The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension

by H. D. Strozier

  “They gain the adoration of men by getting them as close to sex as possible without actually receiving it. A delicate balance. Too reserved and you’re a prude. Too forward and you’re a whore. If you can keep that balance, you can put even the greatest of men in your control. And for women, you make them adore you by making them just jealous enough that they can only wish to attain your control, give them something to try to achieve for. And all the while, you take care of them and look out for their interests. It’s that simple.”

  Tsubame put the flat iron down and MaLeila felt the woman wrapping her hair up. After she was through the woman gestured for MaLeila to turn around in the stool so that her back was to the mirror of the vanity. Then Tsubame took a piece of thread, tied the ends together and used it to shape her eyebrows.

  “I’m glad you did decide to embrace your potential and join me.”

  “Why is that? Not like you need my help.”

  “Maybe not for the initial takeover but I still would have essentially needed a successor eventually.”

  “I didn’t take you for one who liked to share your power.”

  “I don’t. But I’m not arrogant enough to think I can rule and maintain order in two worlds, let alone that I’ll be forever able to do it. As long lived as I’ll be, this body was made to eventually die. That’s why I need you to become the Immortal Queen Tsubame.”

  “But that’s you.”

  “No. It’s part of me. But it’s not the totality of me. It’s a charismatic personality that I have to pass down because I won’t make the mistakes of my predecessors who destroyed their greatest allies because they feared losing their power and then when they died had no one to carry on their idea. That’s why I’m recreating myself. And the first step in doing that is introducing you to the mask of Tsubame.”

  Tsubame worked silently after that, using tweezers to refine the shape of her eyebrows. Afterwards, Tsubame moved onto doing her makeup—brushing white, red, pink, black and gray paints on MaLeila’s face, neck, and. When Tsubame was done with the makeup, she grabbed a curling iron and curled a lock of hair on either side of her face. Tsubame put the curling iron down and stepped back.

  “Turn around,” she said to MaLeila.

  MaLeila twisted around in her chair, to look at herself. The first thing that caught her attention was the makeup. Tsubame had painted her face, her neck and the part of her collar bone and shoulder exposed white. Not white, MaLeila decided. There was a beige undertone to the makeup like an off-white, but it was certainly paler that MaLeila’s natural skin tone with a faint tint of pink on her cheeks. Her eyelids were an odd mixture of smoky grey and faint pink, eyebrows delicately arched and filled in, mascara making her eyelashes look longer, and finally her lips were painted blood red. Compared to her makeup, her hair which was wrapped in a loose elegant bun with a small red flower on the left side, was an afterthought.

  “This is the real face of Tsubame. This is what makes us immortal,” Tsubame said leaning down so that her face was next to MaLeila’s. “This is the mask you’re going to show the world once you become queen.”

  While MaLeila was no longer trying to stop Tsubame, it was only because she had an invested interested in toppling the Magic Council that she was going along with the woman. She wasn’t sold on the idea of being queen, nor did she think she ever would be. When she said as much to Tsubame, the woman laughed and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll certainly get used to it. For now though, since you’re so eager to see the Magic Council fall, let’s you and I start gathering our allies.”

  “You mean there are powers you haven’t pissed off yet?” MaLeila asked.

  Tsubame grinned in response and then went to her chest.

  “First though, I want you to have this,” she said as she pulled out a long staff.

  It was similar to MaLeila’s old one, a tall piece of gold plated platinum metal shaped like an ankh, but coiled around the neck and handle of the staff was a snake with its mouth half enclosed around its own tail.

  “This is my staff. I hardly ever have use for it anymore. Until you are able to refashion your own, you may use it,” Tsubame said holding it out to MaLeila.

  MaLeila slowly took it from Tsubame, testing the weight of the item in her hand. It was both heavy and light like her own staff had been and while Tsubame said she hardly used it anymore, the magic MaLeila sensed flowing within it was a fair indication of how often Tsubame had used it at one time, much like MaLeila had used her own. And while it would do, it was because Tsubame’s magic permeated through it that it still felt wrong.

