Chapter 23: The Yellow Kitchen

Ewan's POV

Cadence stood beside me with her hands pressed flat against her ribs, and neither of us looked away from the window.

Inside it was a small yellow kitchen with a table by a window and a bowl of green apples on the sill.

A woman sat at the table, tired and laughing, with a dish towel over one shoulder.

A man stood by the stove with a spoon.

He was a big man with thick forearms, and he was frowning hard at what was in the spoon.

"Is that where I go?" I asked.

"It is where you will be born," the King of the Underworld said. "In eight months and some days. The child you are shown is the child you will be."

I looked closer.

In the high chair at the end of the table sat a small round baby with a fuzz of dark hair.

His fists were banging on the tray.

"I can't remember anything," I said.

"You will not. That is part of the arrangement. You will come with nothing you earned in this life, and nothing you were owed."

"Is that fair?"

"It is a clean page," the King said. "I did not say fair."

In the kitchen, the man blew on the spoon.

He blew on it twice, with his cheeks puffed out.

Then he touched it to his own lip, to check it.

He made a face, and blew once more.

The woman at the table laughed at him.

"It's just pears," she said.

"It's hot."

"It's room temperature."

"It's hot to him," the man said.

He crossed the kitchen and held the spoon in front of the baby, and waited for the baby to open his mouth first.

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