Rebirth12 min read
The Old Matriarch in a Starlet's Body
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I woke up to a ceiling I did not recognize and a headache like a bell tolling across a long life.
"Where am I?" I muttered, and my voice sounded young, soft—too young for the bones I remembered.
A man in a dark suit cleared his throat in the doorway. "Hazlee Pierce?" he said coolly.
I blinked. The name in my head fit the face in the dressing mirror: a fresh, modern face with black hair and a mole just behind the ear. "Hazlee?" I echoed. The name landed like a new cloak on an old body.
"You nodded off in the company waiting room," the man said. "I'm Hudson Faure. We met earlier."
I did not remember meeting him. That did not stop my long-life pride from bristling. I had been the Longjoy Matriarch for three thousand years—long enough to be called an elder in the immortal court. No one told me their name like that now.
Hudson's jaw was square. His eyes were cool. He had a presence most mortals would call iron. "Hazlee," he continued, "we have an arrangement to discuss."
I frowned. "An arrangement?"
Nicolas Brooks, a polite man who introduced himself as Hudson's assistant, produced a folder and laid it on the bed. "A one-year nominal marriage contract," he said. "Sign, and you'll receive the funds and the apartment. One year later, we separate. Public persona: married. Private: we keep our distance."
"Why would I marry a stranger?" I asked, because it was true. Pride flavored my words.
Hudson's mouth twitched. "Because you were found penniless. Because the company you once owned was frozen as collateral. You may not like me. You will not be touched. You will be provided for. One year. Sign."
"One year?" My voice softened. The Longjoy Matriarch had lived through centuries of scarcity and abundance. Money had kept me alive. "And I get to be safe?"
"Safe," Hudson said. "And comfortable."
I chewed on the logic until, for a moment, old calculation took over. "If I sign, I get a house, cash, and a roof while I rebuild. I can live my remaining life for me. Fine." My pen carved a thin black line across the paper like a sword.
"Good." Hudson's face did not smile. "Also, the contract states we will share the home and the bed."
My mouth opened. "You put that in the contract?"
Nicolas shrugged as if to say the world required blunt things. "To prevent problems."
I wrapped a sheet around my shoulders. "Then I shall break no rules I cannot break back."
Hudson's attention did not leave me. "I want you to be safe this year, Hazlee."
I let the lie stand—that he wanted my safety for my sake. The reality, if I could ever see it, might be more complicated.
"First," I said, "show me the house."
We drove in a vehicle I learned was called a car. It hummed like a small beast and smelled of leather. The house Hudson opened for me was arranged like the inner court of a real shrine: respects given as props. A woman in sober gray met us at the door.
"Welcome home, Madam," she said. "I'm Hermione. I'm in charge here. Call me Hermione."
I bowed, because manners survive even when lifetimes change. "Hazlee Pierce," I said. "Thank you."
Hermione guided me through rooms that touched the edges of my old tastes: wood, lacquer, things that looked as if they would hold an old story. Two girls—Harriet Campos and Nina Schuster—came with delicate bows.
"They're your assistants," Hermione explained. "And Brock Ortiz is your driver."
Brock stood tall and solid at our car, a man who looked as if he could move mountains with his hands. He smiled shyly. "At your service, Madam."
I liked people who looked like they had lived by work. I liked their faces. I liked their steadiness. I felt a strange warmth for the first time in many lives.
"Tomorrow you begin your public role," Hudson said. "For now, rest."
"Rest," I echoed, thinking of techniques long buried—breathing forms the old monks called day-and-night inhalations. I had no real spiritual root here, people told me. No, that wasn’t right. I had something stronger: a body that remembered more than the new face. "I will rest and study this world's breathing."
That night, in a bed so soft my bones whispered in envy, I closed my eyes and tried a long-practiced meditation: draw the sky into the chest, let the moon sit in the belly. To my delight, little light dots—like the first sparks in a forge—drifted along my skin.
"At last," I breathed on my pillow. "After three thousand years."
The new body's reaction was clumsy; the lights stumbled by my veins, stuck at the chest. I pushed, and something resistant lodged like a small stone in the passage to the belly. I had not expected obstacles like this in a world that believed in no magic.
The next morning, Hudson collected me for ceremony and paperwork. I sat stiffly as a camera took our picture. The flash sang, and the image of the two of us—from my perspective, an old soul boxed in a young face and a rich man beside me—was stored for the world.
