Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) (11 page)

She chose two trees that were about ten feet apart and lashed the pole she’d cut to them at about head height to herself. Then she attached the tarp to it, angling it back to the ground. What little wind was coming down the valley would be deflected by the tarp. She chosen a slight slope toward the creek, close enough to the creek to build her fire in the rocky verge of the dry creek bed, where she was sure she wouldn’t start a forest fire. As she started the little blaze, she could almost hear her grandfather’s voice in her head telling her: “You planning on roasting an ox, or just staying warm?”

Linn sighed. They’d be warm, if hungry. Her tummy growled. She spread out her ground cloth and bag, and brought the kittens from the saddle, where they had stayed. They seemed to think it was a part of home. She could see their uncertainty in how they moved, and how they stayed close to each other, or her when she was still enough.

She broke off a chunk of her protein bar and offered a piece to each of them. They both sniffed, then gave her identical looks of disgust. Linn chuckled a little. “Sorry, boys, it’s what I’ve got tonight.”

Blackie turned and started to wash his brother.

“I guess that’s a no.” Linn ate the protein bar. “How about some water?”

That they deigned to lap from her cupped hands, giving them the water from the waterskin. She would have to find some birch bark so she could boil water before she’d use it from the puddles. And that would have to wait until morning. She didn’t want to go wandering around in the dark.

Pushing a stick a little farther into the fire and watching the sparks dance, Linn pulled her boots off and crawled into the sleeping bag. The kittens crept in on either side of her. She lay on her side looking at the fire, and slipped into sleep.

She didn’t dream at all that night. She awakened to a cold nose on her cheek, followed by a raspy tongue washing her face. Spluttering, she opened her eyes. Blackie was draped over her chest, bathing her. Spot One was a warm lump curled at the small of her back. Blackie started to purr.

“Poor baby.” Linn cuddled him in her arms. “You must be hungry, and wondering where your sisters are.”

She looked over to the fire, surprised to see that it was still alight. Then she saw the two rabbits hanging from her ridgepole. She sat up into the cold air, clutching Blackie, and looked around. The forest was empty and quiet in the dawn light. There were birds singing, and a far off chatter of a squirrel, but no movement.

Shivering a little, Linn climbed out of the sleeping bag and went to look at the carcasses. They had been killed with an arrow, she thought, shot through the heart, and then gutted and skinned. Tied with a bit of rawhide and hung over the ridgepole for her and the kittens' breakfast. She looked around. No sign anywhere, and nothing moving, as before. Still, she raised her voice and called, “Thank you!”

Leaving the kittens curled up in the warm sleeping bag, she cut a couple of sticks to cook the rabbits over the fire. Whoever had left her the rabbits had also pushed her sticks in and kept the fire going. As she prepared them, she stretched and tried to work the kinks out of her muscles. She might be young, but yesterday had been a very long day indeed.

The mare wandered over to have her nose patted. Linn loved the velvety feel of it and hugged the palomino’s neck for a minute, picking twigs and pine needles out of her mane. She didn’t have a curry comb, but she grabbed a handful of the long green pine needles and wadded them up and tried that. She didn’t know how much good it did, but the mare sighed and leaned into her, so it was making her happy, at least.

She stopped when she could smell the rabbit, and rinsed her hands in a puddle. The pine pitch was there to stay, but the horse hair she could get rid of. Poking the rabbit with her knife, she decided it was done enough. The kittens had ventured close enough to the fire to worry her about their whiskers. She cut the rabbit in half and offered them the parts. Blackie took it eagerly and carried it off to the side before beginning to chew on it. Spot One sniffed, licked, and then seized it. She watched both of them, worried they’d choke on a bone.

She ate hers much more delicately, as hungry as she was. The kittens were done before she was, and she cut a few bits of hers for them. While they were nosing about exploring, she broke down camp and made sure the fire was extinguished.

