A/N: I apologize for the long absence between chapter postings. School schedules, doctor appointments, a visit from the godkids, and a cold brought back from my girlfriend's vacation meant that the most I could do creative-wise the last few weeks was stare at a blank screen. I was going to post two chapters tonight, but chapter thirteen did not come out the way I wanted it to, and so I'm rewriting it to make my muse stop throwing a fit.
The Druid Code in this chapter comes from a certain media, and if someone can pick it out, then you're probably as old as I am :D
Once again, a million thanks to those that favorite/review. It means a lot to me to see the notifications and while a writer should write for the sake of appeasing the hungry maw inside of them; that there are people interested in what I'm writing is ...a very exciting feeling.
The storm descended on the Moorland with a strength that shook the boughs of the Great Trees and sent the lesser fair folk underneath their respective shelter. While not the first of the summer storms, this one was intent on leaving an impression before it rolled south and turned into a mild downpour. The storm nixes fluttered down when the first of many fat raindrops splattered over the wide petals of the whispersweet flowers and coxed Aurora up and away from the prone-to-flooding Moorland marsh and up along a winding craggy path until they guided her into a cavern protected by a stretch of rocky outcropping. From within, Aurora watched the rain backlit by the snaps of lightning as the sheet of water went vertical to horizontal with the wind.
The light inside was given up by fireleaf, a plant Maleficent showed her during the coldest part of winter. The plant's natural inclination to give off heat and light made it a welcomed substitution for actual smoke and flame in a season where dry kindling was rare. It's against the fireleaf crawling up along the rock like ivy that Aurora rested, hands filled with the fruits of her wandering. She watched the sky split open, spilling bright light over the world before the darkness swallowed the Moors, and wondered what would Maleficent had told her to explain the violent clash of nature.
The thought of the lithe fairy caused Aurora to scowl around a bite of blackberry. She'd forgotten that she was mad with the faery. No. Not mad. It was a tighter feeling that stung just underneath her breastbone like the time she'd fallen from a rotted branch high in one of the oaks that sheltered the cottage. She'd been chasing Diaval, climbing higher and higher to steal back the spool of ribbon he'd snatched from her hands, but she'd misjudged the strength of one limb and tumbled back to earth with enough force that her lungs felt bruised from the inside out.
This feeling felt like that and it lingered, stuck to her ribs like molasses.
Before they'd encountered Yennifer on the road, Aurora felt shame roll through her much like the summer storm, but it dissipated when they'd arrived at the farmhouse. Somber moods never stayed for long, but this felt different.
Tucked into the cliff with little more than the light of cave moss, Aurora thought on her journey into the human world and marveled at the sights she saw there. Philip had been eager and kind enough to show her much of what he enjoyed. A minstrel show, a joust set to the colors of the setting sun, a dance around a bonfire crackling merrily. Surrounded by people who were shedding the stress of a kingdom free from the yoke of a tyrant, Aurora had been swept away by the emotion of the crowd. None of it could match the sheer beauty and wonder that the Moors offered, but it held its own charms all the same.
She wanted to explore the kingdom, wanted to uncover the daily lives of its inhabitants as eagerly as she explored the Moors at Maleficent's side.
The dark faery's presence in her thoughts dimmed the brightness of Aurora's thoughts like a candle caught in a quick breeze. Aurora's mood grew grim as she recalled the rebukes of Maleficent. The first at the festival, then before they aided Yennifer, and then when Adalia's babe had quieted enough to be placed at her mother's breast for a first meal.
It's not that Aurora was ignorant or callous! Really! She just wanted Maleficent to like the part of Aurora's life that was outside the (what she felt) still-there Wall of Thorns. She felt as if it had only been taken down in a physical sense, yet still surrounded Maleficent as some sort of invisible shield.
She remembered Maleficent's story about her father, and could read between the lines with a quicker grasp of wit than she thought either the faery of Diaval gave her credit. She guessed Maleficent's dislike of the human kingdom stemmed in part from a fear that it would steal Aurora away as it had the young boy that Stefan once had been.
"Well," Aurora said to herself after she took a moment to suck clean the blackberry juice from her fingers. "I'll just have to show her that I'm different."
The storm rumbled as if in approval.
~.*.~
The dream disappeared with her awakening and left her with curious thoughts about the trees and whispering words on the wind. Aurora opened her eyes to the grey stained morning and the shadow of bark and antlers that stood upon the soaked ground below her shelter.
"Oh, hello Balthazar," she said, voice scratchy from sleep. "Are you looking for Maleficent?"
The great head shook.
"You were looking for me?"
Balthazar nodded, the creak of his body audible even from the distance between them.
"Oh, all right then." Aurora stretched. Her legs complained once with the movement, then quieted as blood returned to properly circulating throughout her limbs. She made sure that her retreat from the small cave would spare the fireleaf any untoward bruising, and winced as her foot slipped on rocks still wet from the rain.
