First Night
By Harry Youtt
Of course Qaht is the one who by himself created all of the people and all of the pigs for his island. Qaht – born from a stone long ago. But that is a story that you know already. Qaht created food for them. Everything they would need – except for darkness, which Qaht had never learned how to make.
And Qaht was pestered by those of his people who could think thoughts farthest out to their horizons and were bold enough to challenge their own maker with questions of how things could be better. The pestering people said “Qaht we must have night.”
Qaht said “Night? Why do you speak of night? Who is it – telling you such ideas?”
The people said “We have heard things about Night, Qaht, from the other islands, where they have it. And they like it. We have heard of night as a curtain to shield us from the always-day. We have heard even about rest.”
“Rest...” said Qaht, and he looked off into the distance as the breeze blew fresh. Qaht scratched his chin.
“You must find some night for us,” the people said.
So Qaht took himself, and some pigs, for trading, to Vava Island where he had heard that night already was, and he asked Qong if he could buy a piece of it.
“How big you want it?” Qong asked him, and Qaht said: “Just big enough. No more than that.” So Qong said he’d take the pigs. He nodded and cut what he figured would be the size to drape night over Qaht’s island, and he stuffed it into a big cloth bag he found lying on the ground. Then he helped Qaht carry it to his canoe.
As Qaht was climbing into the canoe and getting ready to paddle home, Qong brought cages of birds and fowl, almost more than Qaht’s canoe could carry. He said: “Take these too.”
“Why?” said Qaht. And Qong said: “You will know.”
So Qaht began to paddle home with the piece of night from Vava, along with the cages of birds and fowl, on a rough crossing that soaked the birds. Twice, he nearly lost night into the sea and had to fasten it down with strong twine to keep that from happening.
When he paddled through the lagoon to the shore, the people came running to him from where they were working. “Did you bring it?” They said. And Qaht pointed to the package in the prow of his canoe.
The children untied the twine and helped him carry the sack ashore and up the beach, while some of the men took the cages and released the birds and fowl, as Qaht told them to do.
That day Qaht showed the people how to weave mats, with palm and coca fronds, and beach grasses to keep them very soft. He told the people to spread the mats on the floors of their huts and on the shade porches in front of the huts.
Then Qaht came to visit each house, in full daylight. He taught the people how to lie down for rest, for in the presence of the always-day, the people had never rested before.
The people said “Qaht, this feels good!” And Qaht said: “Just you wait.”
Later, Qaht pulled the piece of night from its cloth bag. He dragged it up into a tall palm tree and draped it among its branches, in just the place it was supposed to be, in just the way Qong had showed him how to do it.
When he got back down, Qaht poured water for the birds and the fowl he had brought from Vava Island. And after he watched them drink, Qaht sat down on the sand. He shielded his eyes with his hand. And he looked far out at the sea and waited.
Suddenly the people noticed that the sun was sliding down from its place in the west and moving down to hide in the sea.
They were afraid. “Will it come back?” they cried.
Qaht nodded, and he shooshed them, and he told them: “This is what you asked for. This is called night. It is coming now, and it is only just beginning.”
Then Qaht went over to the piece of night and pulled its string the way he was supposed to do, and he loosed the entire night down over his people, as if it were new silk.
In the darkness the people began to feel a little bit afraid. First they laughed, because they were nervous. And then some of them began to dance around. They built their fires high and said the fires even reminded them of the sun. Some began to chatter, and some began to murmur, some saying they never had needed to be reminded of the sun when it had always been there. Some wondered whether the sun would ever come back and find its way through the night. A little boy, and then a little girl, began to weep.
Finally Qaht said “Quiet down!” And so they did. “Now sit down together.” And so they did. Then one of them began to tell a story, the first time a story had ever been told, because the beginning of thinking of stories or telling them, for any people, has always been the night. “Now listen!” said Qaht. And so they did.
During the telling of the stories, the people began to feel strange and dreamy, and for the first time, ever, their eyes began to droop.
Then Qaht circled the gathering, stopping beside each of them, whispering to them to go back to the mats they had fashioned in the day.
And so they did, stumbling over one another as they groped in darkness that was new to them. Moving slowly, silently.
When everyone was back at their huts, they stood and looked out to where the campfire was beginning to dwindle in the still night air.
Silence drifted through the darkness as if it were lazy smoke.
“Now, everybody lie down,” Qaht called out in a quiet voice that people could barely hear. And so they did, all at once, so that there was a rustling of sleeping mats all through the village.
“Let your eyes close now,” he said in the same quiet voice. “Do not resist.”
“Are we dying?” one of the villagers called out.
Qaht laughed a low laugh. “This is sleep. Now be quiet!”
And so they were.
And for the first time, the people slept.
And for the first time Qaht slept.
Everybody dreamed.
Only the birds and the fowl knew how long the first night should be, and when it was time for the day to return, they began to do what birds and fowl always do, even now. They began to chirp, first only one or two, then more and more, and the fowl began to crow, first one rooster, and then all of the rest.
When he heard this Qaht knew what he must do. He took a piece of obsidian, a sharp piece that could cut his finger if he was not careful, and he reached up, and he sliced a long hole in the night as it hung there.
The first light that showed through the slash Qaht made was red, but the rest of the light soon followed it, so that before long, all of the light that the night had covered was back again, and the sun was shining the way it always had done before.
First the children woke up, and then, one by one their parents and the other adults. Of course right after that they had their first breakfasts, because breakfast had never been before.
Later, when they wandered down to the beach to see Qaht sitting there looking out to sea, each of the people, one by one and even the little children stopped and sat by him, just for a moment, to let him know how pleasant the night had been. Of course Qaht smiled, but only faintly, the way gods do when distracted with thoughts of the next plan.
And so it has been ever since. First the day, then the night, then morning.