Pots and jars fell to the floor and splintered, the roof of a jeweler's studio on the eastern side of the palace collapsed, and several minor fires blazed up where furniture or cloth had fallen into open fire pits. It frightened me, but my nurse, Graia, assured me that it was nothing. "Only a bit of temper, no more," she said, and she told me this story. "Deep within the Island of Kefti," she said, "below the deepest caverns, below even that realm where the dead people dwell, down in the darkness and the heat of the earth, there lives a gigantic bull. The Bull in the Earth is the dearly beloved husband of the Lady Potnia, She Who Made All Things. "The Lady loves her people, the Keftiu, but she also loves the Bull. These two loves do not always harmonize with each other. The Bull is as large as a mountain, and his breath is a roaring flame hot enough to melt stone. If he were allowed his freedom he would surely kill each and every one of the Keftiu. The Lady therefore keeps the Bull pent up within the earth, where he cannot destroy her people.
