The Waterproof Bible (13 page)

Normally not of easy virtue, Aby had been easily seduced, fuelled by loneliness, propinquity and a fear that the end of her world was near. From the moment Aby had stolen the white Honda Civic, she had been convinced she would die in it. She was so sure a fatal accident lay ahead of her that she thought of each passing kilometre as bringing her not closer to the Prairie Embassy Hotel and her mother, but nearer to the collision that would kill her, a death she believed would transform her soul into a
sála-glorsol-tinn
.

With these thoughts in her head, Aby felt the need to crawl back into Ást’s bed. She got under the covers, wrapped as much in the feeling of calm and safety as in the cotton sheets. For twenty minutes she felt at peace and without fear, but then at minute twenty-one the guilt set in. Aby did not try to fight it. With a shake of her head, she pushed a small sigh from her gills and began
to hunt for her clothes. She had dressed and was opening the front door when Ást, wrapped in the bedsheet, caught her.

“You already want to leave?” Ást said. He spoke in Hliðafgoðian, and for the first time Aby noticed that his pronunciation was perfect, his accent distinctly upper-class.

“I need to keep moving,” Aby responded, suddenly feeling slightly ashamed of her accent.

“Please stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Just for breakfast?”

Aby shook her head.

“Then I’ll take a look at your car, the engine, the brakes, everything. I’ll make sure it’s safe.”

Aby decided she couldn’t leave yet. She closed the door. She promised herself she would only stay three more hours, then get back on the road. She followed Ást, although his path was not towards the kitchen.

Six hours later, Aby could only see Ást’s feet. The rest of him was underneath the white Honda Civic. She could hear the sound of metal on metal, a tight, solid frequency that sat heavily in her ears in a way she found uncomfortable but attractively decisive. She had an impulse to caress the webbing between Ást’s toes, but she resisted, having already stayed too long.

“So, you’re an Aquatic, right?” Ást asked from underneath the car, his voice disembodied from his feet.

“How can you tell?”

“It creates a certain appetite.”

“Oh, it does not.”

“What makes you risk being here?”

“My mother.”

“She lives unwatered?”

“Yes.”

“How old?”

“127.”

“The
ryð?”

“It runs early in the family.”

“At?”

“Late 120s.”

“Trying to get your blue light to shine, eh?” Ást said.

Even without being able to see her, Ást sensed that he’d gone too far. Aquatics believe that those who, during their lifetime, reach
koma
, or sainthood, demonstrate their grace in two different ways, both of which happen when they die. The first is that they flash a brilliant blue light at the moment of their death. The second happens when their
upplifa
enters the clouds—they absorb not the characteristics of the cloud, but the cloud itself. The
koma upplifa
doesn’t fall as rain, but uses the strength of the cloud to travel to the next world, the cloud disappearing with them.

“I’m sorry,” Ást said. He remained underneath the white Honda Civic but stopped working on it. “I didn’t mean to be mean.”

“It’s okay.”

“But if she doesn’t want to go back to the water?”

“It’s not an option.”

“You have a plan B, then.”

“I do.”

“You’re willing to use force?”

“I guess I am.”

Ást slid out from under the car. There was grease
on his face, and his arms were thick in his T-shirt. “Everything’s fine underneath,” he said. “It should get you … where again?”

“Morris. Manitoba.”

“You’ll be fine. That crack in the windshield’s gonna keep growing, but you’ll be fine.”

“I really appreciate this. The water. Everything.”

“You know, Aby, I’m a bit of an Aquatic as well.”

“You can’t be a
bit
of an Aquatic.”

“Nonetheless, I know I’m following the
trú
, my
trú
,” Ást said. He continued looking Aby in the eyes, even though all he found there was disbelief.

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.

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.

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
ry
ð 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.