She thought she knew who had looked after them in the night, and wondered why he didn’t show himself. The mare stood docilely while she hefted the saddle on with difficulty. She hadn’t done much of the saddling before, and hadn’t been paying close enough attention the night before. Fortunately, the mare was content to just stand there and let her fiddle with the girth until she’d figured it out.

Tying the blanket roll and panniers on took a little more time. She was very warm by the time she turned to the kittens, who were pouncing on one another and wrestling. Linn sighed. Bes’s trick with the sleeping would come in handy about now. She tried to pick up Blackie, who danced away from her, obviously thinking she was joining the game.

Spot One pounced on her foot, attacking her boot laces, and she captured him.

He wriggled, wanting down.

“Sorry, little guy. We can’t stay here. Time to travel on.”

She put him in the saddle bag and he gave her a reproachful look, but stayed put. Blackie climbed her leg, making her yelp as his claws caught her.

“Be nice!” she told him as she took him around to the other bag. “Stay there, now.”

Getting on the horse without kicking the kitten in the face was interesting. She muttered under her breath as she settled. Checking her lashings one last time, she kicked the mare gently. The palomino looked around at Linn, and then pricked her ears forward, looking up the valley. Linn gave her her head, and they began moving slowly uphill again. Linn wondered how high into the Bitterroots they were going to go.

It was another lovely summer day. Idaho in the summer rarely gets too warm, and in the cover of the trees it was comfortable. Linn drowsed in the saddle, trusting her horse to know the way. The kittens had gone to sleep with full bellies.

Around noon, she dismounted and walked alongside the horse for an hour. The mare showed no signs of slowing, but Linn didn’t want to hurt her, either. She held onto the stirrups during a steep scramble up a slope, but mostly just tried to keep up. She stopped seeing much of the scenery, as her world narrowed to the next copse of trees, the next slope. They were traveling mostly east, but also slightly north, so they were crossing ridges and valleys.

Sometime in the afternoon she decided they weren’t headed to Coyote’s place. It wouldn’t have taken Bes that little time to pick up the horses if his lair were this remote. She was tired, the mare was tired. Linn patted her neck. “Good girl. Thank you for the ride.”

The mare just flicked an ear back at the crazy human. Linn wondered how much farther they could all go on like this. It was early, but she thought maybe they would camp at the next water. If the horse became incapacitated she and the kittens would be in dire straits.

She dismounted as they reached the crest of the ridge and climbed up ahead of the mare, worried the horse would fall on her or kick her. At the top she stopped and panted a minute while the mare joined her in a last scrabble of hooves on rocks. Then she looked down into the valley she realized she had been right the first time. They had found Coyote.

Chapter 16

Linn remounted the mare and realized she’d lost her tired feeling as they rode slowly down the slope, the horse picking her way through the enormous bones that littered the entire valley. Linn knew where they were headed, now. The long alligator-shaped skull at the head of the valley with a curl of smoke issuing from one nostril had to be Coyote’s home. She knew the story, how Coyote had rescued the Niimipuu, who would later be called the Nez Perce, from a gigantic monster. She just hadn’t realized it was literal.

She wondered if magic masked this valley from mortal eyes. Surely it would have been in the news, this valley of bones, if a satellite could see into it.

Blackie crept into her lap again, as he had done the day before. Linn wrapped an arm around him, grateful for his solid warmth.

There was little green growing in the valley, as though it had been blighted and never recovered. The bones loomed overhead as they reached the floor of the valley and the ribcage. Linn studied them. White, cracked, and incredibly ancient looking. She shivered a little. The monster that had died here had been bigger than any dinosaur, even.

They reached the skull, and she saw that a rickety staircase led to one nostril, and the smoke vented from the other. No one came to greet them, but the mare stepped livelier as they drew near, tossing her head a little. Linn saw something off to one side that somehow made her relax slightly. A small, neatly tended garden in square-raised beds flourished, flowers mixed in with vegetables.

