The Waterproof Bible (14 page)

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.

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 squatting 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.

“Where?

“Vit’s verv close. Morris?”

“Sorry. I’m not from around here.”

“Auh. Auvay. Feranks, then.”

“No problem.”

“It’s sau drv here.”

“I find that too,” he said.

Aby nodded. The man returned the gesture. She felt that this brief interaction had somehow been significant, of even greater significance than returning the keys. Perhaps he was an
Almennt
, a word that has no English translation, but that describes God’s brief appearance in the world in exactly the form the seer needs to see.

Aby looked back at the man to see if this was true, but he just continued to stand there, looking dumbfounded, and she concluded that he wasn’t an
Almennt
. She got back inside the white Honda Civic, rolled up the window and started the engine. The gills in her neck opened and she took a very deep breath, then mistakenly put the car into reverse. Still feeling like something had been left unsaid, Aby gave a small, embarrassed wave, then pulled onto the street. She was less than two hours away from Morris, but first she’d have to find her way out of Winnipeg using nothing but
allt
, or, in English, trial and error.

Kenneth Richardson had begun rainmaking in 1978, at the age of twenty-two. He’d had no one to teach him but had stumbled onto a process of filling small cloth bags with silver iodide and attaching the bags to a flock of starlings he tamed and trained himself. The birds, sixty or seventy at a time, would fly into a cloud. The silver iodide would fall out through tiny holes he’d cut in the cloth. The cloud would be seeded, and rain would begin to fall roughly five minutes later. Kenneth was never sure how it worked. He just knew it did.

After becoming quite successful as a rainmaker, Kenneth got married in 1980 and had a son, whom they named Anderson, the following year. When Anderson turned fourteen, Kenneth’s business became Richardson & Son, and they took the rainmaking world by storm. Seven wonderful years passed. They were the best there ever was, turning water-starved fields into bumper crops, saving livestock and livelihoods.

But then, in 2002, Anderson had an idea. He put seven car batteries in a circle, attached copper wire to the positive and negative poles, and raised the wires until they met at a point five feet in the air. Next, he built a kite, which he flew on a copper wire. When the kite was in the clouds, Anderson attached the batteries. An electric current climbed up the copper string and into the
clouds. There was a flash, then thunder, and then rain began to fall.

Anderson recreated his experiment for his father, expecting approval. He did not get it. Kenneth found the use of electricity crass. The kite was lazy and undisciplined. They fought, and from that day forward they never spoke again. Through written correspondence, they divided the country: Kenneth took jobs in the western states and Anderson in the east. Canada had never been discussed, never even considered. When they got the calls to come to Morris, each man assumed the territory was his.

It was because of this rivalry that, the morning after they’d checked in, Kenneth and Anderson Richardson left the Prairie Embassy Hotel in different cars. They drove into downtown Morris and began searching for very different, yet very specific items. It did not take Kenneth long to discover Snyder’s Photography Studio, where he purchased the entire stock of silver iodide. Anderson’s search began and ended at Nixon’s Auto Wreckers, where he bought five used car batteries. Both men then drove back to the hotel and carried their purchases up to the roof.

Just before noon on August 25th, Kenneth and Anderson occupied different corners on the roof of the Prairie Embassy Hotel. Anderson took the northeast corner and began placing more car batteries than he’d ever used before in a circle. Kenneth, in the southwest corner, carefully added as much powder to each of his pouches as he dared. Then they sat on the roof, waiting for the perfect cloud to appear.

Aberystwyth’s foot continued to depress the left pedal as the white Honda Civic idled at the top of the laneway. Her gills widened. She breathed, lifted her foot and then pressed too hard on the gas. The white Honda Civic began fishtailing in the gravel. Aby oversteered and the car began travelling sideways. Returning her foot to the brake, Aby turned her head to the right and watched through the passenger window as the Prairie Embassy Hotel quickly approached. Her grip on the steering wheel became tighter. The car stopped of its own accord, two feet from the porch.

Dust curled in the driver’s side window and settled on Aby’s fingers, which continued holding the steering wheel. Her knuckles were the only part of her that was pale. The rest of her had become an iridescent dark forest green. The brake remained pressed against the all-weather floor mats, and the engine continued to run. Aby stayed in this position for several minutes, until her right leg began to tremble. Relaxing her grip on the steering wheel, Aby lifted her foot from the pedal. The gills in her neck flapped open and she took a deep breath. The dust made her cough. Reaching up, Aby traced the length of the crack in the windshield with her index finger and stopped where the crack did, half an inch from the top left corner. Aby had won. Her gills pulled in and pushed
out an especially large volume of air. Beating the crack filled her with a gust of optimism, although this was tempered when the dust made her cough a second time.

She shifted in the driver’s seat so that she could see all five storeys of the Prairie Embassy Hotel below the crack. Aby feared the building was abandoned, although all Síðri buildings looked unoccupied to her. It was certainly much smaller than she’d expected. The wood looked flimsy. She didn’t like its faded yellow colour, and she didn’t like that it had held her mother for so many years.