Heart of the Moors

Chapter 9

Aurora was nearly her height, Maleficent noted as they made their way through the Moors. She remembered the tiny flaxen-haired child who had grabbed hold of both of her horns and refused to let go.

The willful girl who had giggled at her scowls.

Who had transmuted her anger into love.

But Aurora was not smiling now.

“Tell me about this wall of flowers,” she said, hands on her hips. “Spiky flowers. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

Maleficent gestured airily. “Oh, my dear, it was too big to be a secret to keep for long. I thought of it as a gift—one I could always magic away if you didn’t like it.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Aurora said.

“Only consider,” said Maleficent, “your borders are protected with no expense to your treasury. No knights need to patrol. No neighboring kingdom can engage in raids. Even brigands and robbers will quail when they realize there is no great distance they can run without trying to pass through a sinister, yet beautiful, hedge.”

Aurora did not appear mollified. “You’re trying to protect the kingdom the way you protected the Moors,” she said. “You put the crown on my head. You have to talk to me before you do things like this. You may have been the protector of the Moors, but you made me the queen of them, remember?”

“I protected the Moors quite well.”

Aurora looked exasperated but changed tack. “What about the storyteller in the market? Is it true you turned him into a cat?”

“Well, it’s not not true,” Maleficent said, a mischievous grin growing despite her best attempts to suppress it. “And just think of the stories he will have to tell now! Why, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that I’ve done him a favor.”

“Turn him back,” Aurora told her.

“Just as soon as I can find him,” Maleficent promised, gesturing to the expanse of moorlands, the foggy pools and hollow trees in which a hundred cats could hide. “I am sure he’s around here somewhere.”

“And the missing groom?” Aurora asked.

Maleficent shrugged. “Really, I can’t be to blame for everything. You will have to look elsewhere for the boy. And I hope that after today you see that the humans aren’t going to come to love the Moors. They’re not like you.”

“They didn’t even have a chance to see—” Aurora began.

Maleficent snorted. “As though it would have helped.”

Aurora gave her a wry smile. “Well, since you will be looking for the cat anyway, you can keep an eye out for the boy, too. Maybe that will help.”

Maleficent was surprised—and insulted. “I told you we’re not to blame. Had one of the Fair Folk stolen him away, I would have heard of it,” Maleficent told her. “I hope the humans haven’t managed to make you distrustful of us.”

“Of course not,” Aurora said, hopping along a path of stones half sunk in the water with the ease that came from long practice. “But if you found him, it would do a lot to convince the people of Perceforest that we are all on the same side. What happened today showed the lack of understanding between humans and the faeries. Count Alain thought his sister was being insulted, and etiquette demanded he do something about it.”

Maleficent gave her a long look.

“He doesn’t see the wallerbogs as we do, as gentle and mischievous beings,” Aurora admitted. “But I couldn’t help pitying him a little, first to be knocked around by one of the sentinels and then to be saved by you. You had only to fail to intervene and he might have fallen to his death.”

“When you put it that way, I do see I made an error,” Maleficent drawled.

That made Aurora laugh, as though the words were said in jest. Maleficent had only intervened because she hadn’t wanted the tree warrior to be blamed for a human death. Personally, she wouldn’t have minded if he had fallen.

The more Maleficent thought about it, the more she was convinced that Aurora had learned all the wrong lessons from her.

Because Aurora had been wrong about Maleficent. She wasn’t a kindly faerie, no matter how many times Aurora insisted that she was. And at least in the beginning, she’d seen Aurora only as the means through which she would exact her revenge on King Stefan.

It didn’t matter that Maleficent helped Diaval get her milk when she was a baby, or that Maleficent caused some vines to save her when she ran straight off a cliff while chasing a butterfly right in front of those oblivious pixies. It didn’t matter that things had worked out for the best. It didn’t matter that Aurora’s goodness had woken something in Maleficent she’d thought was lost forever.

It was still foolish to try to see the best in those who were wicked.

And most humans had those seeds of wickedness in them, just waiting to bloom.

But there was no making the girl believe that she’d been mistaken in trusting Maleficent. And Aurora was likely to make the same mistake again, probably with that floppy-haired prince who was mooning over her or that arrogant count desperately trying to impress her. She was going to trust in their goodness, and they were going to fail her, perhaps even hurt her.

“Stay here, in the Moors,” Maleficent said impulsively. “Here, where you’re safe. Here, with me.”

“But at the palace—” Aurora began. Before she could get the sentence out, Maleficent lifted her hands, and in a swirl of golden light, a mist that had hovered over one particular area cleared and her palace of flowers and greenery was revealed. Its spires seemed to spin up into the sky.

The girl could not fail to be delighted by it.

Aurora gasped, her eyes widening in awe. Her hand went to cover her mouth.

“Now you have another palace,” Maleficent said, “one the like of which has never existed before and may never exist again. Come, let’s tour it.”

“Oh, yes,” Aurora said eagerly, everything else momentarily forgotten.

Maleficent followed, watching the girl’s skirts billow behind her and smiling. Aurora raced through the flower tunnel. Then she spun around in the great hall, causing a shower of pink petals to fall from the canopy.

When she discovered her bedroom, she stopped to marvel at the columns of twisted tree trunks, at the enormous bed with embroidered blankets stuffed with the spores of dandelions in place of feathers, and to exclaim over her open balconies.

Maleficent could tell she adored the palace. She even allowed herself to feel a little smug.

“It’s so beautiful, Godmother,” Aurora said once they’d toured the entire place, “and I want to stay here with you. But I cannot. If I don’t change the hearts and minds of the humans of Perceforest, nothing else will matter.”

“You’re their ruler,” Maleficent said, “and ours. But you must decide if you will rule like a faerie or like a human.”

“You say that as though there’s only one correct answer,” Aurora replied, kicking a small pebble that was resting near some steps. It rolled over a few times, then grew little legs and scuttled off.

“Perhaps that’s what I believe,” said Maleficent.

Aurora took her hand, surprising her. It reminded her again of the sweet child Aurora had been—and, for all her height and the crown on her head, still often was.

“I want the humans and the faeries to see that it’s possible to live together fruitfully,” Aurora said, “to have love and trust between them, as you and I do.”

Willful, Maleficent thought. Foolish. Good. But what could she say? Aurora had taught Maleficent gentleness when she’d thought that part of her was lost. Now Aurora believed the world could learn gentleness. It was Maleficent’s fault that Aurora didn’t understand how unlikely that was. But all she could do now was vow not to let the girl get hurt.

And if that meant hurting someone else instead, Maleficent felt perfectly capable of doing it—delighted, even.