Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) by Cedar Sanderson Read Free Book Online

reflexively. Branches and leaves kept the sky from even being visible here.
    It wasn’t long before two rabbits appeared at the stream edge. When she shot one, the other took off like a streak of lightning. Linn stepped gingerly on rocks across the little stream, trying to keep her feet dry. Even in full summer, the mountain streams of Idaho weren’t exactly balmy. She’d been in this one once before and it was icy all year round.
    With two rabbits in the bag, she headed home, gathering a handful of sorrel at the edge of the trail as she walked. Chicken-fried rabbit, salad, and potatoes, she decided. Simple, but it’d be good. She was hungry already. Actually, she was hungry all the time. She knew it was because she was a teenager, but it didn’t make her tummy rumble less. She pulled a bag of gorp out of her pack and munched.
    The wild strawberries were gone, but she knew where a patch of cloudberries were, and she knew how fond Grampa Heff was of them. She picked them every summer with her Grandma for him. Linn sighed over the fragrant, tender golden clusters. She missed her grandmother’s belly laugh, and the stories she told as they picked together. It wasn’t as fun without a companion.
    The she wondered who was coming to be babysitter. Would it be her grandmother? Who was her grandmother? Linn rocked back on her heels and looked up at the looming mountains. Her grandmother was a goddess, but Vulcan hadn’t said which one. She wasn’t an Olympian, Linn was fairly sure. Her Gramma was too down-to-Earth. Linn chuckled at her inadvertent pun.
    Time to go home and make dinner. Answers would come with time and patience in her experience. It had been years... five, at least, since she’d learned that staying quiet and out of sight meant she could hear adult conversations and learn all sorts of things. The babysitter should be here tomorrow.
    She was walking down the worn path from woods to house through the meadow, feeling relaxed and planning dinner in her head, when the flames caught her attention. She was running through the grass toward them before she even thought why the smithy would be burning. The barn wasn’t alight, she saw quickly. Huge orangy-red flames leaped and flickered up from the shop where Grampa Heff was working.
    Linn didn’t remember screaming, although later Heff told her she had. Which is what had brought him bursting out the doors toward her, through the flames and bringing them with him. Linn kept running toward him, seeing the fire on him, above him, all around the smithy... no smoke billowed up. She caught at his arms, shaking and not feeling any heat although she could see the flames. Her vision sparkled at the edges and she felt her knees give way before everything grayed out like a tunnel receding.
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    Heff carried his limp granddaughter into the house cradled in his arms. He didn’t know what she had seen, but he’d seen the terror in her eyes as she’d collapsed at his feet. He laid her down on the couch, then raised her legs to lay on the arm of the couch, elevated over her heart. She opened her eyes but he knew she wasn’t quite back yet.
    “Shhh...” When she started to struggle, he leaned over her and pushed the hair out of her eyes. “Lie still. It’s OK.”
    Her eyes closed, then flew open a minute later. “You’re on fire!” she blurted.
    He knew what was going on, now. “It’s OK. Feel.” He took one of her hands and placed it on his bare forearm. She flinched, then grabbed tightly. “No heat, no fire. I’m all right.”
    She gasped and shuddered. “Thought you were burning,” she managed finally.
    Heff gathered her in his arms, forgetting that he was sweaty and covered in soot. “It is all right, child.” She clung to his neck, eyes tightly shut. “You have the Sight. This is my blood coming to the fore in you. It’s a common enough gift.”
    “Gift?” she choked. “I was so scared!”
    “It will be a gift, once