  “How long until I can make my own?” MaLeila asked.

  “Whenever you’re ready to,” Tsubame said.

  MaLeila gave the woman a wry look which Tsubame only shrugged at. MaLeila had been hoping for more help on the matter. Theoretically she knew how to fashion a staff. Contrary to popular belief, everything in nature was magic if you knew how to hone it, but simply some items in nature were better conductors of magic than others. Too weak a conductor and it weakened a magic users magic and eventually destroyed the conductor because it couldn’t contain the power of its user. Too strong a conductor and the user risked the item zapping their life force and killing them. Simple witches and wizards used things like wood and plants to make their magical items, usually wands. Sorcerers and sorceresses needed stronger conductors than that and even that depended on the strength of the magic user. Platinum was one of the strongest conductors and magical items made from it were usually plated with gold to reign in its conduciveness for young powerful magical users until one day their magic was so strong it destroyed the gold plating and left the powerful platinum in its place. MaLeila’s staff had been far from being destroyed, but there had been a fair amount of crack in its plating. Tsubame gold plating wasn’t worn at all.

  “I put a new gold plating on it. Pure gold mind you. That way you can adapt to it.”

  There was still a lot Tsubame’s residual magic coursing through it though. It may work fine for now, but it still wasn’t fashioned by MaLeila’s magic. Of course she hadn’t fashioned her old staff physically. Claude Thorne had. But MaLeila had been the first and only one to use it and her magical energy had permeated it. MaLeila decided that fashioning a new staff would be her first priority when she had time. But more pressing at the moment was why Tsubame thought she’d need the staff right now to begin with if they were going to gather allies.

  “While I’d like us to gain allies the… diplomatic way,” Tsubame said with a pause in between her words as though diplomatic wasn’t the word she wanted to use but was the best fitting, “It may come down to a fight to gain them or we could inadvertently turn them into our enemies which means we’d have to fight our way out of enemy territory. I don’t think it will come to that where we’re going but for all their similarities our worlds are still very different and even an alliance with Marie isn’t a guarantee of her loyalty.”

  ******

  After Hitler, the lone sorcerer who rose to power and waged war on the rest of the world and killed upwards to 17 million people during his reign, the German magic families who had been unable to stop him fell from the graces of the magical world. Through sheer stubbornness, Marie Voss, who had been twenty-one at the time of the war, was the last magic family head with any influence left standing in Germany after the backlash if only because of her sheer stubbornness. Or at least, that’s what MaLeila gathered when she read through the woman’s entry in the International Registry of Magic Practitioners.

  “I’m actually surprised she hasn’t come to you seeking your assistance herself yet,” Tsubame said once they had settled into their plane flight.

  “Can’t we just get there with magic? I’m pretty sure we’re on every secret no fly list in the country at this point,” MaLeila said when the woman initially bought the tickets.

  “That’s true, but the fun part is getting around it anyway. When you have as much unlimited magical potential as we do, we have to
remind people that we aren’t limited to their silly rules and laws that they use to control others,” Tsubame said.

  “A lone sorceress with no magical ties who gave the Magic Council the proverbial fuck you when she was only sixteen years old. Those are the kind of people Marie likes to prey on,”

  “Prey on?”

  “In her endeavor to conquer death and achieve immortality.”

  “Did she contact you?”

  “No. By the time she knew anything of me, I was already closely tied to the Long family and she didn’t bother.”

  “Closely tied to the Longs? You mean they recognized your friendship with Irvin in your universe?”

  “No. They recognized our marriage,” Tsubame said simply

  “Your marriage?” MaLeila repeated. That was certainly new.