"You're oddly bright-eyed," Hudson said, watching me look at our registered photo.
"Of course. I haven't seen my face this closely in centuries," I said.
Hudson frowned once, as if he wanted words to obey him. "You should eat slowly. We have a social calendar these next months."
"I will," I promised. But I had plans, private and hungry.
I signed more papers until the ink tired my fingers. Then, restless, I left the seeded comfort of the house and went to a place called an "entertainment city." Jonas Bolton, a courteous director, waved at me like a sailor seeing a lighthouse.
"You're Hazlee Pierce?" he said, with a half-pleased relief that made my chest warm.
"I am," I answered. "And I can act."
"Perfect," Jonas said. "We need you as our lead."
"I have money and time," I told him. "I'll produce. Put me into the cast."
I handed him ten thousand in seed money. He clasped my hands like a man who had been given a rare seed because I was someone who remembered how to plant things.
"Begin tomorrow," he promised.
Back at my house, I worked the first of small magics that mirrored the arts of my old world. Paper burned with marks I set with a borrowed brush. Little things—sparks, a flash of wind—answered. I learned the modern materials didn't always carry what I needed. The pantry's white paper could not hold the ink like ritual paper. I asked Brock to bring yellow paper from a temple he once joked about passing.
"You want what?" Brock blinked.
"Yellow paper, the old kind," I said. He smiled and saved my foolishness.
By evening, my tiny efforts lit up the corners of the house; a spray of little charms lay, half-made, while Hermione watched me with an unreadable expression. Hudson watched, too, but kept a distance—as if a distance could bottle a history.
Two days later, at the production site, I wore a costume Jonas selected: a hybrid of modern lines and something that made me move like a willow. I performed with a branch, a prop that I stiffened with breath and practice. The crew watched as if I had become a different woman.
"You're a natural," Jonas breathed. "We will shoot the first scene now."
"We will shoot a great one," I answered. My voice felt like an instrument.
After shooting, I sought hidden stones in a local lake and found a pale gem: something the old monks once called jade marrow. It thrummed like a small trapped sun. I wrapped it and pressed it to my heart. I felt the lights in my belly thicken a measure. I smiled in a way no one had seen in any century.
Mischief, however, waited like rain. A dark car followed our caravan back into the hills. A crude truck rammed my smaller vehicle when our road narrowed, then a match flared and grass caught like a mouth swallowing our car. Brock threw himself at the driver’s door, breaking glass, and we leapt to safety. We ran uphill with our hair and skirts and shirts flailing. When the car rolled and flame licked the chassis, I clutched Harriet and Nina, counting their breaths.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"Yes," they sang in panic, then relief. Brock's palm bled from broken glass. Jonas and Ellis—Ellis Burt, our cameraman—arrived, faces white.
A brown-beaked driver who had watched in the trees stepped forward. "That was Otto Long's men," he said, voice like a rusted bell. "They were at the scene of the auction earlier. They wanted the box."
"Who sent them?" Brock asked.
Otto Long was a name that fell in the air like a stone. He was tall, bald, and known to some as a dangerous opportunist who trafficked in damaged goods.
"Get to safety," Hudson told us on the line. He ordered paramedics, and later his men rode helicopters in to retrieve us. For the first time since my rebirth, I felt Hudson's power gather around me like an old tree's roots.
"You were reckless," he said when I returned home, his voice soft for the first time that night. "You could have died."
"I won't die easily," I replied. "Not when there is work to do."
But the attack unrolled troubles like a dark carpet. Otto Long's men had been provoked by a rare plant I had purchased: a fruit called a Sunberry in the auction—something otherworldly. Silas Garcia, a shy young man, had bid on it and lost to my friend Jonas. Later, Silas had purchased more items and given the fruit to me. Someone had wanted it and had chosen to burn my car to take it.
Hudson wanted retribution. "I will find them," he said.
"No," I said quietly. "Let me learn what their rules are first."
Hudson stared at me as if I were a riddle. "You want to fight this yourself?"
"I want to set my own tone," I said. "I have lived too long to let a transaction go by blood without understanding law and shame."
In private parlors and at places where money grew teeth, I learned the rules of this world: reputations are currency and exposure is a blade. If you can make the city see a man for what he is, the city will feed on him. If you can make the right crowd watch, the right crowd will unmake him.
