The Girl Who Married A Lion. Alexander McCall Smith
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the pumpkin,” the oldest boy said to his youngest brother. “You are the smallest.”
The small boy was unhappy about this plan, but since the whole family had agreed on it, he could not refuse to play his part. While the older boys went off to the fields to look for the biggest pumpkin, the mother made a special meal for her youngest son. Then she covered him with fat and gave him some special charms that she had kept for such a time.
The other boys came back to the house with the largest pumpkin that the family had seen that year. They set it on a low rock and cut a hole in its side. Then, with wooden scoops and knives, they took out the pumpkin flesh and put it in a cooking pot. Soon the pumpkin was quite hollow and they were able to push the youngest boy inside it.
It was now getting dark, and so they carried the great pumpkin down to one of the fields and placed it in the middle. No elephant could fail to spot such a delicious-looking pumpkin.
Do not be afraid,” they said to their young brother. “There is nothing that can go wrong with this plan.”
Inside the pumpkin, the small boy stayed quite still. If he moved, he thought it possible that an elephant would become suspicious. He had a long time to wait, and it was cramped inside the pumpkin, but, like all his brothers, this boy was brave.
Some hours passed before he heard the first sounds of the elephants. To begin with there was only a faint rumble, and then the whole earth seemed to shake as the elephants entered the field. The largest of the elephants, who was also their leader, looked about the field as he wondered which pumpkin to eat first. When he saw the big pumpkin in the middle, he knew immediately that that would be the best pumpkin to eat. He went across to it, sniffed at it briefly with his trunk, and then scooped it up into the air and straight into his mouth.
Inside the pumpkin, it seemed to the boy as if the whole world was turning upside down. He felt the hot breath of the elephant as the trunk embraced his pumpkin and then he sensed the sides of the pumpkin squeezing as the vegetable passed down into the great creature’s throat. When the movement stopped, he realized that he was now inside the elephant’s stomach. This was the time for him to cut his way out of the pumpkin and find the elephant’s heart.
His knife in his hand, the boy groped his way out of the pumpkin. With a quick lunge, he struck his knife into the heart of the elephant, and then fell to his knees as the great beast roared out and lurched upon his feet.
By the time that the family arrived, the other elephants had all run away in fright. Alone in the middle of the pumpkin field, the great elephant lay on his side. The boys cut through the thick elephant skin to rescue their small brother. The mother kissed him when he emerged from within the elephant, and then she wiped away the fat and the pieces of pumpkin that stuck to his skin.
The following night, many people came to see that family to help them eat the elephant meat. They ate many pumpkins too.
The hardest work, though, was the collecting of water. In the rain season there was a spring nearby which gave good, clear water for everybody to drink, but when it was dry, as it often was, the only place where water could be found was in a river a long way off. To reach the river, people had to leave in the early morning and they would only be back at midday.
It was not easy carrying calabashes of water back from the river. The sun was hot in the sky above and a dry wind came from the hills. Often the only companions along the path would be the lizards scurrying off in the dust or the cicadas screeching in the bush.
For many years it had been the task of the first girl to go to the river for water. The second girl was not nearly as strong as her sister. Her arms were thin and it was difficult for her to walk long distances. When she was asked to carry anything, the load felt twice as heavy to her as it did to her stronger sister. For this reason, most of her work was at home, plucking chickens or doing other things which required little strength.
The mother and father of that family had spoken to many people about what was wrong with that girl. They had taken her to a witchdoctor, who had pinched her thin arms and rubbed a thick paste on them.
“That will make them strong,” he had said.
They kept the paste on the arms until it had all rubbed off, but the second girl’s arms remained thin.
“She will always be weak,” her mother said to her father. “We must accept that she is a weak girl.”
The second girl felt sad that she was not as strong as the first girl, but she did not complain. There was plenty of work even for weak girls in that dry place.
The first girl always fetched her water from the same spot. There was a pool in the river there, and a path that led straight down to the edge of the water. It was a place where animals came to drink, and each morning she could tell from the footprints which animals had been there before her. She could tell the marks of the leopards – who always drank at night – and the tiny marks of the duiker, who came shyly down to the river just as the sun was rising.
Every day the first girl would dip her calabashes into the pool and draw out the cool river water. Then, with the calabashes full, she would dip her hand into the pool and take up a few mouthfuls of water before she began the long journey home.
One day she felt very tired when she arrived at the river’s edge. It had been especially hot that day, and it seemed to her that all her strength had been drained by the long walk. As she leaned forward to fill her calabashes, the first girl felt her head spinning around. She tried to stand up again, but she could not and slowly she tumbled forward into the water.
The river was deep and the first girl could not swim. For a few moments she struggled to get back to the edge of the pool, but there was a current in the water and it tugged at her limbs. Soon she was out in the middle of the river and it was there that she sank, with nobody to see her or to hear her last cry. Only some timid monkeys in a tree by the edge of the river saw the first girl disappear. For a few minutes they stared at the ripples in the water where she had been and then they turned away and were gone.
When the first girl had not returned by sunset, the father knew that something had happened to her. There was nothing he could do during the night, as there were lions nearby, but the next morning all the men went out to search for the first girl. They followed her footprints, which were clear on the ground, and traced her steps to the edge of the water. When they saw that the steps did not come back from the river’s side, they cried out in sorrow, for they knew now what had happened to the first girl.
There was great sadness in that home. Everybody had loved the first girl, who had always smiled and been happy in her work. The second girl slept alone in her hut, sadly staring at the emptiness where the first girl had had her sleeping mat.
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