wide above the headwinds. He half expected to find Maleficent up there, but he didn’t see a hint of her autumn leaves colored wings.
When Diaval could no longer stand the lack of the sound of humans speaking and when he had tired of other raven’s nervous squawking when he came near, he perched on a turret of Aurora’s castle until he caught a glimpse of sunlight hair.
“There you are,” said Aurora. He hopped down to the railing of her balcony, and landed in front of her. She held two fingers out and smoothed the feathers on his neck. “My pretty bird.”
He squawked in a way that he hoped sound affectionate to human ears. At this point he struggled to remember what sounding like a raven was even like in the first place.
Aurora had hated the interior of the castle the moment that they returned to it after she had been crowned as Queen of both kingdoms: the iron had been torn down and sold, all the windows unlocked and opened, and now there were almost as many flowers in the main hall as there were in the Moors.
And there were plenty of places for him to perch, but none of them were his nest in Maleficent’s tree. “Oh, I see,” Aurora said after he bristled sadly. “Yes, that’s a problem.”
His chirp sounded heartbroken.
And he hated it.
“Heartache is an awful thing, isn’t it,” the Queen said. “When it hurts to be around a person but it hurts more when they’re away.”
Diaval nodded.
Aurora thought for a moment. But then, “You know, you’re never going to find out what she feels if you keep hiding.”
He was not hiding. This was strategic reconnaissance. He was doing his job, this was important raveny business. Diaval nipped at Aurora’s fingers in an offended way.
But she didn’t pull her hand away, and he felt a bit bad.
Not a lot, but a little bit.
But, regardless of what he felt, once he’d said his goodbyes to Good Queen Aurora, his wings set themselves toward the Moors.
He searched high, but none of the fair folk had seen Maleficent since the morning. He stopped by their tree on the cliff, and picked at evidence that said she had not been gone long.
He flew their path that they usually took for their evening flights, his little raven wings beating against his sides. As a last resort, he flew the path he usually took to the cottage in the Glen.
About halfway between the Moors and the Glen, there was a wide-open field of ripe grain that would soon be cut for harvest. It overlooked rolling golden hills and the border of both the human kingdom and the Moors.
And it was there that he spotted Maleficent.
Without even needing to move, Maleficent’s magic was strengthening the grain, and the roots from which it grew. Instead, Maleficent just held her staff in her hands and watched her magic do its work.
It’d be a good harvest, which was excellent news— King Stefan’s sixteen year vigil had been hard on food stores for all involved.
This time, when Maleficent called him down, he obeyed.
“Diaval,” Maleficent called out.
He circled and landed on a nearby tree branch above her, so that she had to look up to see him. She gestured to her staff with her fingers, so he twitched his wings and gently glided down to perch on the crystal at the head.
It was embarrassing to think that his mood was significantly improved simply by hearing her speak after so long.
And frankly he’d tell her that over his dead, scarred human body.
“You were gone for quite a while,” Maleficent said, head tilted and examining him on her staff. “I thought you’d gone home to the north.”
He shook his raven’s head.
Besides, the north was windy and freezing this time of year, and very difficult to navigate with small raven’s wings. But she didn’t exactly need to know that.
She appeared to suspiciously judge him for a moment, but then with a small smile she turned her attention away from him, and toward the field of grain.
“A favor to Aurora,” she told him. “The ground beneath has healed enough to make good harvest, but it won’t be good every year. Like many things, it needs time to heal.”
He felt, rather than knew, that Maleficent might be referring to more than just the wheat.
What her point was, however, Diaval had no clue.
He might understand it when he was human, but as a raven? He was limited.
“Forgive me, for the words I said,” Maleficent told him, absently stroking his feathers. “You have been with me from the very start of my story, and you have never been, nor will you ever be just a raven.”
He tilted his head from one side to the other. Of course he forgave her, it was him that had made the mistake in the first place.
He had just been afraid that he would be nothing, when he felt that he had become so much.
What was death, to Diaval? Death, at least, was finite. To stop existing entirely, however, was a different thing entirely.
Maleficent exhaled through her nose and looked at him, eyes sad and glinting just a little bit gold.
“I could kiss you as a raven,” Maleficent said to Diaval, running her finger along his spine. “I could even kiss you as a wolf, or a dragon. But as a man I can barely stand to touch you.”
He leaned his head against the hand that stroked his feathers.
“Mortal men frighten me,” Maleficent admitted. “And I know you do not mean to, but sometimes you act more man than raven.”
He tilted his head, but nodded in understanding. The last thing he ever wanted to do was make Maleficent feel uncomfortable, not with a bond as long standing as theirs.
He’d stay a raven forever so long as he could remember the way that she smiled.
But Maleficent cleared her throat, and looked away. Her wings fluttered in the summer breeze.
She jutted her chin out and looked back at him.
“Now,” she said. “Ready to have ten fingers again?”
He chirped, unsure. He hoped the uncertainty that he felt carried through raven-speak.
“I am sure,” Maleficent said. “I think I am ready to see you again.”
He fluttered his wings so he hovered about his human height, and with a tap of her fingers on his nose, he felt himself sink like a giant stone through deep water.
And then he realized that he shouldn’t have remained a raven so long, because everything seemed very big again, like when he’d first started to serve Maleficent.
He brushed the dust off his coat and his arms and smacked his hands against one another to clean them too. When he was done, he looked up, and Maleficent was looking at him warmly, not afraid.
Maleficent smiled. “Hello, little demon.”
Diaval smiled, too. “Hello, Mistress.”
Her wings opened just the smallest bit, but it was enough for Diaval to notice. He swallowed, trying to bite down his nervousness.
“Forgive me,” Diaval started. “If I frightened you.”
“And me,” Maleficent said. “If I hurt you.”
There were ten thousand words bumbling around in his head, and none of them seemed right. Part of him was simply glad that Maleficent was smiling at him, happy to see him. It was nice to feel needed.
But another part of him wanted to re-draw the line, to make sure he’d never make the same mistake again. To hurt Maleficent would be to hurt the half of himself that he didn’t have anymore.
“I will not say so again if you do not wish me to,” he said, something in him getting strong enough to meet her gaze. “I will not harm you in any way, let alone something so small and simple.”
Maleficent sighed, looking out towards the Moors. “It is not that I do not want it,” she said. “But, I do not know if I am ready for it, just yet.”
He nodded, doing his best to understand her meaning. He’d been patient for nearly twenty years, he could be patient for twenty more.
“The harm that has been done to me has been very great,” Maleficent said. “It affects me even now,” she turned and leaned in close to tuck a wayward strand of his hair behind his human’s ears. “But the value you hold for me is greater than many things, and much more than I expected it to be.”
They were standing close, very close, and something swelled up in his chest as he tried not to blink, because there was some fear in his head that if he did, this person that meant so much to him would disappear back into the Moors, never to be seen again.
Diaval took the hand that she held near his temple and brought it together with both of his, kissing her palm.
He might have been hallucinating, but he could have sworn that Maleficent smiled warmly, and even blushed. Just a bit.
If she felt safe with this tiny bit of affection, then it was what he would use.