There was once a young woman whom no one thought likely to marry. She had no parents, no cattle, no home of her own, and no one had taught her the work expected of a wife. In her sorrow she wept until a diviner and his wife, a powerful doctor, took pity on her.
They did not simply give her a husband. First they taught her to build a hut and make a garden. Then the doctor taught her to catch fish and set traps. When the young woman had learned these things, the doctor told her to go to the river and catch a male fish. She was to bring it home in a pot half-filled with water.
The young woman caught a female fish first and ate it. Later she caught a male fish and carried it home. The doctor placed medicine in the pot, spoke secret words, covered it, and told her not to open it until dawn.
At sunrise the doctor gave one warning: never eat the monkey fruit gathered by the husband who would come from the pot. If she did, he would become a fish again forever. The young woman promised. The pot was opened, and there stood a little man, as small as the fish had been. She married him and was proud to have a home.
For a time they lived happily. She gardened and fished, while her husband gathered monkey fruit, the only food that suited him. Then famine came. Gardens failed, rivers shrank, and fish grew scarce. The wife went hungry while her husband still found a little fruit each day.
One afternoon he brought monkey fruit and stepped outside. Hunger overcame her promise. She ate some and hid the skins, but he discovered what had happened. Without angering her with many words, he ran to the river. She followed, pleading, but he leapt into the water, became a fish again, and vanished.
The woman sat on the bank waiting, but the fish husband did not return.
A promise made in comfort may be hardest to keep in hunger; trust is the root of magical bonds.