The Aquatic Bible contains many depictions of God, all of them contradictory. In the Book of Strays, God appears as a homely Síðri, uncouth and powerless. In the Book of Doubt, God appears as turtle with two heads, each offering advice that contradicts the other. The Book of Endings fails to personify God at all, presenting the divine only as the deeds of all living things.
In total, the Aquatic Bible presents fourteen personifications of the divine, each having absolutely nothing to do with the others. In spite of this, or more probably because of it, the vast majority of Aquatics express their belief in God through the concept of the trú, which literally translates as “the current.”
This is what the Síðri would call fate or destiny, although there is one key difference: trú carries no sense of predetermination. Aquatics believe it is possible—in fact, quite easy—to misplace your destiny. Losing the trú is as easy as losing your car keys. But following your trú is also easy, provided you submit to the current and let it take you where it wants you to be, regardless of your own desires.
“You think this is where your trú has taken you?” Aby said, unable to curb the disbelief in her voice.
“Yes.”
“Unwatered?”
“I believe that to be the case.”
“That’s … ah … yeah.”
“Your mother probably thinks so too,” Ást said, and for the first time he looked away from Aby. “Something to think about, anyway.”
Without giving her a chance to reply or washing his hands, Ást opened the door of the stolen white Honda Civic. Hesitating slightly, Aby got inside. As she began to work her legs around the steering wheel, Ást reached between them.
“What are you doing?’
“I’m moving the seat back.”
“The seat moves back?” Aby said. It was so simple and obvious, but the possibility brought tears to her eyes.
“Here, get out,” Ást said.
When the driver’s seat was empty, Ást reached down and found the lever underneath it. He pulled up, and then slid the seat backwards. He showed Aby how to do this. She climbed back in. Holding the lever up, she slid back and forth repeatedly, laughing each time she did it.
Adjusting for maximum comfort, she looked up at Ást and slowly closed the driver’s door. She wanted to thank him but feared she’d be misunderstood. So she didn’t say anything. She kept the window rolled up and pressed her hand against it, spreading her fingers so the webbing became stretched and visible. Ást did the same. They held their hands like this for some time. Then Ást took a step back, leaving a greasy palm print on the glass.
17
Margaret’s reasons
It was after one in the morning when Margaret, while climbing off the sailboat, saw two sets of headlights driving up the laneway to the Prairie Embassy Hotel. She stepped off the ladder and watched the cars park. Stewart had already started to dial Rebecca’s number, but he closed his cellphone to watch. Each car held only the driver. Both were men. They got out of their vehicles and walked directly to the hotel.
“Who could that be?”
“The rainmakers,” Margaret said. “I forgot all about them.”
Putting the phone in his pocket, Stewart began climbing down the ladder, but Margaret waved him back. “No, no,” she said. “Call her. She must really need you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“No, I mean, can you? Do you remember how to check someone in?”
“It’s still my hotel.”
“Okay. Okay,” Stewart said.
Margaret watched him begin to dial, then turned and walked to the hotel. She was very sleepy—Stewart’s cellphone had been ringing all night, keeping her up, but even a rested Margaret would have found the two men in her lobby odd. They stood so close together at the front desk that their elbows almost touched, but neither acknowledged the other’s presence. One was slightly taller and younger, but in every other way they seemed extraordinarily similar—each was dressed in black from head to toe, carried a worn brown leather suitcase and had dark eyes and prominent cheekbones.
Margaret was so sleepy that she contemplated the possibility that they were the same person, the one on the right simply twenty years further into their shared lifespan. She moved to stand behind the front desk and looked at them again. This time she concluded that they were father and son, which explained both the resemblance and the lack of communication.
“Um, hi,” Margaret said. “Can I help you?”
“The mayor’s office said they arranged things,” said the older one.
“I was told that the Morris Town Council had made reservations,” said the younger.
“So you are the rainmakers?”
“Yes.”
“I am.”
“Yes, then, well, we’ll have to get you registered,” Margaret said.
It had been three years since Margaret had registered a guest at the Prairie Embassy Hotel. However infrequently it needed to be done, the job was usually Stewart’s. But figuring there couldn’t be that much to it, Margaret began looking for the registry book. It took some minutes, as the desk was a mess. She had to search beneath inches of newspapers, half-open face-down books and rolls of nautical blueprints before she found it. She presented it to the men, each of whom reached into his breast pocket to pull out a pen. The younger one signed first, but he had to reach around the older one, who remained standing where he was. After both men had signed, Margaret turned the book around and read the names.
Anderson Richardson
Kenneth Richardson
Satisfied, Margaret closed the book. While it was good to have guests, all she really wanted was to get back to sleep, so she grabbed the first two keys that came to hand. The keys, which appeared to be antiques, were attached to flat lengths of wood. The room numbers were written in large block letters. Room #201 was handed to Anderson, while #202 went to Kenneth.
Looking around the lobby, both Anderson and Kenneth concluded that they might be the only guests at the Prairie Embassy Hotel. Yet the clerk had given them rooms right next to each other. They both wanted to complain, to request rooms on separate floors or at least on opposite ends of a floor, but that would mean acknowledging the other’s presence, something neither man was prepared to do. Silently and simultaneously, both men nodded. They carried their own luggage as Margaret showed them to their rooms.
