Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) (3 page)

He missed his wife, but it had been complicated. Right at this moment he couldn’t remember what it was that had complicated things, and he wished she were here to help him understand what was happening, and how to protect the children.

Linn gripped her blanket with one hand, which reminded Heff of the little stuffed cat she had carried about for years until it was rags and a memory. He wondered where it had been stored. Theta would have saved it, he was certain. His daughter’s wandering feet kept her from collecting many possessions, but she loved this little girl to her bones. When Mark had died, it had almost killed her. The only thing that had saved her from the lonely fate of so many immortals had been the little girl who was part of both of them.

He left the barn and sat on the bench in the shadows. Then he pulled out his pipe and lit it slowly, lost in thought.

Night was falling quickly, and the temperature was dropping in the clear air of the mountains. Even in the summer it got cold at night. He didn’t mind. After the heat of the forge it was refreshing, and he didn’t feel the cold. He’d always loved the mountains, where the extremes of nature fought with the humans struggling for existence on their slopes. It was in his early years that they had won his admiration with their sheer persistence. In time, that had come to an abiding desire to protect all humans, struggling uphill against the gods.

The children of the gods were particularly precious. He had several right here in his barn. That thought made him chuckle in a cloud of exhaled pipe smoke. The snobs on Olympus would have a fit if they knew. They considered themselves royalty.

Heff heaved a huge sigh. Those sleepy children wouldn’t be alone for too long while he went to rally the mortal lovers to his side, to fight again for the right of humanity to grow unchecked. He wasn’t going to allow a second Dark Age to fall like this night had fallen on his mountain.

“I need a babysitter for them,” he mused finally. The problem was, who could he trust to keep an eye on them for a few days while he ran errands?

Chapter 4

Linn yawned hugely and shifted a kitten off her chest, where its weight was making it hard to breathe. Although their guise of house cat-size was good, they weighed more than you would expect
.
No way to hide mass
,
she thought sleepily. The kitten stretched out and put its paw gently on her nose, then relaxed back into sleep.

She could hear Grampa below, milking the goats. She needed to learn to do that, she remembered. Extricating herself from the kittens, she climbed down the ladder. He looked at her, then nodded for her to come sit down on the stool as he stood, milk pail in his hands.

“Don’t leave this near their feet,” he cautioned as she sat down. Then he handed the milk pail to her. “They’ll kick it over and you’ll lose your hard work, and the kitten’s breakfast.”

She nodded and put it carefully back under the doe’s teats. The goat ignored Linn, munching on the grain before her, weight shifted to her far side and standing perfectly still.

Heff grunted. “Silly here is a good girl. She’s patient, so it will be easy to learn on her. Put your hand around her teat, like that...” He showed her how to wrap her hand around it, thumb at the top. “Squeeze from the top down. Lock the milk in with your thumb and forefinger, otherwise the milk will just go back into the udder. Don’t worry about hurting her, girl, her kids wouldn’t - and they have teeth before long, too.”

Linn squeezed down, finger by finger as he’d taught her, and was rewarded by a thin stream of milk... right onto her pants leg.

Heff laughed. “Aim for the bucket, girl.”

She did, and heard the tinny splash of the milk hitting the pail.

“All right, now try both hands.”

She had a little trouble with the rhythm of two hands at once, until he explained that one hand at a time, one after the other was the usual way. “Don’t try to use both hands at once.”

Linn leaned her cheek against the goat’s warm belly, hearing the rumen grumble inside it, and concentrated on milking the patient doe. Her hands started to cramp. “Ouch.” She rubbed her palm.

“Enough for your first lesson. Go on, now.” Heff’s voice was amused, coming from where he was leaning on the gate.

Linn remembered to hand him the bucket and got up. He sat in her place and said, “Here, this is how to strip her out and make sure she’s done. You need to make sure you do this, or she could get an infection.”

He milked Silly for a minute, his quick rhythm a counterpoint to Linn’s hesitant streams. The he showed her the flaccid teat.

“Nearly there. Bump your hand up into the udder...” he did this as he spoke. “Like her kid would do, asking for another sip. She’ll let down the last of it.”

He stripped out the last milk and stood, handing the pail to Linn. “Get this in the house while I milk Sally. This pail’s ours. Put it in the icebox in the jars. Make sure you run it through the filter. “

She nodded and headed to the house. The milk was a prime environment for bacteria to grow in, so it had to be chilled as quickly as possible. Otherwise it would smell and taste funny. As it was, she always had to get used to the rich thickness of it compared to the 2% milk her mom bought for her at home.

She rinsed the pail and left it in the sink. Her Grampa would sterilize it with the rest of the equipment when he was finished. When she got back out to the barn, Heff was up in the loft. He looked down at her.

“Stay put a minute. I’m going to try and get them corralled up here better...” he grunted and she saw that he was rolling chicken wire across the opening in the loft. “Send up that staple gun, won’t you?”

She put it in the basket and pulled it up to him. He took it out of the basket and pointed to the milking stand. “Get those bottles filled while I do this.”

She went obediently to the milk and could hear the tack of the staples above while she readied four bottles and twisted on the rubber nipples. The wire would keep the kittens from falling out of the loft, she guessed. She wondered why he wanted to keep them in the barn. She’d like to take them in the house.

Up in the hayloft, Haephestus was wondering when she would ask him that. His reason, of course, would be difficult to explain to her. He knew she’d understand it a little, but the millennia-old vows still held, and it was as good for him to adhere to them as it was for the enemy...he frowned. When had he started to think of them as the enemy? Must have been about 1893...when the Information Age had begun to accelerate into a threat to the old, established ways. When they had started not caring about mortals. Well, that had been going on for millennia, anyway.