Her ankle twinged and she was careful the rest of the path down, favoring her other leg until she was flat footed on grass that squelched between her toes. She tested the injury and smiled in relief when she could place weight back on it.
All through this Balthazar waited with the patience of the forest. He beckoned for her to follow him when Aurora confirmed that there was no lasting harm done to her ankle. The pair walked west, toward the boundary with the human kingdom. Aurora removed her slippers somewhere between the Wallerbog's favorite muddy creek and the overgrown barrow protected by a rather unpleasant spriggan, who leaned out from a cracked pillar to leer as Aurora passed by.
She carried her slippers in hand as Balthazar stopped just before the boundary, where the no-man's land left from the years of thorns had been churned to mud was visible through the thick undergrowth of the Moorland; he turned north to where the forest began to claim ground from the lowland marsh. Here, the trees grew taller than Aurora could crane her neck to spy and were wider than she could hope to possibly wrap her arms around. They walked further until they came to a grove of rowan trees. These were nothing like the Great Tree that Maleficent nested in, but the grove claimed a small clearing in the woods for themselves.
Aurora looked to Balthazar for clarification on what to observe or discover here. Across the Moorland and in the human kingdom, there were plenty of groves. Was there something special here? The sentinel approached the center of the grove, where the little bit of light that made it down to the forest floor settled, and waited for her to do the same.
The forest woke up around them as Aurora waited for whatever it was that Balthazar wanted to show her. Birds chirruped in the branches, and the crack of twigs and the rustle of plants announced the coming and going of wildlife that Aurora couldn't see. There was the softest of hums as the insect world roused for the day, and if Aurora strained her hearing, she could follow the babbling brook that detoured away from the great lake.
She became so absorbed in her listening that Balthazar's careful grasp of her palm caused Aurora to startle, a nervous laugh escaping her before she could stop it. His hand was rough on her own, the bark jagged and catching even with his gentle ministrations. He turned her hand palm-side up, gesturing that she should splay her fingers wide.
He pointed at her with his free hand, spoke one word in that ancient language of his, and then pressed carefully on her palm with a finger. First against the meaty bit centered between her thumb and her wrist, then at the base of her middle finger. He tapped the second pad of her smallest finger before the next touch came to the base of her index finger before the final touch landed exactly where he began.
Curiosity furrowed Aurora's brow.
Balthazar went through the motions again, pointing first at her, speaking that creaking word second, then tapping out that pattern on her hand third. He repeated the process two more times before it became clear.
"My name!"
Balthazar nodded in approval, rumbling laughter shaking his antlers. He pointed to himself, said another word, then spelled it upon Aurora's palm. This time it took two repetitions. "Your name?"
Another nod.
They went back and forth. Balthazar pointing at objects, or speaking and spelling out the words that Aurora suggests. Aurora quickly picked up the tapping on her hand connecting to letters, but it took longer until she could easily connect the touch at specific points equating to specific letters. The only obstacle was when she tried to spell her name on her own hand in the beginning, only for Balthazar to block her. He shook his head and spoke in the low timbre Maleficent once told her was a warning note.
After that she fetched fallen rowanberries and used the juice from those she crushed to paint the letters onto her name. With the stains, she worked through the common letters and those that did not come up in casual look-and-speak, she simply went down the list until her hand was covered in her known alphabet.
The second time she went to spell her name, she asked Balthazar's permission first. He studied the berry juice on her palm, then gave his approval. He watched as Aurora pressed the tip of her right index finger along the pattern of her name and when she finished with a gentle nudge to the point between her thumb and wrist a sense of … well, truth shivered through her bones.
A musical language sang to her from the haven of the outermost rowan trees. Maleficent came into view as the faery language resonated in the grove. "In the old tongue that we taught humans it is called An Cód Drui, in the common tongue that your people now use, it is simply the Druid's code."
"Druid?"
"Priests of men who spoke the language of the land and were the most learned among the kingdoms. They were mediators between faery and human, and oftentimes between human and human." Maleficent did not enter the ring of trees; instead she favored a slow walk around the outside. "From the stories I heard growing up, druids faded from power as the Saints came from the south, carried on the wings of the iron eagle. Your human captain, Berend, might know more about this than the oral traditions of faery."
"What is the Code for?"
"As you have noticed, Balthazar cannot speak your langauge, nor can you speak his. You might, after many years, learn to understand pieces here and there, but the human mind was not made to follow the river of words that is faery. At best, there is the go-between of the Gaels but even that is dying among your people."
Aurora remembered Gàidhlig from the lessons that Aunt Thistlewit gave on the days she'd deemed an education warranted. They usually followed a day that Aunt Flittle caused Aunt Knotgrass to puff up like a disgruntled hen during a fight and the two were locked in a battle that forced Aurora and the most mellow of her aunties out into the garden.
