Maleficent(41)

            Walking into the cottage’s main room, she smiled when she saw her aunts bickering once again. Hearing her footsteps, they all froze, then turned toward her, looking oddly guilty. But Aurora ignored that and plunged ahead with her news. “I need to talk to you about something,” she began.

            “Anything, lovie,” Flittle said, straightening out her hair, which was a tad disheveled.

            “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, and please don’t be sad, but I’ll be sixteen tomorrow and so…”

            Her voice trailed off as she struggled to go on. “Yes?” Thistlewit prompted.

            Aurora took a deep breath, and then in a rush, her words running into one another, she said, “I’m leaving home.”

            Expecting tears and sadness, she was surprised when Knotgrass’s face turned red with anger. “Oh, no you aren’t!” she cried. “I didn’t suffer all these years in this miserable hovel with those two imbeciles so you would ruin it on the last day! We are taking you back to your father—” As the last words left her lips, Knotgrass slapped her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that.

            Aurora’s face grew pale. “My father?” she repeated. “You told me my parents were dead.”

            The three aunts looked at one another, silently figuring out what to do. Finally, Flittle patted the bench next to her. “You’d better sit down,” she said.

            Confused, Aurora did as she was told and listened as they began their story.

                         “Faerie Godmother!”

            Aurora’s voice rang out through the glen. Hearing the panic in her voice, Maleficent emerged from the shadows while Diaval hung back. It was the day before Aurora’s sixteenth birthday, and she was supposed to have come after telling her aunts that she was leaving. Clearly, something had happened, and knowing the three pixies and their conniving ways to stay on Stefan’s good side, Maleficent figured they must have told Aurora about her past to try to keep her with them. But just how much had they said?

            “I’m here,” Maleficent said, glancing at the princess. The girl’s usually bright eyes were full of tears and her hair was a mess, as though she had been pulling at it incessantly. Maleficent waited, fearing what Aurora was about to say.

            “When were you going to tell me that I’m cursed?” she asked, her voice full of pain.

            Maleficent had been right. Those meddlesome faeries-in-waiting had told Aurora what had happened years earlier. But Aurora had said only that she had been cursed. She hadn’t said who had cursed her.…

            “Well? Is it true?” Aurora asked, her voice pleading.

            Maleficent nodded. “It is,” she said simply.

            Aurora’s face fell. “I was just a baby!” she cried. “Who would do such a terrible thing to a baby?” Her big blue eyes met Maleficent’s. “My aunts said it was an evil faerie. They said her name. They said…they said…” She choked on her sobs, unable to say the name out loud.

            Seeing the hurt this moment was causing her, Maleficent couldn’t stand it any longer. Turning away so as not to meet Aurora’s gaze, she said the name aloud. “Maleficent.”

            Behind her, Aurora’s eyes grew wide as something clicked and she began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “Is that your name?” she asked. “Are you Maleficent? Are you the one who cursed me?”

            Slowly, Maleficent turned to face the princess. This was not the way she had wanted Aurora to find out who she was and what she had done. But what else could she do? The truth was going to come out one way or another. “Yes,” she said softly.