Her arrival and declaration seemed to signal the meeting was over. The water faerie slipped back into her pool. The wallerbogs began to squabble with one another. A hedgehog faerie scuttled into a nest to take cover. Robin seated himself on a rock and began to carve the top of a long stick, turning it into a staff.

“Is that the—” Aurora began.

“Your storyteller,” Maleficent said, lifting the animal in her arms. “But he seems quite content being a cat. He didn’t seem nearly so happy as a human.”

“No one is,” said Diaval. “A dragon, however? That I wouldn’t mind doing again.”

“Turn him back,” Aurora said.

“I warn you,” said Maleficent, “I didn’t much care for his stories.”

“You astonish us,” Diaval returned. She gave him a sour but not entirely unamused look.

Maleficent let the cat half jump, half drop from her hands. It gave a yowl as it landed in the grass. Then it sniffed the air, as though it had caught hold of some particularly interesting smell.

Maleficent made a gesture with her hands as though flicking water from them. The cat began to grow, and the fur peeled back from a man dressed in traveling clothes. He looked around in confusion and then horror.

“You—you nightmare!” he said to Maleficent.

She gave him a wide smile, clearly delighted by his distress. “What a lovely thing to say! Now, mind, don’t annoy me again or there’s no telling what I might do. Perhaps you might like to try being a fish this time.”

Aurora knelt down beside him. “No, no, there’s nothing to worry about. She’s not really like that.” She slid a ring—gold, with a pearl—off her finger. “Here, take this for your troubles.”

Maleficent was obviously offended. “I am absolutely like that,” she muttered.

“Why don’t I show him the way out of the Moors?” interrupted Diaval, slinging an arm around the man’s shoulder and ignoring his attempt to pull free. “We can commiserate about being transformed. Come along now. There are so few people who really understand our troubles.”

Maleficent watched them go, then went to Aurora’s side. “Are you pleased?”

“Yes,” Aurora said, leaning her head against Maleficent’s shoulder.

The faerie absently stroked her golden hair, and Aurora sighed. “Do you think that I would have turned out horrible if I was raised in the palace? Would I have hated faeries?”

“I think you were born with a generous heart,” Maleficent said, “and no one could have made you otherwise.”

“Would I have been frightened, then?” Aurora continued, thinking of the girls her own age who had been among the townsfolk and the farmers.

“You were never afraid of anything. Even when you ought to have been.”

Aurora gave Maleficent a fond smile.

“Come,” her godmother said. “Eat with me.”