himself in an all but feeble charge!
Marimba felt the heavy blow that struck her on the side of her head, sending her reeling to the ground, straight into the dark valleys of unconsciousness. She did not see her fearless husband hurl himself upon the lion that had brought her down. She did not see how his bone harpoon glanced aside harmlessly from the shaggy flank of the hunger-demented beast. Neither did she see how he, with a strength above the strength of an ordinary man, threw himself barehanded upon the snarling lion and dragged it off her. She did not see her husband locked in mortal battle with the lion whose claws all but tore his strong body to shreds. And she did not see the shaggy maned savage beast drag the limp form of her lord and husband away through the tall grass.
Simba the lion had found a meal at last.
And the Princess Marimba, Chieftainess of the Wakambi Tribe, had lost yet another husband, the second husband she had lost since the cruel Goddess of Evil, the night-walking Watamaraka, had laid a curse upon her. The Mother of Demons had one day approached her and commanded the shocked daughter of Odu and Amarava to become one of her handmaidens in the Land of Darkness, and this Marimba had flatly refused to do. Watamaraka then placed a curse upon Marimba saying that any man she would love and marry would die violently, and in her presence, within three moons of their marriage. Exactly three moons after the curse was pronounced, Marimba’s husband, the hunter Zumangwe whom she had married sixteen years earlier and who was the father of her young son, had been trampled to death by a rogue elephant.
Marimba and the boy Kahawa had managed to escape by climbing a tall tree and had watched in horror as the head of their home met his untimely death almost immediately below them. Two years later Marimba had married again, and in order to prevent the curse of Watamaraka from being fulfilled, the Princess Marimba had kept her new husband a virtual prisoner for two whole moons, confined to the village of the Wakambi and never allowed him to go out with the other men on a hunt.
But the man had tired of being protected like an overgrown child by a woman. He wanted to face the perils of the forest and risk his life as all brave men should. Marimba had pleaded again and again, resorting to all her womanly subterfuges to keep her lord and husband at home. Finally Marimba had to give in to her valiant consort; she allowed him to go into the forest, but provided she could accompany him, hoping he would then exercise greater care.
They had spent the whole day in the forest and as the time passed she felt the voice of presentiment growing in her heart. She began to beg her husband to return home with her. But he, the stubborn, stupid and stone-headed fool, had laughed at her fears and had assured her that nothing would happen. It had been in the course of their tenth argument that afternoon that Simba the lion pounced upon them.
Now, the sun slowly set beyond the mountains to the west, and as the skies swept their blazing farewell to the departing Lord of Day, the Princess Marimba lay unconscious in all her beauty in the long grass while the water beasts began to leave the gurgling mud to commence their greedy nightly grazing. The sacred flamingoes gracefully retired to their mud and reed nests. And in the silent distance there came the faint sound of a hunter’s horn. It sounded once, twice, thrice, and then it was silent again.
A search party of Wakambi warriors was on its way to find out what had happened to their beloved princess and her consort – why they had not returned to the crude settlement of caves and huts which the Wakambi, the Tribe of Wanderers, knew as their home. In the long elephant grass the breezes of sunset fanned the soul of the beautiful Marimba back from the land of Nothingness and she stirred. She sat up with a blinding headache that dimmed her vision.
The first thing she saw was blood – slowly drying blood all over the patch of trampled down grass, the unmistakable signs of a violent struggle. ‘My husband!’ was the first thought that came to her mind. Struggling against the mists of shock and apprehension Marimba tried to stand up. But she fell back and could only lie flat on her back, quite helpless.
Then out of the empty air above her a bright bronze-coloured apparition took shape. Watamaraka, the Mother of all Demons, presented herself in visible form, with a cruel smile on her dark lips.
‘You will look around for your husband in vain, Oh Marimba: he is in a land far from here, beyond the seventh gateway of creation – the land of Forever-Night.’
‘My husband . . . dead! How can he be dead? I tried to tell him!’
‘You poor babbling fool,’ murmured Watamaraka. ‘I told you that every man you marry would die violently within three moons of your marriage, did I not?’
Fires of hate and fierce anger flamed in the gentle breast of the beautiful Marimba and words of wanton harshness spilled like a fierce torrent from her lovely mouth: ‘You pitiless blackhearted sexless monster! You foul witch from the lowest pits of hell! So you would place a curse on my head, would you? But I can yet defeat your vile schemes. I have already made up my mind that I shall never love another man again.’
‘You stupid human beings! You are all the same, whether mortal or immortal,’ purred Watamaraka nastily. ‘You make a lot of wonderful resolutions, you swear a lot of oaths to do this and not to do that. You bind yourselves with promises without first studying your secret natures – without knowing yourselves first. You never size up your ability to keep your oaths. And you say you will never marry again, my little ugly cockroach!’
‘Ayieeee!’ flared Marimba, ‘I shall never marry again, I swear by my mother’s sacred breasts.’ Her voice rose to a mad shriek.
‘Look down there,’ smiled Watamaraka, pointing down to Marimba’s jutting breasts, ‘What is the purpose of those, do you think?’
‘What have my breasts to do with my oath?’
The harsh voice of the evil goddess turned soft and gentle as she said to the angry and frightened widow: ‘Marimba, you are a very beautiful and desirable woman. And you, the youngest of the few immortals left upon this earth, have one very delightful weakness which you inherited from your mother, Amarava, long before she came under my spell. You know well enough what I am referring to. That weakness will force you to marry again in exactly twelve moons from now. And once again you will suffer the pain of my curse; within three moons of your marriage your husband will die violently and evilly in your presence, and I shall stand nearby and laugh! Until then, farewell, namirika!’
‘Namirika!’* – the unfriendly epithet was more than adequate to describe the great weakness that the Wakambi princess had. But she was shocked at hearing this accusation hurled at her for the first time in her life – and by her arch enemy of all creatures. The Queen of Falsehoods had spoken the truth for once and this truth had brought Marimba face to face with the realities of her character. She now saw herself exactly for what she was, not the wise and tender-hearted ruler of the first tribe ever organised in the land – the first tribe ruled not by force but by wisdom and love. She saw herself not as the loving mother of a boy wiser than his fifteen tender years and braver than a thousand lions, but as a very ordinary, frail woman tormented by the unceasing demands of her own exotic body. The silent forest suddenly seemed to possess voices. The distant tree trunks seemed to have grown faces and eyes that leered at her and mouths that laughed hideously. ‘Oh no!’ gasped Marimba. And just as she lapsed once again into the valleys of unconsciousness she heard the harsh brazen laughter of the Mother of Demons rippling through the forest as the triumphant goddess took her departure to the Land of Forever-Night.
Oko! For the beautiful one this was not only the day of
