The Prologue tells a part of the Navajo creation story as narrated by Nali to Nathan. Long ago, First Woman, First Man, animals, and insects came to a watery place known as the Third World. Water monsters, “giant toads whose toes were as thick as the trunks of fully grown pine trees” (1), watched over this world and kept the waters calm. The most powerful of these beings was Mother Water Monster. She welcomed the humans, animals, and insects and allowed them to live on the islands that dotted her domain.

This peace broke when the trickster Coyote, who envied the water monsters’ power, took an infant from Mother Water Monster’s nest. The next day, the land beings watched in dismay as the tides roughened and swelled, “swallowing morsels of land down dark blue throats” (3). To save themselves and their fellow land beings, First Woman and First Man planted a river reed seed and nurtured it by singing and praying. They hurriedly scaled the giant reed, but Mother Water Monster sealed off their exit with a sheet of ice. Coyote returned the infant, and Mother Water Monster allowed the land beings to ascend into the Fourth World, where humans live now.