He shook his head. “Your mother is fully immortal. Your grandmother is immortal, and a child of two immortals is one. You are half mortal.”
Linn blinked. “Why did.... Mars come to summon you?”
“The immortals are growing afraid of the mortals. They believe that unless technology is stopped, the mortals will achieve what they have already - power.”
“I don’t think they can stop technology.”
“They can,” he said grimly, getting that faraway look on his face that her mother sometimes wore. “They have done it before. Humanity would have come much further if it were not for the Great Falls of civilization.”
“Oh.”
He rubbed his face and sighed. “I was looking forward to a quiet summer vacation with you.”
“And I to raising my kittens in peace.” Sekhmet muttered.
Linn looked back and forth between the two of them. “Can you... stop them?”
Heff shrugged. “There are more than the two of us that care about mortals. We can stop them if we can persuade all to work together, but I am afraid it will be messy.”
He looked at the Cat, who was curled mostly around Linn. Linn’s eyes were drooping in spite of herself as the warm, softly furred creature purred.
“Sekhmet, can I ask you to go and speak to those who have assumed beast form?”
“My kittens?” she reminded him gently.
“Well, I think we can supply a babysitter.” He looked at the child, already half asleep.
“True.” The amusement was back in her voice. Linn thought drowsily that the cat must have a great sense of humor, as she always seemed to be laughing, or about to.
They may have talked more, but Linn didn’t hear it. She was fast asleep.
Chapter 2
Linn woke up to her grandfather shaking her shoulder. “Get up, girl, you have kittens to feed.”
“Whah?” She sat up and rubbed her eyes. She was on the couch, covered in the afghan. Sekhmet was nowhere to be seen. For a fleeting second, she wondered if she had dreamed it all.
“Kittens need feeding. Sekhmet left last night, she filled their tummies before she went, but now it’s up to you.”
“Oh!” Linn sat straight up. “How do I do that?”
“Bottle of warm goat milk.” He pointed at a milk crate by the door. “Tonight you get to fill them, but you had a long night last night.”
“Thank you, Grampa.” She scrambled out of the tangle of afghan and headed for the loft and day clothes.
“Thermos is for you. Hurry now - they are crying.”
Linn could hear them when she got into the barn. Little sonic shrieks, so high she almost couldn't make them out. Getting the milk crate up the ladder was difficult, and when she got her head above the floor she could see that all four kittens were trying to climb out of their hay bale corral. She scrambled up and patted heads. The black one sucked on her finger while she fumbled for a bottle with her other hand. “How am I supposed to feed all of you at once?” she muttered.
She compromised by taking them out one at a time and holding them in her lap to feed. They were bigger than she remembered, even from last night, and she thought their mother must have been keeping her from seeing that when she first met them. Two of them - the black one and the calico - had their eyes open just a little. Full tummies meant nap time, and she cuddled the spotted one that she had fed last while the others slept in a boneless heap in their corral.
Her grandfather came in and looked up at her. “How goes it?”
“They are full. Two have their eyes open. Do they have names?”
He shrugged. “You can call them whatever you want, cats usually have several names. Their mother won’t mind.”
“When will she be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she in any danger?”
He sighed. “Come on down, I’m getting a crick in my neck.”
“Grampa, last night, Mars called you Haephestus and Vulcan. And Sekhmet is an Egyptian goddess.”
He tousled her hair. “Right. I have many names. As do most immortals. We live long enough with mortals, and they start to call us gods. Then, each different culture, like the Greeks and Romans, has different names for us.”
“So all the gods of myth were really immortals? And why don’t people now still worship you?”
“Well, they don’t worship me because I don’t want them to. Never really did. Other immortals...well. A few centuries back, there was a war. Spilled over down to the mortals, sadly, but the long-term effect was they stopped worshipping us. Started to look beyond us to realize that the universe is a helluva lot bigger than these petty gods they had set up, and there had to be more. There are still isolated cultures that believe, and corrupt immortals that encourage that, but the civilized world has moved on.”
Linn thought this might be the most she’d ever heard her grandfather talk. “You were part of that, weren’t you?”
He looked down at her. He wasn’t all that much taller than she was, any more, and his craggy, bearded face hid the lopsidedness that had been his downfall from Olympus in the first place.
“Maybe,” was all he said.
“I love you, Gramps.” Linn hugged him. “So what do we do now?”
“Lunch.”
Linn sensed she wasn’t going to get more out of him right then.
They ate in silence, and then he sent her back out to the kittens with an armful of bedding. She was going to sleep in the loft with them that night. Linn amused herself with trying out names for them.