  “We didn’t stay married very long of course. My marriage to him was supposed to tame me and the Magic Council became frustrated when I was still as rebellious and free spirited as I was before. So they began looking for a way to cast me out. I didn’t know that at the time of course. Not that knowing would have made me stop my course of actions, but I probably would have been queen that much sooner.”

  “What did you do?” MaLeila asked.

  “I had an affair.”

  MaLeila frowned, eyes settling on the little television screen in front of them, but not truly looking at it. Affairs in the magical world happened all the time. Bastet told her that much. The only time it became an issue was when there was an accidental exchange of magic or, MaLeila imagined because Bastet hadn’t told her this but in world where heirs were prized and bloodline was your reputation it was a given, a child was born of the affair. MaLeila was sure Tsubame wouldn’t let just any man have access to her magic, but at the same time as powerful as she was she didn’t seem the type to just have anyone’s baby either.

  “With who?” MaLeila asked. If she knew who she could figure out which scenario was more likely.

  Two things happened before Tsubame could answer; the pilot announced for them to put on their seatbelts because they were coming in for landing and to put away all electronics and carry-on luggage and it occurred to MaLeila just who Tsubame had her affair with. She turned her head slightly to her right to where Marcel was sitting next to Nika in the opposite aisle and belatedly wondered why she had needed to ask in the first place. Who else would Tsubame have had her affair with?

  Tsubame’s affair quickly left MaLeila mind though as the plane landed, pulled up to the gate and Tsubame, who waited on no one’s permission, promptly walked off the plane even before the few first class sitting ahead of them could get up. MaLeila, Marcel, and Nika were quick to follow. They had no luggage so Tsubame led them to the shuttle pickup. Even not dressed in her expensive silk and satins, Tsubame certainly had an air of prestige an authority that made people move out her way while dressed in a simple flared empire waist burnt orange sundress and hat. They rented a car and then proceed to drive three hours to Marie Voss’ castle. It was such a decidedly normal trip without magic that MaLeila could almost believe that this wasn’t a quest for world domination and MaLeila was simple on a trip to see old family friends with her boyfriend, his sister, and his ex like a weird family road trip in cinematic romance comedies.

  “Right?” MaLeila muttered to herself as she caught sight of a large isolated castle surround by a thin forest in the distant countryside valley. And though it was at least a third as small as the Longs castle that resided in the English countryside, it took nothing away from its grandeur. In fact, MaLeila was more impressed by the Voss castle on first appearance than she had been when she first laid eyes on the Long Castle, if only for its coloring. MaLeila could only describe the color of its bricks as the color of fall and she imagined that it would be a sight to behold once all the trees surrounding it had turned oranges, browns, and yellows.

  Marcel drove through a well-kept dirt path in the forest and up to the front door of the castle. They got out the car and Tsubame put her hand on the large dark red doors. Then she turned to Marcel and said, “Let’s announce ourselves?”

  The shadow of the door suddenly expanded underneath them. In the time it took MaLeila to blink suddenly they were on the other door, inside the area between the actual castle and the wall they had just been standing outside of. Then the shadow beneath them arched upward and through the door again, presumably to reside back where it had originally been in correlation with the high afternoon sun.

  MaLeila frowned. A trick like that undoubtedly meant that Marcel had also bent space and distance. Maybe a magical loop that redirected the rays of the sun so that the shadow moved to the other side and therefore moved them to the other side because of Marcel’s ability to control the shadows. Devdan certainly had never done it. Couldn’t do it in fact since he had trouble doing anything that meant manipulating space and distance beyond traveling through shadows. Then again, MaLeila wasn’t surprised. Marcel had a couple of centuries on Devdan. More than that since he wasn’t sealed to begin with.

  “I’ll show you how to do it later,” Marcel whispered to her.

  MaLeila blinked out her thoughts and then smiled bashfully.

  “Was it that obvious?”

  “Tsubame used to get the same look when she encountered manipulations with magic she had never seen or tried before,” Marcel said with a grin.

