Linn sat down, arranging Lambent to hang properly. He knew everything... “Then why did you let us be attacked? The other two kittens were killed!”
“Knowing and being able to act on are two different things. I was able to keep an eye on you as you came here, once I intersected you.” He padded over, leaving the two kittens wrestling with one another. Putting his front paws on Linn’s knees, he reached up and kissed her face with his long wet tongue. Linn’s giggle was watery with her tears.
“I am sorry for your grief, child.” He spoke softly, his golden eyes fixed on hers.
She hugged his neck, feeling the soft ruff of fur. “I was supposed to be their guardian!” she wailed. She felt him shift abruptly and opened her eyes. He’d changed to human form, and was holding her gently, kneeling on the floor. Long black braids fell over his shoulders, and a peaceful face that looked as though it were made of old leather looked at her. He was wearing a buckskin shirt and jeans. His feet were bare.
“Cry it out. You will feel better.”
Linn sniffled. “I’m OK.”
He nodded. “You saved two of them. Bes is not dead. You are not dead. It is a victory.”
“No, it’s not...” Linn felt the tears coming back. “I left them behind.”
“I, too, have left many behind.” Coyote hugged her. Linn cried on his shoulder. She remembered the last time she had cried like this. After her father’s death, she had crawled into her mother’s lap, and they had both cried until they fell asleep. Linn couldn’t bear losing the little ones. Not again. She couldn’t do anything about it, though.
Coyote picked her up and carried her to the couch. He tucked her in with one of her grandmother’s afghans, she recognized the pattern. She clutched at it and whispered, “Thank you.”
He kissed her forehead and said, “Sleep, sweet child. You have ventured much and will win more than you know.”
Linn felt as though she were falling into a well. She clutched at his sleeves, and then everything slipped away. First Bes, now Coyote. Drat them. She was going to have to learn how to counter the sleep spell. As soon as she woke up...
When she woke up she realized the sun was shining. She looked up and saw what she hadn’t the evening before. Where the eyes of the monster had been were two great windows. She looked back down to see Spot One lying across her legs. She twisted her head around and realized that Blackie was draped over the arm of the couch, one paw on her head. She felt warm and safe. She closed her eyes and drifted off again.
She woke up to the smell of bacon and eggs. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Coyote was standing at the stove, stirring something in a skillet. The kittens were at his feet eating already, tails straight up in the air. The immortal looked over his shoulder at her.
“Shower while you can and then come and get it... You have a long day ahead.”
Linn stretched and staggered toward the bathroom. She had been in it briefly the night before. Now, she found a towel and clothes laid out waiting for her. Gratefully, she got clean and dressed. They were too big for her, but they were clean.
Coyote nodded when she came out. “Good, you were getting pretty ripe, kid,” he teased.
He put a plate down and Linn sat, glad to eat. He had cooked the bacon, then chopped it and added it and some tomatoes and herbs to the scrambled eggs. It tasted like heaven. She giggled a little. Coyote sat down and looked at her quizzically.
“Food of the gods,” she explained. “Ambrosia. I never thought it would look like this.”
He laughed. “It is good to feed a hungry child again. I had forgotten how satisfying it was to cook for someone who appreciates your food.”
“Well, I like it. You can feed me anytime.” She finished the last bite and took the plate to the sink.
“What are we doing today?” she asked Coyote.
“You are going to take it easy and perhaps read. My library is yours,” he instructed.
“And you?” she asked curiously.
“I prepare to join your grandfather.” His voice was solemn.
“You will leave your land?”
“I must, this time. I never go, but this time I am needed.”
“It’s bad... isn’t it?” Linn heard her voice tremble. She gulped. She wasn’t a little girl, and she wasn’t going to cry again.
“It could be. But we will stop them. Your grandfather is formidable.”
“This has happened before.” She knew that from some things her grandfather had hinted at.
His eyes focused on something very far away indeed. “On a small scale, so many times. On a grander scale, the world has been rolled back to the Stone Age a handful of times. That... that is what they want this time.”
“What can we do?” Linn felt very small and young again. She had been feeling very confident after her trek.
“You and Bes are going to keep the children safe.”
“I hate babysitting.” She hadn’t been all that good at it, so far.
Coyote laughed. He did that a lot, she noticed. “The children of the immortals are the key to the future of the earth. You have proved your worth...”
Linn felt her lip wobble. She bit it and listened hard, trying not to think about what she had left behind.
“You are a child yourself, but this is an important task.”
Linn nodded, not trusting her voice.
Coyote stood. “I’ll be in the stable if you need me.”
Linn sat looking up and out of the eye of the monster for a long time. The kittens were asleep on the couch. Finally, she stood and went to find a book. Today she wanted something to make her laugh. Coyote could, and she could learn. She had a feeling it was an important survival skill.
She was curled up with a kitten on her feet and the afghan wrapped around her when Bes walked in the door. She shrieked and ran to him, hugging him hard.
He staggered back a little, laughing. “Oof! Girl, I’m immortal, not unbreakable.” He hugged her back hard, though.
“I thought I’d never see you again!” She sniffed as she realized she was crying.
