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Piers Anthony

And Eternity

Incarnations of Immortality, book 7

Chapter 1 - ORLENE

Jolie was in France when she felt the pain. Someone close to her was dying!

She was conducting a routine observation, animating a servant girl in the house of the man she was studying.

She had to extricate herself in a hurry—but not in such a way as to alienate her host.

Please, Marie—something pressing has come up. May I leave you for a time?

The girl was startled. "You will return?" she asked in French. She enjoyed their association, because she was dull and Jolie was bright. When Jolie animated her, she carried herself with greater flair and was more alert, and her employer liked that. There was nothing untoward in this, and the employer had no designs on Marie; he merely liked to think that his relatively egalitarian household was good for her.

When I can, Jolie reassured her, communicating mind to mind because she did not want the girl to seem to be muttering. I fear a friend is in trouble.

"Of course you must go to her!" Marie agreed.

She had spoken too loudly, and the employer looked up from his book. "What was that?" he inquired, also in French.

Jolie took over. "I beg your pardon, sir. My mind garbled, and I misspoke myself."

He smiled indulgently. "It happens to the best of us, and to me also. But if someone needs you, you may have time off, of course."

He was a good and generous man—which was why Jolie was observing him. "Thank you, sir. But the need is not pressing. I will finish here."

He nodded, and returned to his book. He was a portly married man, and Marie was young and shapely and not bright, but he treated her with perfect courtesy, much as he would a visitor. That, too, counted in his favor.

Jolie returned control to the maid, and reverted to her home immediately. This was a drop of blood on the wrist of Gaea, the Incarnation of Nature. Gaea was at the moment making an observation of her own: the pattern of weather in the mid-Pacific ocean, which might require delicate modification to weaken an untimely storm. She felt the return, and lifted her wrist. "Back so soon, Jolie?"

"Gaea, I felt the dying of one I love. I must go to her!"

"Go!" Gaea agreed. She was another ideal employer and friend; she did not inquire into Jolie's private business, either overtly or covertly, but allowed free rein. This was the type of generosity afforded by one with such enormous power that she could, if she chose, destroy the world. Any of the seven major Incarnations could—but their thrust was not to harm the world, but to preserve it.

Jolie oriented on the pain she felt. In a moment she was there.