He wrapped the ends of the wire back into itself at the gap for the ladder so neither girl nor kittens would be scratched. He would build a little gate separately and then hang it here in the opening. This wouldn’t keep the kittens long, he knew, but long enough. Things were coming to a crisis point, but he hoped to be able to get the young ones to a safe place, at least. When the kittens could travel, which they couldn’t, yet.

He looked down at the floor of the barn, where Linn was filling the last bottle. She was trying hard to do this right. He appreciated her care for the kittens. He also wished that she was a little better prepared for what was coming. She hadn’t yet manifested any talents that indicated if she had inherited his blood, but that didn’t mean anything. Children of the gods were often late bloomers. He snorted. The early bloomers had historically met early demises, as well.

Heff climbed down the ladder easily. With Linn he need not pretend that he felt the same aches and pains as a mortal of his apparent age. And he had finally decided who to call on as babysitter. He needed to get out and do some campaigning, as much as he hated the idea, and he couldn’t leave the children alone. Even if Linn would protest that designation. As she started up the ladder he reached out and touched her cheek.

Linn was startled when Grampa patted her cheek. It was unlike him to show affection. She looked at him and smiled. “I can take care of them.”

“I know you can. I was just thinking how much like your grandmother you are.”

“I miss her.”

“I do too. Now get feeding while I make that gate.”

Linn finished her ascent and laughed to find the kittens lined up waiting for her. “Silly little guys, you are always hungry!”

She started with Blackie and Patches, as usual, while the Spot twins rolled around in the hay playing with one another and one of her feet. Their claws were sharp, and she yelped when one of the kittens tried to climb up her back. She pulled the kitten off her back and looked at him sternly. “Spot One, there will be consequences for not minding your manners!”

He blinked his big blue eyes at her until she kissed him on the nose, and then gave him his bottle. Blackie stretched out along her thigh and began to purr. His buzzing shook her whole body. She finished feeding the Spots and when they were asleep, slid Spot One off her lap onto Blackie, who opened one eye, licked his brother and went back to sleep.

Spot Two was trying to wash herself, and Linn grabbed the damp cloth out of the basket and rubbed the kitten’s face with it. Sekhmet usually did this for her kittens, baths and toilet. Linn was glad they were finally using the litter pan. She had been contemplating kitten diapers for a couple of days there; surely she could cut tail holes in regular ones.

Spot Two staggered over to her brothers and curled up with them. Linn rubbed Patches’ belly and then scooted her closer to the kitten heap, too. Patches yawned, showing off her tiny, needle-sharp fangs.

Linn looked down to see where Heff was, but he was nowhere in sight. She looked at the sleepy kittens and decided they weren’t going anywhere with their full round bellies. She climbed down the ladder and followed her nose into the house.

Her grandfather was pulling a loaf of bread out of the oven. “Stew’s on.” He pointed at the wood stove.

Linn grabbed a bowl and dished herself some. “It’s good,” she told him with her mouth full. She was starving. Heff grunted at her.

Linn ate silently for a few minutes, watching him roam around the house, picking things up and then putting them down again. “Grampa, what’s wrong?”

Heff sighed and walked over to the table. He tousled Linn’s hair. “I’m going to be leaving soon. I have to get out there and see what’s going on. Meet some people. I’ve called in a babysitter for you.”

Linn frowned. “I don’t...”

He grandfather cut her off. “Yes, you do. There are bad things happening.”

“What is happening? I’m not a baby, Grampa, and I do need to know. I need to be ready.”

Heff looked down at her for a long moment, one bushy eyebrow raised. She could see forever in his dark brown eyes. There was a flicker of something... He blinked, and was just her grandfather again. He sat down and looked at her.

“How much did you hear when Mars visited that night?”

“I heard that he wants you to join his side. He hates mortals, doesn’t he?”

“He hates not being worshipped anymore. You’ve heard the term absolute power corrupts absolutely?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s what we immortals have. We cannot be killed.”

“But even immortals could be killed. What happens if someone cuts off your head or burns you up?”

Heff laughed. “Book and TV vampires aren’t immortal. They just live a really long time unless someone kills them. My people are truly immortal. And not human.”

“Then what are you... um, and what about me?”

“I can’t tell you. Can you trust me, princess?”

He hadn’t called her that since she was small enough to sit in his lap. She wished she could do that now. Her head felt full. She nodded, after a moment. She knew Grampa Heff would never hurt her, and if he said he couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t. She’d never known him to lie.

“All right, then. You are half-blooded. You have a little of me, a little of your grandmother in you.”

“Grandmother is an immortal?”

“Yes. She isn’t with me because she feels responsible to her homeland, you know. Unlike me, she’s put down roots and invested so much of herself there, she doesn’t feel happy anywhere else.”

“Can’t you go there and be with her?”

Heff sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I was trying to stay near you, but then...” He shrugged. “We’ll see what happens.”

“So who are the bad guys, Grampa? Why do the gods... the immortals, want to fight?”

“Some of us were happy to give up godhood. Some of us never wanted it in the first place. Also, the most powerful among us maintain a pure form, and look down on those who assume other guises.”

“What?” Linn was confused.

“Beast shapes. When we were new to this plane, some of us were forced to abandon the preferred, human guise, and take on the shape of animals. I can’t tell you why without explaining what we are. Just take it that the purists among us look down on beings like Sekhmet and Steve.”

“That’s not fair.”

He shrugged. “I was raised by one. A water naiad. So to me, they’re just folks and shouldn’t be considered less than that.”

“I should think not!” Linn was indignant at the idea of the big, gentle cat Sekhmet being considered unworthy.