The first time Diaval opens human eyes, it’s very strange. Human eyes only have one lid. Human eyes aren’t as keen. And, of course, human eyes like looking at other humans. Or things, Diaval amends quickly, that look human. The person who changed Diaval into a human clearly isn’t human; that headdress is true horns, not an affectation of hair and clips like Diaval’s seen some humans wear.
Diaval blinks, and tries to stand, and is surprised by how well the body responds. It’s unsettling, feeling legs this long, feeling... arms instead of wings. No feathers. Nothing protecting Diaval from the wind, but nothing making the wind an intimate part of movement either. Diaval stands, staggers, cocks head towards the other person with horns and a sweeping black outfit and that staff that channeled power and changed Diaval into a human. “What have you done,” Diaval says, first croaking but then voice steadying, “to my beautiful self?”
“Would you rather I let them beat you to death?” The voice settles it for Diaval: this person is a faerie.
Diaval grits teeth. The feeling is familiar. The sensation is not. “I’m not certain.”
“Stop complaining. I saved your life.”
“Forgive me,” Diaval manages, sweeping a bow. Faeries are capricious, after all.
The faerie seems contented by that sap. “What do I call you?”
“Diaval.” The name sounds different on a human tongue than a raven’s. “And, in return for saving my life, I am your servant. Whatever you need.” The words are sour on Diaval’s tongue, but a debt is a debt.
“Wings,” the faerie says, and Diaval begins to hope for the first time. “I need you to be my wings.”
Before Diaval can even think to respond, another flash of magic consumes the human form, and Diaval has wings again. With a cry of joy that Diaval doubts the faerie understands, Diaval launches into the air and begins to fly above the faerie’s head, simply pleased to no longer be bound to that human form.
*
Diaval’s first mission for the faerie was to spy on some humans who turn out to be the king and his queen in the castle. Upon returning to where the faerie waited outside, Diaval reported that the humans had been touching each other and moaning and naked in bed. The faerie swore, human curses with no power behind them, despite the obvious anger they showed, and turned all sorts of interesting colors before storming off, leaving Diaval to fly along behind, an afterthought.
The faerie led Diaval back to the fae lands, behind the wall of thorns that promised terrible things to those who attempted breaching them uninvited. Once across, the faerie swept into what was clearly a throne room without the walls, and Diaval looked around, fascinated by how... normal it all seemed. The colors were too bright, but the shapes were right, and it took a very close look to notice that the little insects that buzzed around weren’t quite right. The larger creatures were more obviously fae, but they seemed to be staying away from the island the faerie’s throne was on.
“My lady,” a fae being Diaval had mistaken for a rock -- maybe a statue -- says as they arrive, rising stiffly and bowing with a grinding sound. “All has been quiet.”
“Good.” The faerie waves a hand in dismissal and sat upon the throne.
Diaval settles upon a tree branch with a caw, and the faerie’s gaze locked onto Diaval in an instant. “Ah. Yes.” A raise of the staff and a muttered word, and Diaval almost falls out of the tree, human once more.
“My lady,” Diaval manages, the words stumbling. “What should I call you?”
“Maleficent.” A smile curls across the faerie’s face, an expression that Diaval thought more suited to a cat than someone so human-formed. “‘My lady’ is also acceptable, of course.”
Diaval’s bow is slight and careful, as the crow-turned-human balances precariously among the branches. “My lady Maleficent. How shall I serve you now?”
“Go, my wings. Explore my lands. Learn them well, and come at my call.”
Turning into a crow unexpectedly, Diaval reflects a moment later, was something that it was entirely too possible to get used to.
*
Diaval explores Maleficent’s kingdom for almost a month before her call comes. By the end of the month, the crow’s almost used to being called ‘her pet’, and ‘her crow’, and ‘her boy’. Even in crow form, the fae can understand... him, Diaval supposes, is how they’d say it, though Diaval’s not entirely sure why.
Perhaps it’s because she is for Maleficent, for the faeries who can change things outside themselves, and he is for the rest of them. Some of the little fae don’t use either, and Diaval understands that better, calls them ze with the rest of the fae folk, and never quite questions why the fae don’t call him zir instead. Size, perhaps? Or status? Either one makes as much sense as anything about the human tongue the fae folk share and the human form Maleficent periodically inflicts upon him is forced to use.
When Diaval settles back down in front of Maleficent, he stumbles only briefly as his wings turn to arms and his feathers shrink into subtle human hair upon his skin. “My lady,” he says, bowing.
“They call you my pet, I’ve heard?” She smiles, lips thin and dark as blood in moonlight. “Accurate enough, I suppose. It’s time to go exploring again, my wings.”
“Where to, my lady?”
She stands, and her power eddied behind her in shadows that looked, for a moment, like wings. “The castle,” she says. “Where else?”
Diaval doesn’t answer. She doesn’t seem to expect him to.
“We need to check in with the king again,” she says, voice cold as winter and hot as a bonfire. “They tend to dislike seeing me. You can move unnoticed.”
“Am I to fly or walk?” Diaval asks, after a brief pause. He isn’t sure what he wants the answer to be, whether
Her smile, as she turns him into a crow again and begins to walk, is cryptic and not reassuring at all.