“I have a surprise for you.” He put her a little away from him.
“What?” Linn was trying not to cry.
“Close your eyes.”
Obediently, Linn closed her eyes. She heard the door open again, and then a soft, warm, wiggly bundle was in her arms. Her eyes flew open and she cried out.
“Kittens!” She stopped abruptly.
Coyote gave her the other toddler.
Linn looked down at the little girls in confusion. “Who are they?”
“Patches and Spot Two.”
Linn protested, shaking her head. “They’re human!”
The redhead put her arms around Linn’s neck and cuddled. Spot Two cooed up at her.
“They don’t talk quite yet.”
“They are human,” she repeated.
Coyote sighed. “They are immortals. When they were killed in the house...”
“What!?” Linn looked at him, horrified.
“They died in the blast. Their bodies were destroyed. Their consciousness was not. They are the children of two immortals and possess the power to revive in a formed body.”
“But their imprinting dictated the form. And they think of you as mother, right now,” Bes finished.
Linn looked down at the sweet faces. Her mind was reeling. “They are alive.” she whispered finally.
She took them over to the couch and sat down. Blackie sat up and yawned, showing his fangs. Then he sniffed Patches and mewed at her. She hugged his neck. Linn looked up at Bes and Coyote, aware that tears were silently falling down her cheeks.
“I can’t keep calling them Patches and Spot.” she said.
Coyote shook his head and chuckled. “You think of names. Plan to stay here tonight, we’ll leave in the morning.”
Bes patted Spot One, who was trying to climb the short god. He’d gotten too big to do it, though.
Linn nodded and buried her face in Spo
t Two’s hug. The child was wearing a simple dress and no shoes. Her tumbled ringlets badly needed a brushing. She didn’t look at all like the kitten Linn knew, but she felt right.
Linn looked at her. “You all need names that mean something.”
Blackie headbutted her cheek. “I know you like your name,” Linn assured him.
She looked at the black-haired child. “Moira. You are Moira.”
The little girl smiled at her and then grabbed Blackie. Linn let her wiggle out of her arms and down to the floor. She picked up Patches and hoisted the redhead up in the air. The little girl squealed and kicked.
“Patricia. Close to what it was before.”
Linn put her down and turned to Spot One, who was sitting next to her with his tail wrapped around his feet. “And you?”
He opened his mouth in a soundless meow. She stroked his head and he arched his jaw into her palm.
“I just named one sister for the Fates, and the other for a Roman high society. What shall we do for you? Your mother is Sekhmet, also called Hathor. Your father has an unpronounceable name and prefers to be called Steve.”
He just looked at her, purring.
“You’re no help. I need a baby name book.”
She got up and walked over to the bookcase. No baby name books - she would have been shocked - but there was another copy of the Standard Dictionary of Folklore. Her idea for Moira’s name had come from that. She hesitated over it and then looked further. She didn’t want to name them for an immortal who might object to them using the name.
She pulled a couple of books out and sat cross-legged on the floor. The kittens and girls had occupied the couch and were getting reacquainted, which seemed to involve lots of wrestling. All that was missing was Coyote, who was still outside with Bes.
It seemed so surreal. Here she was, sitting on the floor of a house built into a Monster’s skull, waiting to be taken to safety while the end of the world was coming. And she was looking up a name for an immortal being who was currently shaped like a kitten. A rather large and inquisitive kitten, she thought as he romped over and leapt up on the book to headbutt at her face, rubbing his cheeks on hers.
She looked down at the book she had been leafing through. “How about Lancelot?”
He chuffed a little sneeze.
Linn chuckled. “Then maybe Gareth. He was one of the Knights of the Round Table, and the name is Welsh for peaceful.”
Spot One put his paws on her shoulders and started to lick her face.
“Hey! That tickles... I’ll take that as a yes. You’re Gareth, now.”
Patricia and Moira came over slowly, still walking unsteadily. Blackie walked between them, letting them hold onto him as they needed support. Physically they might look they were three years old, but they had only assumed a two-legged form three days before. It was harder for them to learn to walk with two legs than with four.
Linn hugged all of them as they got near enough, grabbing them indiscriminately. She had thought she had lost them. Now, having them all near to her was making her cry, still, but they were happy tears now, and those she didn’t mind. Blackie and Gareth wiggled free and prowled around the room, while Patricia and Moira were content to snuggle a little longer.
Linn got up and gave them each a hand to hold onto. They walked across the room slowly and she put them each in a chair. Then she pointed at herself. “Linn. My name is Linn.”
She pointed at Patricia, “Pat. Your name is Pat,” and then at Moira, repeating the phrase. “Now you say it. I am...” she pointed at herself.
The girls both giggled.
Linn sighed. “I guess you guys will start talking when you are ready, huh.”
They climbed down from their chairs and toddled off hand in hand. They didn’t get far before their brothers pounced on them. Linn went back to clean up the books she had taken out. She stopped when she was done, running a finger along the spines of the library. She was beginning to have a feeling the science fiction collection was as much a part of the answers to immortals as the mythology books.
