The following day they were sent for, and they came to Ilâmbe’s house. After they had arrived, Ilâmbe sent word to her father, “Have your place cleaned, I am coming to enter a complaint.” The father replied, “Very well!” Ompunga came and swept the place. Seats were prepared in the street. Ilâmbe summoned the visitor and her people, saying, “Let us all go to my father’s house.”
So they went there, and Ilâmbe made her complaint, telling all from the beginning: how she obtained a husband; how the other Ilâmbe had come; how she received her kindly; how she even had been willing to share her husband with her, but how the new Ilâmbe had monopolized instead of simply sharing; and how things had become so bad that she had to send the man back to his beast origin. Turning to the visiting people, she said, “I have nothing more to say except that your sister Ilâmbe is not going back to your town, but has to be my slave all the days of my life.”
So the king’s council justified her, and pronounced the judgment just. The people scattered to their homes. And the two sisters went to their house, with the other Ilâmbe as their slave.
IV. The Fairy Wife.
In his great town, King Ra-Mborakinda, or Ra-Nyambie, lived in glory with all his wives and sons and daughters. Some of his great and favored sons had large business and great wealth. But there was one of the sons, named Nkombe, whose mother was not a favorite wife of the king, so this Nkombe was poor. Everything went against him, and his life was quite miserable; only, he had a gun, and he knew how to shoot; that was all. So he thought, “I’m tired of this kind of life. I better leave and go off by myself.”
He gathered together the few things that belonged to him,—a few plates and pots, and his gun and ammunition,—and went away. He went far into the forest, and with his machete began to clear a little place for a camping-ground (olako).
He fixed up his camp, and next morning went out hunting. When he began to feel hungry, he turned back to cook his food. On his return he had fresh meat with him; this he cooked, set it on the table, and ate. After eating, he cleared off the table, washed the dishes, brushed up the floor, and the new meat that was left he put on the orala (drying-frame) for next day’s use. So that day’s work was done.
Next day he again leaves the camp, and with his gun is off again to his hunting. At noon he comes back with his meat,—antelope, or wild pig, or whatever it may be. He cooks his food, eats; and that day’s work is done just as the day before.
So he did many days. After each day’s work he was so tired and felt so lonely he wished he had a mother or some one to do for him.
Unknown to him, since he had come to that olako, there was a woman named Ilâmbe, who belonged to the awiri (fairies), who secretly had observed all that he did. One day she thought to herself, “Oh, I am sorry for this man; I think that as I have the power I will turn myself into a human being and help him, for I do not like to see him suffer.” So she said to herself, “To-day I will cause Nkombe to be unsuccessful, so that he shall kill only ntori (a big forest rat), and I will hide myself in ntori.”