The horse went right through the gap between teeth. The canine of the monster loomed next to Linn’s shoulder like a massive ivory column, and then they were in the gloom. The horse stopped. Linn’s eyes adjusted to the dim light and she saw stalls built against the wall of the upper jaw. The lower jaw was gone altogether, she realized.

She slid off the mare, feeling her legs wobble. Then the buckskin gelding put his head over his stall door and whickered to the mare. The mare moved to bump noses with him and Linn, taken off guard, lost her balance and sat down abruptly. If the buckskin was here, then Bes must be as well.

Blackie leaped out of the saddle bag and ran to where Linn was still sitting on the earth floor of the stable. He bumped her chest with his head, and she hugged him.

“I’m OK. Just tired,” she told him. He touched his nose to hers, and then Spot One joined him and did so as well. Linn slowly got to her feet and went to the mare. She loosened the saddle and slid it off, setting it on a nearby rack. Everything was rustic but clean. She opened the stall next to the mare’s and the horse walked in and pulled a mouthful of hay out of the manger. Linn closed the door and walked back outside, the kittens following at her heels.

The breeze tugged at her hair as she stood by the gigantic tooth, looking out into the eerie valley. She had braided it that morning, but it hadn’t been brushed. She felt grubby and tired. She let out a deep breath and focused. The landscape in front of her lit with Power. The grass-green flickers of the Coyote mingled with deep umber that was weird.

Linn blinked and closed her eyes. She thought what she had just Seen was the Monster’s power. It had to be, even though it had been dead for something like three millennia. She shivered in the warm air, her neck hair raising.

Blackie put his paws on her knee and she looked down into his baby blue eyes. She wondered what color they would be when he was grown up. She started to focus on him, to See if his power was coming in, and then stopped. She was just too tired.

Spot One walked over to the stairs, tail held high, and started up them. Linn followed to keep him safe and out of mischief, if nothing else. Together the little group went up the side of the skull and along a long deck to the opening of the nostril, which had been closed in and had a door in the center.

A scrawled note was tacked to the door. She pulled it off and squinted at it. “Come in and be comfortable.” It said. The handwriting was terrible. She turned the knob and went inside.

Chapter 17

Sekhmet stayed on the high path longer than usual. The closer they drew to the earth’s surface, the more power it took to run the path. Finally she let it go, and they fell to earth, buoyed by the Power. Steve remained at her side, unspeaking. She appreciated his respect for her fear.

She ran through the wards without stopping, feeling the tickle of recognition as they were already attuned to her. Steve, beside her, yelped but didn’t break stride. She looked over at him, and he just shook his head. The wards’ warning sting didn’t do damage, it was just uncomfortable. Heff attuned them to very few, suspicious old man.

They ran on down the driveway, two great cats in perfect step. Sekhmet faltered as she saw what was left of Heff’s house. Only the side walls still stood, the front and rear walls were completely gone. Debris scattered all over the meadow behind the house. Nothing moved in the devastation.

Sekhmet roared, hearing Steve’s eerie shriek at the same time. She leapt onto what was left of the porch and sniffed. Steve prowled through the flowerbeds with his nose to the ground. He called, “Bes was here, and three of Mars’ golems.”

A movement from the barn caught her eye as Bes staggered out into the sunlight. He was holding something. Sekhmet leaped toward him, transforming to human shape in mid-leap and landing on pointed feet. (Some things could not be done with four paws.) She caught him as he stumbled, then Steve was beside her, helping. They eased Bes onto the bench by the pump.

“Sorry, Hathor,” the diminutive god said, looking up at Sekhmet and using her other name. “They imprinted on Linn.” He unwrapped the afghan and revealed two toddlers, asleep and hugging one another. One had black curly hair, and the other pretty strawberry blonde ringlets. They looked to be about three years old.

“Oh, Bes...” Sekhmet gathered them into her arms. They blinked at her. The redhead put her thumb in her mouth.

Steve hugged Bes. “How can we thank you? And are you all right?” The emotional Latino had the other’s head between his palms, taking a closer look.