Reluctantly, she turned away from the books and started to make dinner. Coyote’s late breakfast for her was a distant memory. She looked in the vintage refrigerator with its avocado door and saw the leftover stew from the night before, and four fresh rabbit carcasses. She smiled. Chicken-fried rabbit, coming up. With biscuits, and...something from the garden she had seen coming in. Not to mention that she’d been here thirty-six hours and hadn’t been back outside.
She looked in the cupboard and found a colander. Carrying it, she opened the door and stepped outside. She looked down at the valley. Coming in that evening, she had been too tired for the weirdness of it all to truly hit her.
“Alice, you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole,” she muttered. A valley full of bones, mythical beings that might not be magical, and a mixed bag of toddlers and kittens. And she could see whatever it was that powered the immortals, and was having really weird dreams that might not be dreams.
She carefully did not focus on the power that rippled through the valley. One glimpse of that had been enough. Walking down the stairs, she could see Bes and Coyote walking with the horses near the mouth of the valley. She realized there was no fodder for the horses in the blackened valley. If Coyote was going to be gone for awhile, they needed to be somewhere they could eat.
She walked around the nose of the skull to where the little garden was. As she’d caught a glimpse of it before, she had thought it had raised beds. She was right, but the beds were made of yet more bones. She chuckled to herself. Coyote was nothing if not practical. There were green beans and cucumbers that needed harvested.
Once she had enough for all, she headed back up the stairs, glad of the fresh air. She had no desire to roam around the eerie valley, though. She kept getting flashes of power out of the corner of her eyes, the umber of the dead monster more often than the green of Coyote.
Dinner prep while keeping an eye on the children kept her busy, until she heard footsteps on the stairs. Coyote came in first, the resemblance to his beast form acute as he raised his nose, sniffing audibly. He walked to the sink and washed his hands, looking at what she was doing.
“Look, Bes,” he called jovially. “She has made us ambrosia!”
Linn laughed. “The secret must be in how hungry you are.”
“I could eat a bear,” the stocky god chimed in cheerfully.
Linn pulled another piece of rabbit from the skillet she was frying in and put it on the draining rack.
“Go ahead and start. I just need to finish up.” She slid another piece into the sizzling fat. “You don’t have any bigger pans,” she told Coyote.
He shrugged. “I don’t have company often. If you will come to cook, I will get a bigger pan.”
Bes collected the little girls and put them on cushions so they could reach the table top. He fed them and himself until Linn sat down and took Patricia’s bowl from him.
“You feed Moira,” she told him.
“Moira?”
“We picked out names today. This is Moira...” She pointed at the black-haired toddler who had gone by Spot Two. “This is Patricia, or Patch...” She pointed at the redhead who looked up from the green bean she was playing with and smiled at all of them before going back to her amusement. Linn was sure she wasn’t going to eat that green thing.
Linn leaned over and fished Spot One out from under the table into her lap, grunting slightly at the effort. He was easily twenty-five pounds already. “And this is now Gareth.”
Bes smiled. “Good name.”
The kitten inspected her plate and then looked up at her hopefully. Linn shook her head at him. “I don’t think so. You’ve had yours.” She put him down again.
“What about the big one?” Coyote asked, grinning at the byplay.
“He likes his name,” Linn answered. “For now, at least. Blackie is a pretty stubborn kitten, aren’t you?” she cooed at him. He came and sprawled next to her and she r
eached down to tickle his furry stomach.
“I will clean up tonight,” Coyote announced. He patted his stomach. “Thank you, Linn, for the meal.”
Bes nodded. “Thank you, child. You cook well.”
Linn could feel herself blush.
Bes stood. “I need to get my bedroll. Linn, I need you to relax and get some rest. We have a long way to go tomorrow.”
Linn nodded. “I think I'll lie down with a book.”
Coyote went over to the library and looked for a minute. He pulled out a worn hardcover with no dust jacket and handed it to her. “Try this one.”
“Thank you.” Linn looked at it curiously. She hadn’t read it before.
She curled up on the couch and started the story. She looked up when Bes covered her with the afghan. He grinned at her. “Just like your mom.”
Linn nodded and remembered that she needed to call her mother. “Can I call her?”
He shook his head. “No cell service here. You can call her tomorrow. Long drive to the airport.”
“All right.” She went back to the book.
He laughed.
Linn just read. Her mother used to tease her that the world could end and she wouldn’t look up from the page.
Chapter 19
From Idaho, Sekhmet and Steve returned to the high path and traveled south faster than they could have in a car or airplane. The featureless tunnel of the high path warped perceptions, and it was hard to see one another, but they could talk, and did.
“The Shiwanna child first, and then what?” Steve asked.
“She’s young, maybe five? So we will need to take her to Sanctuary and then go on to the next one.”
“So we are only bringing the young ones in... the children who have not yet matured.”
“That’s what I was thinking. I don’t think we will get too much of an argument from parents. Although the Shiwanna can only loosely be called parents.”
“This is true.”
Sekhmet thought about this as they loped along in companionable silence. The Shiwanna were a group of immortals who had become the Zuni gods of clouds and rain. They had pooled energy and created another one of them, as a human child, and were raising her in Colorado.
Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) Page 10