"When the kingdoms of the humans were little more than tribes scattered across the Highlands, the Borderguards and the Druids came up with a language that was not spoken, but conveyed through touch."
"Oh," Aurora looked down at her hand. "Why did it feel right to spell my name then?"
"Patience Beastie, every good lesson should have a tale woven through it. Unless you learned how to pay attention the pixie way?" Maleficent's lips quirked upward, the lip stain as dark as the crushed rowan berries on Aurora's hand. "Now, at first, the Druid's Code was simply a bridge between worlds. With it, faery and humans could communicate beyond the fumbling of words. We learned from the Druids, and they from us. It became something much more when the warriors of the eagle came north on a sea of red and gold."
"Who were these warriors?"
"I do not know the name they hold in human history, only the memories of the Sentinels and the stories of the spriggans," Maleficent paced a third circle around the outside. "When these battles rose up, the warriors knew to attack the drui first, somehow understanding that the druids were the keystone to their tribes and to the alliance between man and fae. The druids were teachers and lawmakers, not soldiers, and even the harsh landscape could only slow the red tide so long. So the Code evolved."
"Evolved?"
Maleficent nodded to Balthazar, who then pressed a new word into Aurora's hand. He pressed it again, and then a third time. Then he waited for her to spell it back to him.
Aurora's eyes left Balthazar to watch Maleficent who paced still outside the grove. When neither gave her any indication of continuing unless she spelled the word, her attention ducked to her palm and she did so. She tapped the tip of her index finger for 'L', then the base of her middle finger for 'U', then the base of her smallest finger for 'I', and then the tip of her ring finger for 'S'. Luis.
As the word rang in her mind, she felt her body change. Gone was the golden laurel of her hair and the paleness of her skin, replaced by the bark and branches of the slender rowan trees around her. She felt her feet become roots and she could taste the sweetness of the soil she had sunk into.
And all along the edge of her awareness came the softest of whispers, welcoming and friendly in their way. Words were not exchanged, but emotions were, and Aurora learned that those who surrounded her were the trees. The trees! She was a tree. How could she be a tree? She was a human girl and her name was not Luis, it was Aurora!
The wind whistled along her branches and she could feel the faint touch of sunlight upon the crown of her leaves, and then all too soon she was flesh and blood again, her body her own and the need to breathe something foreign to her body.
"What … was that?" She asked, eyes wide.
"Protection." Maleficent stared at her with the same awe Aurora remembered seeing upon waking from the curse. It's disbelief mingled with wonderment and she grew curious as to what magic she defied this time. "The druids tended the sacred groves and the sacred groves tended to them in turn. You felt right when you spelled your name because it was your true name. At your Christening, you were bestowed with yours and as long as you remember it, no enchantment can steal away what makes you, you."
"...but I turned into a tree." She frowned, because that sentence sounded odd. "I did turn into a tree… right?"
"Yes, Aurora. Within the sacred groves, if you trace the name of the trees into your palm, they will shelter you as one of them until whatever danger you're fleeing from has left. Merely think of your true name and you will return to your true self."
Aurora stared her hand with a newfound light. "This is …"
"A gift." Maleficent interrupted her. "A belated one, for your birthday. A reminder that you belong in both worlds, faery and …" her voice caught, tearing into a higher octave. "And ...human. Faery and human."
"Godmother…" Aurora rose to her feet and took a step forward.
Maleficent took a shaky step back, much like that first night they met. Her eyes went wide and nervous like a deer and Aurora braced for the golden sweep of sleeping magic to fall over her. Only it didn't. And only Maleficent's wings remained inviting, half-furled in a lazy demeanor to soak up what little sunlight poured onto the forest floor.
Their laissez-faire attitude of wings still so new to the dance of their relationship was not enough for Aurora to ignore the clear warning Maleficent gave off. Her first step turned into her last and she did her best to smile from the distance between her and her godmother. She rocked on her heels, hands clasped before her.
"If you are to have friends in the human kingdom, Aurora, then a simple query during a handshake will point them out to you. Any one human who was trusted by faery enough to be taught this will be a friend to you." Maleficent's words were clipped, faster than her usual speech. Aurora figured it was still nerves, but she could not understand why the faery would be nervous around her. The faery's hand fluttered up near her throat, and the jittery movement floated down through her body until Aurora watched the tip of flight feathers quiver. "Now. I spent the night with Balthazar's … I suppose the best translation would be elder - and they invited you to watch an awakening ceremony. Would you wish to do so?"
"Yes." Aurora took her second step toward Maleficent now that she felt it was safe to do so, but halted a second time. She returned to Balthazar's side and picked up his hand. As he queried her actions, she spelled out 'thank you' into his hand before she darted to the offered opening underneath Maleficent's wing.