Two hours later, Margaret was once again woken from her sleep. She could hear Stewart hammering outside, but that wasn’t what had woken her. It wasn’t his cell phone either. She felt something trickling from her gills. The back of her head was wet, as were her shoulders. Margaret opened her eyes but did not move. She was scared to breathe. After several moments, as much out of need as from courage, Margaret opened her gills. When she pulled in air, her gills made a raspy, liquid sound and her darkest fears were confirmed.
Quickly and without looking behind her, Margaret got out of bed. She stood in front of the full-length mirror in the corner of her room. The floor was cold on the soles of her feet. Margaret wiggled her toes. These, she reluctantly observed, were not the toes of her youth. The realization made her sigh, which produced the raspy, liquid sound. Margaret looked up. Her neck was covered in a thick orange syrup. It dripped from her gills, momentarily collected at her collarbone, then slipped down between her breasts. Margaret could no longer deny it: the rust had begun.
As every Hliðafgoð knows, the ryð signals the beginning of the end. Some have lived for years after its appearance, others for only hours; most live for another few weeks. No cure has ever been found. Religious or not, each and every Hliðafgoð immediately begins the bjarturvatn as soon as the rust appears. Bjarturvatn, or “clear water,” is the process of putting your financial, material and emotional houses in order. Since all Hliðafgoð are given such a concrete signal of their impending demise, it is considered intolerable to leave behind any unfinished business.
Financially, Margaret didn’t have
much to do. She supposed it would come to light that she didn’t actually own the Prairie Embassy Hotel. The former proprietor had abandoned the building after two unsuccessful years of trying to sell it. Three years after that, Margaret had broken in through a second-storey window. After renovating the lobby and six of the thirty-eight rooms, she’d declared the Prairie Embassy Hotel open for business. In the seventeen years that followed, no one had seemed to notice that she didn’t legally own the building, and Margaret had become an upstanding member of the community. Should the truth emerge, it wouldn’t really affect anyone but Stewart. He would have to find a new place to work, but Margaret was sure this would be good for him. If anyone needed a fresh start, it was him.
Emotionally, Margaret felt settled as well. She had few close relationships in town. She should say some goodbyes, but they wouldn’t be tearful. The only area that needed work was her relationship with her only child, Aberystwyth, whom she had not seen since leaving the water behind.
After graduating from an Aquatic seminary, Margaret had received her first parish in the farming community of Nowwlk. The congregation was small and had been dwindling for years. This was true of Aquatic congregations, both rural and urban, all across the country. So when Margaret’s stern passion, direct approach and gift for words started bringing more and more Hliðafgoð into the Nowwlk parish, she quickly gathered attention.
But as her congregation grew, so did her doubts. While she continued to feel that Aquaticism offered truth, she had two major concerns. The first related to her amphibious nature. Margaret couldn’t believe that God would have given her the ability to breathe air, equipping her body with such elegant biology, simply to forbid her from using it. The second was that, while she thought the Aquatic Bible held considerable insights into the Hliðafgoðian condition, she was unable to believe that anything within it had actually happened.
Meanwhile, her reputation as a preacher increased exponentially. Hliðafgoð were swimming for hours to hear her sermons. Nowwlk’s only hotel had to be booked months in advance. Her acclaim grew so wide and so far that even the Aquatic Religious Council took note: they announced, with great fanfare, that the Augasteinn would visit the Nowwlk parish. While the more cynical dismissed it as little more than a media stunt, a way to bring attention to an Aquatic congregation that was growing instead of shrinking, no one could deny that it was a rare honour.
The morning of the Augasteinn’s visit, the current had turned the water hot and murky. Margaret was nervous. She’d stayed up all night, tweaking the sermon the Council had already approved. Council representatives escorted her to the church and ushered her inside. The media presence was overwhelming. Camera were everywhere. She counted sixteen microphones attached to the edge of the pulpit, with every major network represented. The Augasteinn and his people took up the first six rows, pushing her regular congregation to the back of the church.
Margaret looked over the crowd. She paused. She looked at the Augasteinn. She looked at the congregation. She knew that she would never have a moment like this again and she put her prepared sermon aside. She held up her copy of the Aquatic Bible. “This book is full of lies,” she said.
It was not an auspicious beginning. The congregation collectively gasped.
“Beautiful, true, inspiring,” Margaret continued. “But fiction. This book is filled with stories that can change your life, help you live, love, be loved. But these stories are not here to make us deny any part of ourselves. They are not here to bully us. The Bible teaches us that dying unwatered will curse your soul. How does that help us understand God? Or know God’s love? It does not. It only keeps us in fear, leaving half of the grace God gave us unexplored and unused, something I feel God takes more as an insult than as a form of worship. Remember that the truth within yourself will always be greater than the truth found in these pages. These stories are here to guide us—to help us find that truth, not to tell us what it is.”
By this time the Augasteinn had already reached the door. His people followed, and then so did her congregation. Margaret stood in front of the empty pews. She was officially excommunicated the following day, by decree of the Augasteinn himself.
