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“I think it’s this way.”
Keket dragged Atem's hand, pulling him away from the rows of shark plushies to rows of desks. She came to a full stop, the beads in her braids clinking together as she looked to her right and then to her left. Neither Kazuko nor Yugi were anywhere to be spotted, and Atem was starting to wonder if they lived here now. Keket, meanwhile, had a glint in her eyes and a furrowed brow that told Atem she was determined to figure out where they needed to go.
To their right was a display of a modern child’s bedroom, and Atem compared it in his head with the palace. There was a lot of glittering gold, but it was nowhere near as warm as the child’s bedroom presented before him. The implication in the set up was that the parents were around. Keket was not looking at it, and Atem vaguely remembered how Keket’s family had simply dropped her at the palace’s doorsteps with the intention of marrying her off. They never came back after Atem had married her as planned. While Atem was grateful, he never asked how Keket felt about it and Keket never brought it up.
“Wait,” he finally said, staring at the storage units on the wall. “When you arrived at the palace, you were only eight. Your parents visited every summer until we were twelve and wedded. Then they never came by again.”
Keket paused, looking at the shelves he looked at. There was now a faraway look on her face. “No, they didn’t,” she said. “My father was always distant. My mother was one of many wives. She always told me to be the first wife of a ruler, and was thrilled to engage me to a prince directly in line for the throne. I would be a first wife, as she wanted.” She paused, not continuing, before taking his hand again. “Let us go find Yugi and Kaz. I think we’re close.”
She yanked him away from the child’s room and through a shortcut that dumped them out into an area that had a bunch of neatly polished kitchens in varying sizes. None of them were the warm hearth and stone of his childhood. He couldn’t picture Mana or Mahad in any of these kitchens. He could not imagine making bread on the cold, icey blue stone of the modern kitchen’s counter. The steel fridges may store plenty of food, but they lack the warmth that the hearth should hold. He was alive in a world he was never supposed to be alive in. And then Keket stood in the tiny model kitchen, and suddenly Atem understood how a modern kitchen could be warm.
Her eyes were like liquid gold, and they locked with his, and Atem didn’t care if they had to live in Ikea anymore. He could recall when they were in the kitchen, and Keket would help knead bread. He remembered the smell of baking fish and herbs, of the laughter of long dead people. And yet here they were. “We should ask an employee,” Keket said, her brow furrowing again “I don’t think we’ll be able to find our way to Yugi and Kaz without it.”
Asking for help would’ve never crossed his mind. Keket reached out with her hand, and he took it. The past was long gone, dead and buried. They could never turn back to the people they had been before. From ancient bones, to ghosts, to solidly alive again. Without her, Atem would have felt like he would have come back wrong. Stuck in the past, unable to grow past it. But with her, he could admit to needing help. He could accept help. He would not let pride hold him back. He would let Keket lead him into the future.