Maleficent looked sadly down at the helpless little baby, who was still smiling despite what was going on around her.
“Poor child,” she murmured. “My powers are not strong enough to prevent this wicked transaction. Not the way matters stand now. But I swear on my own life I will be back and set everything to rights. On your sixteenth birthday, goodness and nobility will be restored to this wretched kingdom.”
And she vanished in a puff of green smoke.
As the days wore on in the wretched kingdom, the little princess Aurora grew in grace and beauty. She sang and danced to the delight of everyone around her.
Her parents, meanwhile, made good use of the powerful demons and fearsome magics given to them by the fairies. They waged strange and terrible wars upon their neighbors that not only decimated their enemies but punished the land itself, rendering it infertile and foul. Only horrible black and twisted things grew where the king and queen’s army had passed.
Soon that was most of the known world.
The peaceful valleys, lush orchards, sparkling rivers, and snow-capped mountains that the queen and king had so envied and wanted for themselves were now nothing more than a blasted wasteland blown through by hot and deadly winds, occupied by only the most vile, unnatural creatures born of darkness and magic.
And the monsters, having consumed everything else, began turning their hideous eyes to their masters’ castle.
Meanwhile, the good little princess was mostly neglected by her parents and often wore rags—except for the rare occasion when the king and queen noticed her and decided to dress her like a proper member of royalty, so all who remained could see and admire her.
Aurora took her mistreatment surprisingly well, making friends with the dwindling number of cats, mice, dogs, birds, and squirrels who lived within the castle walls. All the people who still made the castle their home loved her utterly.
But they were frightened of her parents more.
At sixteen years of age, Aurora, now a beautiful young woman, knew full well that her birthday celebrations were less important than the apocalyptic events that were occurring in the world around her. She forgave her parents in advance for most likely forgetting that special day—as they had for the last fifteen.
Still, she dressed in her finest gown and prepared to greet everyone with the grace and good humor for which she was known. Someone would remember and wish her congratulations, perhaps whispered so her parents wouldn’t hear.
As the clock struck noon in the middle of her birthday, the three evil fairies appeared.
“We have come for what we have been promised,” the first one said.
“We can no longer control the magics you gave us!” the king protested.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t make deals with the devil,” the second fairy said.
“You must save us!” the queen cried.
“No,” the third fairy said. “Now hand her over.”
Confused, Aurora looked from her parents to the fairies.
“What…what is meant by all of this?” she asked, hoping against hope she didn’t understand.
“You must go,” the queen said wearily, gesturing to the fairies.
“NO.”
As had happened sixteen years previously, there was a puff of green smoke. Maleficent appeared. She did not look like she had before; now she leaned hard on a staff, and her beautiful face was drawn and hollow. Black robes wrapped around her like she was an ancient pilgrim at the end of a very long journey.
“It has taken me the full sixteen years to prepare, but now I shall do my best to prevent further evil in this kingdom,” she said, her voice still strong. She raised her staff and green light glowed from the crystalline orb at its top.
“You have no power—” the first fairy began.
“BEGONE!” Maleficent cried. She threw both her hands into the air and green fire shot from her body.
The three fairies shrieked and dissolved backward, the essence of their being returned to whatever evil place had spawned them.
“Oh, foolish king and queen,” Maleficent said. “What evil you have done cannot be entirely undone. The land will shriek forever from the pain you have caused it. Perhaps, however, I can save what little is left.”
She raised her arms again and chanted. Green fog flowed out from her fingertips and through the delicately paned windows of the castle. It ebbed around the black and twisted trees that now grew in the dried-up moat. Vines and thorns began to sprout from the ground. These grew rapidly and reached up over the castle walls, crisscrossing quickly like the warp and weft of a spinster’s loom. Soon the whole castle was enveloped in a dark green shadow.
Unholy cries of frustration rang out from the blasted land beyond.
Spent, Maleficent fell back, her white face even paler than before.
“We are safe.”
The king, about to give her royal thanks or some such, was not allowed to speak.
She held up her hand and he was silenced.
“You, however, will receive a punishment far kinder than you deserve considering the things you have done,” she said coldly. “For selling your own daughter to the Dark and destroying the world outside these castle walls, you should die. But as the new queen of this castle, I will show leniency and lock you in the dungeon forever, where you may think upon what you have done and repent.”
And the guards of the castle, and the people within, did nothing to stop this—and may, in fact, have helped push their old king and queen down the stairs.
“Sold me?” Aurora murmured. “I don’t understand….”
Maleficent put her hand on the poor girl’s head.
“I am so sorry, child,” she said. “This is a terrible thing to have happened to you and the world you knew. But at least now you and those still here may live, and we shall survive and prevail.”
And so Queen Maleficent, Aurora, and the survivors in the castle lived happily ever after, while the world lay dead and deadly around them.
THE PRINCESS AURORA was spinning again.
She couldn’t help it.
When the corridors were wide, inviting, and empty…When bright bands of actual sunlight slipped through the vines and the windows, golden and slow, puddling on the ground the way she imagined it did in real forests…When the soft carpet beckoned, patterned with dark colors and bright spots the way meadows were supposed to be…Then she would sing and spin, twirling down the corridor, feeling the warm moments of light on her skin as she flung her arms out. Trying to recapture snippets of dreams that once in a while involved the woods.
Sometimes she took off her golden shoes.
She would sing whatever came to mind and seemed appropriate for the moment—bits from the nicer tunes the minstrel taught her, proper ballads from her music tutor, half-remembered lullabies, snippets of her own invention. Sometimes, right before sleep claimed her, music rang in her sleepy ears, entire orchestras and choruses proclaiming sternly but joyfully some unremembered thing. Sometimes she would try to remember those tunes, and sing them, too.
This was usually a good corridor for twirling. It was on the southern side of the castle, just above the great hall, and if the hot winds outside managed to scrape away the layers of smoke and soot, sunbeams would sometimes form. The far end of the corridor led to a wide set of formal stone stairs that had balustrades good for dragging the tips of her fingers dramatically along while pushing herself back and forth to each side, like a deer happily tumbling down a waterfall.