"Then bring me names," Hudson said.
"I will," I promised.
First, I built a small empire of remedies and charms. Tyrannical though they might be, markets obey opening offers. White family apothecaries—represented by Walter Martini and his son Aldric Lambert—wanted to partner with me. Walter was a slow, patient man who smelled like old paper and steam. Aldric was clever and persistent. They offered to provide channels if my potions had efficacy.
"You will be the public face," Walter said, hands folded. "We will supply materials."
"And I will take forty percent," Aldric added, smiling too fast.
"Fifty-fifty," I deadpanned.
Hudson raised one brow. "You drive a hard bargain for someone who owns less than a week of studio time."
"I drive a hard bargain because I have to," I answered. "I am rebuilding an identity in a foreign clock."
Widget by widget, I sold three minor protective charms to Anibal Hicks and to others in the musty corridors of collectors. Anibal paid with a brisk, efficient hand and then—surprisingly—he bought a whole set of talismans I had drawn. He looked like a man who kept secrets like lesser men kept breath.
Then came the market night of the auction: a roofed house filled with men and women who thought themselves invited to hold the city's pulse. I stood in velvet and looked at the tablet of items. There, inside a floating box, glowed a fruit I had coveted. Silas Garcia had stood up and named a sum that lifted the room. The fruit became ours.
Afterwards, I took leftover products to a private sale. Anibal Hicks, with his quiet presence, bought all thirty of my small talismans in a single sweep, transferring numbers to my account with a simple nod.
"Why so many?" I asked, startled.
"They are worth protection in the right hands," Anibal said.
I was smiling when we left but the night turned sharp. Ten men cut us off in a side road. A bald-headed stone of a fellow stepped forward—Otto Long—hands gloved. "That fruit belongs to my patron," he said like a prayer. "Hand it over."
"No," I said.
"Then you'll burn," Otto said.
He raised his voice like a bell. Then, with Hudson's team already gathering evidence and witnesses, I made a choice like the Matriarch I had been. I would not greet them with knives. I would greet them with a public unmasking.
I arranged for the scene to be taken to the public square by morning. Journalists are creatures with lantern-laden mouths; feed them a spectacle and they will devour it. I fed them a spectacle.
"Today," I told the assembled press, "we bring what they hid."
The media lights were like a new sun. "Hazlee Pierce," a camerawoman whispered into her recorder. "Tell us what happened."
I held the fruit on a velvet cushion like a relic and then put it down. "This fruit was bid upon and purchased at a legal auction," I said. "Then men tried to steal it, burned a vehicle, and injured my crew. This man," I said, pointing at Otto Long as he arrived, pale with a bravado that could not cross the light, "set those men upon us for profit."
A reporter asked, "Where's your proof?"
"Watch," Hudson said. He flicked a device; a grainy clip rolled across a large screen. It showed men in the dark sending a match into the grass. It showed a truck steering with deliberate force. It showed a gloved hand throwing a match into a car. It showed faces.
"If you did not act," Otto started with a thick voice, "then—"
"Watch the accounts," I said. I handed check stubs and transfer orders to a lawyer who had come—my lawyer from this new age, Ellis Burt. "Otto Long, you have transactions from known illicit lines and you have associates who bought tickets at the same auctions and who paid your crew."
Otto's face, which had been carved in arrogance, creased. "Those are business payments," he said, too fast.
A woman from the crowd shouted, "You burned their car! People could have died!"
"They were in the way," Otto tried to plead. He looked at Hudson like a man daring to find mercy.
"Is this how your business runs?" the reporters asked, circling like gulls.
Otto's lips tightened. He had muscles again—muscles that had not felt the city's opinions. He smiled like a man at a table who believes no one will call his bluff. "You can't prove I—"
"Actually," one of Hudson's attorneys said, stepping forward, "we have witness testimonies and bank records. We have a list of purchases in the past month that link you to the men in the footage. You can deny it all you like, but the city will judge."
Otto's eyes darted and then hardened. He took a breath like a drowning man. "I didn't do—" he began, then stopped. The words were weak against a field of cameras.
"They tried to kill us," Harriet said into a microphone with the polite, terrible steadiness of someone who had just seen death. "They burned our car. We ran for our lives."
"People watched your car burn," an older man in the crowd said. "How do you sleep at night?"
