The Elementals by Morgan Llywelyn

smile, offering little tokens of peace between the flying arrows of her words. “I am sorry … of course, you’re quite right … you do work very hard, I know … yes, yes …”
    But she had to run on to the end, always. And loudly, so others heard. In the city the houses huddled close together.
    â€œShe will be different when the children start to come,” Meriones had once said apologetically to Phrixus, who lived next door.
    â€œI doubt it,” commented Phrixus, who was older. “Sometimes the marriage rites bring forward the worst in a woman. Your Tulipa told my Dendria that she had married beneath herself and regretted it.”
    Meriones had hung his head at these words. “Tulipa’s uncle was Keeper of the Bulls. I’m just one of the countless musicians at the palace, with no royal blood to give me status.”
    â€œHow did you come to play the lyre?”

    Meriones had hesitated before answering. When he spoke his voice was low with embarrassment. “My grandmother was brought here as a slave from the Islands of the Mist. Are you surprised? Not many know; Tulipa would rather die than tell anyone. My grandmother taught me to play a small stringed instrument that had belonged to her father. It was the only possession she had been allowed to bring with her.”
    â€œYou don’t have to be ashamed, Meriones,” Phrixus had said. “Almost everyone on Crete has ancestors who came from somewhere else, and a lot of them were slaves. After all, the commerce of the world goes through our harbor. Slaves are treated well here and their descendants can prosper, you are proof of that yourself. So be proud—and start siring some descendants of your own. They will keep Tulipa too busy to scold you.”
    But although Meriones and his wife prayed daily to the Good Goddess and observed her rituals, and Tulipa made several pilgrimages to the cave of the deity of childbirth, her belly remained flat while her tongue grew sharper.
    Now as Meriones emerged, blinking and yawning, from the windowless ground floor of his house into the brilliant sunlight of the courtyard, she began on him at once. “That thief at the oil merchant’s shop sold me a whole pithos of rancid oil, husband. It was delivered yesterday. I just unstoppered it and the vile smell turned my stomach over. What will I boil tonight’s meat in? Why does everyone think they can take advantage of us? It’s your fault, Meriones. Because you are unimportant we are sold rancid oil and we live on a crowded back street with no view of the harbor.”
    â€œWe have a nice house,” Meriones replied. “You seemed to like it well enough when we married, and you said nothing about the view then.” Trying to hold on to the good mood he had awakened with, he looked admiringly at his little house of stone and plaster. Its exterior walls were painted the cheerful yellow of field flowers. As was the custom in Knsos, the ground floor was windowless to insure privacy, but the upper story was windowed front and back to catch the light and draw the salty breezes from the harbor.
    A man’s status in the community could be judged from the view he commanded, and in the ninety cities of Crete there was intense competition for a panorama of the mountains or the dark glittering sea. The day room and sleeping chambers were at the top of the
house, so their occupants could enjoy the scenery and be removed from domestic activities taking place at ground level in the megaron, or hearth room.
    Meriones’ house boasted no view more lofty than that of the paved street in front and its own tiny courtyard behind, but the building itself was bright and comfortable. Privately, Meriones thought it a fine achievement for the grandson of a slave. Yet many of his class lived as well or better, for the wealth of the sea kings lapped like a tidal wave over the inhabitants of the island of Crete.
    Tulipa was