“Athena?” She picked up the calico and inspected the little blunt faced kitten. The tiny ears were more rounded than a regular kitten’s would be.
Her grandfather’s voice came up from below where he was milking the goats. “She wouldn’t be pleased to have a kitten named for her.”
“Grampa, why are their ears round?”
“Their father is a Mayan god. The Jaguar God of Terrestrial Fire.”
“I prefer to be called Steve.” Another voice, male and slightly accented , entered the conversation. Linn looked down from the loft to see a slender, black-haired man. The newcomer looked up at her and smiled. “Ah, the child who watches my kittens. Buenos dias, senorita.”
“You aren’t a cat,” Linn blurted. Then she blushed, she felt the heat of it from her chest to her ears. “I’m sorry.”
“No, child, you are correct. I do not wear my beast image in public. It helps in this oh-so-modern world.”
“Steve, what brings you here?”
“Well, Heff, I hear there’s going to be trouble.”
Her grandfather snorted. “And when there’s trouble, there you are.”
Steve shrugged. “Perhaps. I wanted your thoughts on this. Sekhmet did not have time to chat.”
Heff sighed. “Let me finish with the milking. Your kits will be cranky if they aren’t fed.”
“Of course.” He looked back up at Linn. “May I come up, O guardian?”
Linn giggled.
The very dignified man swarmed up the ladder effortlessly. He stood at the top and bowed elegantly to her. “I wanted to thank you for keeping them safe,” he said gravely.
She had never met anyone as mercurial as he was, grave one moment and laughing the next.
“I like kittens, and they are so sweet.”
He sat on a bale and tickled the black kitten’s chin. ”He looks just like me.”
“What is his name?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t seen them before this.”
Linn gaped at him.
He laughed. “I am a cat, chica. And as for names...” he bent over the awakened kittens. All of their eyes were open now, but they didn’t track very well. “How about Blackie, Spot, Patches and Spot?”
Linn laughed. “No! They deserve better than that.”
“Well, then, I shall leave it in your capable hands, young lady.”
“Right now she needs to come down and fill up bottle
s,” Heff’s voice rose from below.
“Coming, Grampa,” she called back.
Linn climbed down the ladder and took the milk pail from him. Steve followed her down and went with her grandfather into the house. Linn filled the kitten bottles and raised them in the pulley basket Grampa had rigged that afternoon. That proved to be much easier than trying to climb up the ladder with them.
The hayloft was quiet as she fed the kittens, with only the faint squeaks of the siblings that weren’t being fed audible. Linn decided that the black kitten was the boldest.He’s certainly the greediest, she thought as she pulled the bottle away from him. She took the smallest, spotted one out of the enclosure to feed as Blackie showed signs of pushing him away from the bottle and taking it for himself.
“Enough, piggie boy,” she scolded. He flipped onto his back and waved his front paws at her. Linn rubbed his full tummy.
“I need to learn more about your parents before I give you names. I wonder if Grampa has some books about the mythology of Egypt and Mexico.” She sighed. Having no Internet slowed research down a lot.
Spot was asleep in her lap, and purring loudly enough to vibrate her to her bones. Linn leaned against the hay bales. It was warm and smelled good up here. The hay was a little scratchy in places, but she was sleepy enough to ignore that and relax fully. She closed her eyes and drifted into the warmth.
Chapter 3
Haephestus, sometimes known as Vulcan, and more recently as Heff Vulkane, stood looking at his house and barn from the dark edge of the woods. He was walking the perimeter, renewing the wards that would warn him of intruders to his little domain. He’d known Mars was coming, but had wanted to hear out the angry god’s spiel. Heff sighed. With the girl and kittens to protect, his hands were tied. Traveling would be difficult at best for a while.
He had, perhaps, waited too long already. In the two weeks since Sekhmet had gone, the kittens had grown and developed amazingly. But the news that was filtering back to him led him to believe that the gods were moving fast this time. The last time they had been slow, too complicated.
“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” he muttered to himself.
The warm light spilling from the open barn door reminded him that Linn hadn’t had dinner. He made his way back to the barn, walking in shadows until he reached the cleared field of fire around the buildings, and then he walked cautiously, aware of his exposure. They might not come for him. But they probably would. He was too well known as the outsider, the immortal who loved humans.
He climbed the ladder to the hayloft and stood with a smile on his face looking down at the little heap of kittens and girl, all fast asleep. The kittens had climbed out of their nest and were lying near or on Linn. She had a half-smile on her face. Heff thought she looked a lot like her grandmother at the moment. He tucked a strand of silky black hair behind her ear and out of her face.
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 h
ad 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.
Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) Page 2
