The Girl Who Married A Lion. Alexander McCall Smith

roaring with rage, he tried to leap to his feet, only to be wrenched back painfully by his nailed tail.

      “Release me at once!” he roared at the hare. But the other just laughed, and ate more of the lion’s food. Then, when he had eaten enough, he sauntered over to another part of the lion’s house and found a large knife. The lion watched him suspiciously, and tried to swipe at him with his claws, but he could barely move now and it was easy for hare to get round him. Deftly waving his knife, Hare split the lion’s skin from one end to the other and pushed him out of it. Once he was out of his skin, Lion was just a weak jelly, with no claws and no teeth. Hare pushed him aside and straight away began to free the tail of the now empty lion skin. Once he had finished this task, he slipped into the skin and bounded out of the house.

      The baboons were frightened when they saw what they thought was the lion. Carefully they laid out a great deal of food so that the lion would eat it and not bother them. Inside the lion skin, the hare smiled to himself and cheerfully began to eat the food. When he had finished, he lay out on the ground and relaxed his lion claws. It would be pleasant to sleep in comfort in that place and wait for the baboons to bring him more food in the evening.

      The next day, since the hare was eating so much food, the baboons had to travel far afield to find food for their store caves. The hare stayed put, and when his hosts had gone he slipped out of the lion skin to play with the baboon children. They enjoyed their games, with the hare chasing them in circles and the baboon children trying to catch him by his ears. Just before the baboon parents came back, however, hare got into the lion skin and was a lion again. The baboons had found a great deal of food but he managed to eat up most of it and told them that they would have to go out again the next day to find more.

      That night, the baboon children told their parents that the lion was not really a lion but a hare dressed up as one. The parents did not believe them, and warned them not to say such things. One baboon, though, was suspicious, and he decided to hide the next day and see what really happened when the adult baboons had gone in search of food.

      Of course the hare slipped out of his skin again and enjoyed more games with the baboon children. This was watched from a bush by the hidden baboon, whose eyes glowed with anger as he saw the deception which he and his friends had suffered at the hands of the wily hare.

      “That lion is not a lion,” the baboon whispered to the others when they returned. “The children were telling the truth – he is really a hare.”

      “I see,” said the leader of the baboons. “We shall have to drive him away.”

      “Taking a large stick, the head baboon went up to the sleeping lion and hit him firmly on the nose. This woke up the hare, who felt the sharp blow to his nose and howled with pain.

      “That is not the sort of noise that a lion makes,” said the baboon. And with that he beat the hare again, putting all his strength into the strokes. Had the lion been a real lion, of course, that would have been the end of that baboon, but it was really only a hare and a frightened hare at that. Leaping out of the skin, he ran off into the bush, to be pursued by the angry shouts of the baboons.

      The baboons took the empty lion skin back to the real lion, who was still just a weak pink thing without his claws and mane. He was grateful to be able to get into his skin, and promised that he would not trouble those baboons again. This made the baboons happy, and they decided that although they still felt angry at the way the hare had tricked them out of food, some good had come of it and they would forgive him after all.

       Pumpkin

       family who lived near a river had good fields. Because they were near the river, there was never any shortage of water, even when other parts of the country were dry and dusty. There was no father in this family – he had gone off to a town and had never come back – and so the mother lived with her five sons and with her own mother and father. Although she sometimes wished that her husband would return, she knew that this would never happen, and so she reminded herself of her good fortune in having such good fields and such brave sons to look after her.

      This family ate nothing but pumpkins. From the time when they had first come to that place, they had known that the ground was good for pumpkins. If you planted pumpkin seeds there, in a few months there would be large plants growing across the ground and, a few months after that, there would be great yellow pumpkins ripening in the sun. These pumpkins tasted very good. Their flesh was firm and sweet and would fill even the hungriest stomach. As the boys grew up, the woman saw that pumpkin was undoubtedly the best sort of food for a boy, as her sons were strong and took great pleasure in helping their mother in the fields.

      Soon this family was known throughout that part of the country for their good pumpkins. People would walk from a great distance to buy spare pumpkins, and later they would tell their friends just how delicious these pumpkins were. The family planted more pumpkins, and soon they had so many in their fields that they were able to sell almost half of their crop, while keeping the rest for themselves.

      One morning, the youngest boy, Sipho, went from the huts to fetch water at the river to water the pumpkins. He did not get as far as the river, though, as what he saw in the fields made him turn straight back. Calling out to his mother, he ran up to her hut and told her what he had seen.

      The woman lost no time in running down to the fields. When she reached the first of the fences she let out a wail of sorrow.

      “Our pumpkins!” she sobbed. “Who has eaten our pumpkins?”

      The other boys and the grandfather were soon in the fields as well. They looked about them and saw that many of the pumpkins had been ripped from their vines and were lying, half-eaten, on the ground. Other pumpkins had been crushed, and the seeds were scattered all over the ground. Every field looked as if it had been a battleground, with the yellow blood of the pumpkins on every stone.

      The whole family set to work in clearing up the broken pumpkins. Then, when this was done, they set to repairing the fences which had been broken by whomever had done the damage. That night, the two elder boys crouched in a bush near the furthest field, waiting to see if anything would come back to wreak further havoc.

      Many hours passed, but at last they heard a sound. They knew immediately what it was that had done so much damage to their crop. Of course, they were too frightened to move, and had to sit in their bush while the great elephants ate as many pumpkins as they could manage and destroyed many more. Then, when the elephants had walked away, the two boys ran to their home and told their weeping mother what they had seen.

      The next day the family discussed what could be done to save their remaining pumpkins.

      “There is nothing we can do,” said the grandfather, who was very old and had seen many times the damage that elephants could do. “When elephants come to a place the only thing that people can do is to move somewhere else.”

      “But we cannot leave this place,” said the mother. “We cannot leave our beautiful fields and the good water in the river.”

      “Then we shall all starve,” said the grandfather. “The elephants will eat all our pumpkins and there shall be none left for us.”

      Nobody spoke for a while. They all knew that what the grandfather had said was probably true. Then the oldest boy stood up.

      “I know of a way to save our pumpkins,” he said. “It is the only way.”

      The other boys looked at him as he spoke. This boy always had the best ideas, but they wondered how even he could deal with such great beasts as elephants.

      “We shall put a boy in a pumpkin,” he said. “We shall hollow out the biggest pumpkin that we can find and we shall put a small boy inside. Then, when the elephants come back to the fields, they will be unable to resist such a good-looking pumpkin. The biggest elephant will eat it, and when the boy is inside the elephant’s stomach he can strike at its heart with his knife. That will