It was rumoured that Margaret left the water three days later, but that was not what really happened. It was hard for her to explain to those she loved, especially Aby, that her excommunication had not diminished her love of Aquaticism. It actually helped her find the confidence of her convictions. When, some eighteen months later, she did make the decision to live unwatered, she did not waver.
The only heartbreak came from leaving her daughter behind, something Margaret had not planned on doing. She had tried to bring Aby with her, but her daughter had refused to leave. But Margaret was sure that living unwatered was her trú. She knew that resisting it would only cause her futile pain and sorrow. So while she found it difficult to put her religious convictions ahead of her love for her daughter, she believed it was God’s will. She was sure God would convince Aby to join her at some future time. She did not expect this to take more than two or three years.
Standing in front of the full-length mirror, with the rust trailing orange lines down her green skin, Margaret decided that her bjarturvatn need not include any reconciliation with her daughter. She would spend no more of her now finite time and energy thinking about it. Margaret stood in front of the mirror for many more minutes, watching as more and more rust seeped from her gills. She tried to convince herself that her decision was for the best, but failed miserably.
18
One great city!
Aby was tired, still more than three hours outside of Winnipeg, and had no words to describe the horrible feeling in her legs. It was as if a thousand tiny, jagged pieces of shell were floating through her bloodstream, pushing at her skin from the inside. Aby had vowed that she would not stop until she was on the far side of Winnipeg, but as the sensation grew severe, she had to. Slowing down, Aby pulled onto the side of the road. She got out of the white Honda Civic, attempted to take a step and collapsed. Leaning on the hood, she looked at the long crack in the windshield.
Even though Ást had told her she didn’t have to worry about the crack in the windshield, Aby did. But as the kilometres went by, she’d managed to turn her worry into a game: if she reached the Prairie Embassy Hotel before the crack touched the left-hand corner of the windshield, her mother would still be alive. The rust would not have started. In addition, both more importantly and more improbably, Margaret would be receptive to her daughter’s unannounced visit. As Aby drove through Manitoba, most of her understood that this was simply a way to make the time pass more quickly, but a small part of her began to believe it. Now the crack was less than two inches from the corner of the windshield.
Aby stood at the side of the Trans-Canada Highway, alarmed by the continuing and still unnamed sensation in her legs. She feared it was permanent, but after five minutes of leaning against the stolen white Honda Civic, she began to feel better. After fifteen minutes, the sensation was gone. Determined to get past Winnipeg, if not all the way to Morris, before she slept, Aby got back into the driver’s seat.
Three and a half hours later, Aby reached the outskirts of Winnipeg. The sky was moonless, the road was not well marked and Aby was tired. All of this led to confusion, and instead of bypassing the city, Aby found herself in the centre of it. Her attempts to return to the highway only led her to residential streets. Just after 10:00 p.m., her eyes were beginning to close on their own, and Aby acknowledged that she needed to rest. She selected a quiet, tree-lined street and after several attempts managed to parallel park. She reclined her seat and fell asleep quickly.
A short time later Aby was startled awake when she heard someone at her left right rear tire. Eagerness to get out of Winnipeg made her forget her promise to have as little contact with the Síðri as possible. She opened the car door, stepped onto the pavement and walked to the rear of the vehicle. At first she thought she had hit the young man who was squ
atting on the curb, because his body was so close to the back bumper. But he appeared uninjured, so Aby relaxed, though just slightly.
“Mavbe vou could velph me?” she asked.
The man did not immediately respond, which made Aby very nervous. Her gills opened and closed slightly and she wiggled her fingers, stretching the webbing between them. Aby was unaware that she was doing this until the Síðri looked at his hands. Self-conscious, Aby put hers behind her back.
Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, he spoke. “I think I know you,” he said.
“I von’t fink sooh.”
“Yeah, I do. You almost crashed into a limousine I was in.”
“Fat was vou?” He looked very different.
“I was in the back.”
“Neye am so soohrry aboot vat,” Aby said. “Please vait here?”
The man continued to squat, and Aby took his lack of movement as agreement. Still impressed with her improving ability to walk, Aby returned to the car and thrust her head into the back seat. She knew she’d hidden the keys somewhere safe, but she suddenly couldn’t remember where that was. After pushing her hand down the crack in the seat behind the seat belts, then searching in the pocket in the driver’s side door, she found them underneath the back floor mats. Holding them firmly, Aby returned to the man, who had remained at the back of the car.
“Cav vou please make saue fese get back tau her?” Aby asked. She held out her hand. At first it seemed like the man would deny her request. Then, slowly, he reached out his hand. Careful to make her movements slow and predictable, so as not to spook him, she handed over the keys.
“I will,” he said. He stared at the keys.
“Verv impaurtant.”
“It’s unbelievable,” the man said.
His answer satisfied Aby, as she assumed he’d meant it in the Aquatic sense of the word. Returning the keys was a weight off her shoulders and filled her with satisfaction and renewed energy. “Dou vou phow vow to get to Morris?” she asked him.
The Waterproof Bible Page 10