The crowd shifted. A woman raised her phone and livestreamed. Another man, heavy with camera gear, rattled like a gavel with a mic. The city was listening.
Otto snapped. "This is slander!" he cried. "These are lies! I had nothing to do with it, you—"
The crowd hissed. "Prove it," someone shouted. "Prove it now."
At that, an elderly collector who had sold Otto men—his face lined like maps—stepped forward. He wore a watch that had seen many years. He set down a small envelope like a bell.
"This man paid me for muscle," the collector said. "I regret it now, with my grandchildren looking. It was in my ledger."
Otto staggered like a struck dog. He blinked. His voice changed. "You can't—this is—"
"Speak up," Hudson said. The crowd pressed close. "What did you expect to gain? A fruit? A rumor? A fear?"
"I—I wanted the fruit to be offered to a collector," Otto whispered. His bravado collapsed into a crouch beneath the camera's cold eye. "They paid me to take it, not burn them. I swear—"
"Swear to whom?" someone cried from the crowd. "Swear to the victims?"
Harriet held her broken wrist where Brock had wrapped cloth. "You nearly killed my friends," she said. "You nearly killed me."
Otto's face began to move through stages—texture in motion. First, the smugness fell away to dread. Then there was denial—too loud to be true. "No, no. You all misunderstand. I had people approach me. I only—"
Then his voice broke. "I didn't want—"
He started to beg then, a human thing, the kind that looks small under a thousand eyes. "Please," he said. "Please—I'll fix it. I'll pay. I'll—"
The crowd murmured with the delicious cruelty of hunger and goodness mixed. Someone recorded. A teenager screamed, "Shame him! Shame him!"
"Otto Long," I said, letting my new voice fill the square, "you have set men to burn a car and to harm civilians for profit. Tonight, you will explain that to the city's law, and to the people you've hurt. You will confess this publicly."
Otto staggered like a man waking up. He tried to laugh, a thin sound. The crowd's recording phones flashed lilies of cold light. Cameras in the back of the room pivoted with the pivot of cocked ears.
His expression slid as faces in the crowd pressed to their own screens. It was not a private thing—evidence spread like a public disease. Like a matriarch who learned to turn a plague of slanders into a ritual, I had made a spectacle into a kind of justice: forced inquiry, forced accounting.
The real punishment would come later legally. But for now the city had him. The crowd’s voices were knives.
"Please," Otto said again, a small man in the middle of a city of witnesses. "I'll make restitution. I'll apologize to them. I'm sorry."
The crowd's backwash pressed him. Cameras recorded his shame. People took pictures for memory and for history. Some applauded. Some cried.
From smug to shocked to indignant, from denial to pleading—he wore all the acts of a man unraveling. The crowd's reactions were a chorus: audience members shoved microphones; older women spat; young men filmed; others made sound—applause, disdain, clucks of condemnation.
Hudson never raised his voice. He folded his hands. "We will hand everything to the authorities," he said. "But the city will remember today."
Otto's mouth trembled; he tried to rally. "It's a smear! I can sue!"
An old woman in the front laughed like a bell. "You can try. But the cameras will still show the answer."
Otto's final mask slipped. He fell to his knees in the square as the crowd closed in. A ring of cameras made him an island of smallness. He begged. He promised. He shook. People around him murmured, took photos, recorded.
I watched Hudson’s steady face and felt a curious thing like relief and sorrow braided together. Revenge is seldom sweet without mercy, but shame is an answer that hurts where money never can.
The fireworks of the city lit above us that night, meaningless and indifferent. The cameras flashed. People kept talking. Otto, the man who had tried to burn a life for a sum, curled small and whispered apologies into journalists' microphones.
Later, in a quiet room, Hudson turned to me with an unreadable look. "You did well."
I folded my hands like someone who had led a congregation. "I only remembered how to make a crowd listen."
"Then we'll guard you from now on," he said.
"No," I said. "I will guard myself. But I appreciate your help."
Hudson smiled then, a small, private thing.
That evening I sat alone with my jade marrow pressed to my sternum. The light in my belly had shifted again. I had faced a modern world and used its lights as weapons. I had learned how to make men fold.
"Tomorrow," I told myself, "we continue the work. Cultivate, act, and live."
And so I began—an old matriarch in a young woman's skin, walking a city that had never known how to hold the long and patient memory of a life like mine.
The End
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