*
The answer, it turned out, was that Diaval was to fly to the castle, and see as much as possible while still a crow. Unfortunately -- and as he had expected, with each beat of his wings as he flew circles around the castle and found closed windows, barred doors, and curtains veiling what views he might have been able to find -- his report wasn’t enough, and he was sent back as a human, dressed in human clothing.
Diaval didn’t particularly care about the form; he knew how to use it. He cared about Maleficent’s instruction to “Act like you belong there” -- how could he belong there? He was a crow, a creature of wind and field and sky, not suited for the insides of these hand-crafted caves, stone hidden away behind plush fabrics that apparently meant something to the people who loved and worked inside them.
The crow hated it, hated being trapped by long legs and weak eyes and stone and fabric that muffled noise. The first report Diaval gave to Maleficent, the crow gave at sundown, in the long shadow the the castle, and Diaval grated out every word: “The castle is boring. People move about it. There is cooking and cleaning. Humans eat and talk. Some of them are restricted to certain rooms, and you can tell who is bound where by what they’re wearing. How much longer do I need to do this?”
“Until you are done,” Maleficent answered, and she ran a hand along Diaval’s cheek. “I will meet you here again in a week.”
“The queen has retreated to her rooms,” Diaval says next week. “Her ladies chitter and chatter about something that they will not say to me, for they think I am a man. And no man, even one seen as weak-minded--” his lips curve into a smile he knows mimics hers “--is allowed the secrets of a woman’s rooms uninvited. The queen has not invited me. I am not allowed to know.”
“You will find a way,” Maleficent snaps, and she turns without another word.
“Another week, then?” Diaval calls after her.
He thinks he sees her nod as she disappears.
“She rests often, and her ladies bring her anything she desires.” Diaval shrugs, the movement a stutter of shoulder-blades where wings should be before smoothly shifting to his shoulders. “The king hovers like he’s afraid to touch her but wants nothing more than to do so. The men tell him to drink, and hunt, and have his joy now while he’s still free. The women laugh behind their hands and say that the queen should have enjoyed herself more while she still could.”
“What are they talking around?” Maleficent growls, and Diaval swallows his first response as green light shines behind her eyes. “Do you know?”
“My lady,” he says, eyes averted, hands folded neatly as he has learnt to do in front of those who are called his betters. “The queen is said to be pregnant.”
For a moment, Diaval wonders if he is going to die. For another breath, he wonders if the castle will still stand in the morning. Then Maleficent lowers her staff, and the smile on her face makes him step back, curl his shoulders in, and say, very softly, “My lady?”
“One more week,” she says, and her voice is far too steady for the emotions she just displayed, he can hear that now, hear the plod of words as she spaces them evenly against her rage. “Tell me when this baby is due.”
Diaval bows silently and turns back to the castle, walking up the path he has followed a hundred times by now on errands for the castle, into the halls of stone that no longer oppress but simply hold. The servant men he joins in the hall welcome him with hands on his shoulders and bawdy comments about “his girl” that he laughs at more from amazement that they think he has a girl and how wrong they are about the faerie woman he meets than anything else.
He is, he reflects as he curls up to sleep, almost comfortable in the form of a man after the weeks in the castle. Diaval shakes his head a little, settling into the scent of straw and too many humans in too small a space with too little water to cleanse with, and smiles to himself at the familiarity of it as he falls into dreams of dark feathers, open skies, and flight.
*
When he leaves the castle with Maleficent the next week, he knows that they will return eventually. Even as Diaval stretches wings in flight above her head, the crow expects that they’ll return when the child is born. Whatever Maleficent’s grudge against the king is born from, at least he seems restricted to him and his blood alone; the queen is innocent of anything but having the luck to be married to that man.
*
The first time Diaval sees Aurora, he is a crow and perched upon Maleficent’s staff. The infant blessed and cursed in turn, and Diaval ignores much of that in favor of looking at the tiny human and wondering why this child is called she and what cues the humans are even seeing to choose that word.
The second time he sees her, he’s a crow and peering in a window, listening to her cry. The little faeries who turned themselves human to care for her have no idea what they’re doing, and it shows. He flutters in and perches on her crib, looking down at her. Her eyes lock on to him immediately, and she reaches for him, cries falling off as he hops back far enough that her hands can’t touch him. He’s charmed, though, by the golden fuzz coming in on her head, and the peach-soft skin that barely protects her, and the way her soft blue eyes can’t quite focus for any length of time.
He keeps coming back whenever Maleficent doesn’t have any other mission for him, giving Aurora toys and helping ensure that the faeries don’t forget about Aurora in their petty arguments with each other.
Maleficent follows him one day; bored or irritated or curious or whatever the emotion prompting her actions is, Diaval chooses to ignore her because it worries him too much to acknowledge her. She watches him, as he watches Aurora, with half an eye on the faerie sisters who are theoretically her caretakers.
“You could do more for her with hands,” Maleficent remarks, and turns him into a human while he’s halfway out the window.
Aurora laughs in delight the first time he picks her up and holds her against his chest, awkward and tender, and he looks in her eyes and smiles and falls in love for the first time in his life.