  Nika and Tsubame were already at the door of the castle waiting for Marcel and MaLeila to catch up. Once they had, Tsubame touched the lock on the door. It clicked and she pushed the door opened and they stepped into an elaborate foyer with lights that reflected against the off white walls and made the coloring look like fall just like the bricks on the outside. Tsubame sat on a bench near the door and gestured for MaLeila to join her on the bench.

  “Marie shouldn’t be long,” Tsubame said and no sooner than she made the statement did the woman come into the foyer.

  Her hair was black and wavy, contrasting vividly against her porcelain white skin and causing her blue eyes to stand out, and she seemed to favor bold reds and oranges the same color of fall as her house in her clothing. She said nothing at first, staying quiet in a way that reminded MaLeila of the way Tsubame was quiet when she was waiting expectantly for someone to speak. But unlike Tsubame, Marie seemed cautious. Tsubame was never cautious. Careful of course, but never cautious; only knowing. Tsubame was matching the woman’s stare with that same knowing look and a slight smile, waiting for Marie to speak as much as Marie was waiting for Tsubame to explain why she was there. A silent battle of wills.

  Tsubame won.

  Marie said something in what MaLeila guessed was German. Tsubame stood and replied in the woman’s own language. Marie spoke again and this time, Tsubame replied in English again.

  “I’m not hiding from anyone. I’m hiding her,” Tsubame said, nodding her head towards MaLeila.

  Marie glanced at MaLeila and gave her a once over before looking at Tsubame and saying something in German.

  “Why don’t we go somewhere a little more comfortable and I’ll tell you all about it?” Tsubame suggested.

  Marie nodded and said something else in German. The only thing MaLeila could work out was two names. From a hall opposite the one Marie came out came a girl that looked like she was ten with blond hair and blue eyes and a man a few inches shorter than Marcel with the same dark hair and blues eyes as Marie, a light stubble on his cheeks and around his mouth, and looked like he was in his twenties.

  Both the girl and the man walked directly towards Nika and Marcel. The girl politely curtseyed while the man shook Marcel’s hand. Then the girl gestured for Nika and Marcel to follow them. She also looked at MaLeila and said something in German with a gesture of her hand that MaLeila assumed meant she was supposed to follow as well. MaLeila glanced at Tsubame who nodded for her to go ahead.

  They walked silently through the halls at first, no one keen to say anything to break the uncomfortable tension until the young girl said, “Who ar
e you all? I’ve heard of Tsubame recently but never her companions.”

  Introductions went around and MaLeila found out the girl’s name was Jasmine and she wasn’t so much a little girl as it was that’s how she chose to make herself appear if only to avoid having her grandmother marry her off to the most eligible suitor. The man was Dominik and MaLeila pointedly acted like she didn’t notice him gazing at her every few second when he thought no one was watching. She blamed it on the backless halter dress that Tsubame picked out for her to wear for the journey despite MaLeila’s protests.

  They spent the time waiting for Tsubame and Marie to return in the courtyard. Jasmine, acting the part of the child she appeared to be, asked every question about MaLeila and her life that she could think of. How old she was when she discovered magic? Where she lived, followed by a series of question about Atlanta, Georgia because though Jasmine’s been to the United States on numerous occasions, she’d never been to the southern United States capital before as the Thorne’s and anything that happened of magical importance always happened in New York City or on the west coast in Los Angeles. MaLeila was only halfway through describing the botanical gardens when Marie and Tsubame appeared in the courtyard.

  Marie’s eyes immediately flickered to her and Tsubame promptly said, “I’m exhausted. Which one of your grandchildren will lead us to our room while you get acquainted with MaLeila?”

  Jasmine said something to Marie in German before going up to Tsubame and taking her hand to lead her through the castle and to her room. Nika began to follow, but Marcel didn’t appear to be inclined to follow until Tsubame turned around and said to him, “I’m sure you’re exhausted as well seeing as you put this whole trip together and did all the driving.”