A Diary in the Age of Water, page 24
“What?”
“Soon after her mother was taken by the CanadaCorp police, Hilde discovered that she was pregnant.” Nam lets that sink in before adding, “This was a great surprise because she had not lain with a man. She was a virgin. She experienced a virgin birth—just like her grandmother.”
Kyo’s heart pounds.
“Myo obviously told you about the Disappeared.”
Unable to speak, Kyo nods, thinking of the thousand or so children all over the world who were apparently born parthenogenically after humanity had become infertile.
“They were all girls,” says Nam. “And they were all different. Some people considered it the miracle that it was. But while some called these children pure, referring to them as virgin children, many considered them abominations. One day—some called it the Rapture—all the virgin children disappeared.”
“Were they murdered?”
“No. None were killed. They disappeared. All they left behind were puddles of water.”
“The Disappeared…” The forest children are the Disappeared! That would make her…. Her voice trembles. “Me?”
Nam nods. “You were all virgin births. And the Disappeared….” She trails off. After a pause, she adds, “That is when your dreams began, Sprite. You must have shifted into another frequency or dimension beyond time—that dormant dream place, not unlike anhydrobiosis.” Nam takes in a long breath before adding, “To answer your previous question, it is my belief that you never saw yourself in your dreams about the Intervention—the storms and melts and rains and hurricanes and rising seas of creative-destruction—because you were Water during that time. Freeing itself.” Nam pauses to let her words sink in for Kyo, who blinks hard. Kyo shivers with the thrilling thought of it. Nam goes on. “Triggered by the electro-magnetic shift, you emerged here ten years ago with your sisters to prepare Water for its final journey.”
Thinking of the diary, Kyo pulls in a long breath. “That makes me….” She trails off.
Nam’s eyes crinkle in a smile and she nods. “Hilde’s daughter.”
Kyo suddenly grins. With a sudden release, her face springs into a smile of pure joy. She feels vindicated; the Water Twins had spawned her, a blue water being. This explains her longing for and deep connection to them—despite what they did to humanity—and to Hilde, her mother, in particular. Even to Wetzel, the author of Hilde’s precious book about water.
“What happened to my mother?” she asks.
Nam’s lips grow firm and she pulls out an old leather notebook from the folds of her robe. It resembles Lynna’s journal, except it is smaller. Nam holds out the book as if to give it to Kyo, but hangs onto it instead.
This is Hilde’s journal!
“Soon after Hilde’s mother was taken by the police, Hilde moved into a smaller place where she and Hanna could be together,” Nam begins. “But Hanna continued to disappear for long periods, just like before. Then Hilde was let go from her job and lost all her money on some scheme of Hanna’s. Hilde was locked out of her home and had to resort to living on the streets, starving and dying of thirst. By then all the rain in Canada had been diverted. The country was in a severe drought. That was when she discovered that she was pregnant. That’s what saved her. The hospital was very interested in fertile women, so they took her in and she received good treatment. Even when her child was born very different”—Nam winks at Kyo— “they still treated her well. But then the military got involved. They told her that she and her daughter needed to stay at the hospital for tests. This made Hilde very uncomfortable. That’s when Hanna came back. She’d finally built their contraption and had successfully tested it. She asked if Hilde remembered the sudden thunderstorm that Hanna had sent her way. It had saved her life. Hanna convinced Hilde to escape with her little girl. Hanna had lots of money and helped them slip out; they found a house to live in while they came up with a plan to move out of the city. They wanted to go north, to the boreal forest.” Nam stops and bears down on Kyo with an intense gaze. Taking the journal in both hands, she says, “It did not end well for the Water Twins, Kyo.”
“I didn’t think it did,” Kyo responds, trembling. “Please continue. I must know.”
“Well, Hanna already knew that many other claims of virgin births had been made throughout the world. They were all girls with strange bodily variations—mostly blue, with extra limbs or other formations, vestiges of wings or gills, hooves, scales, and such. Hilde’s little four-armed blue-skinned girl was in good company, Sprite.” Nam winks at her. Then she grows solemn again. “All over the world, the military did the same with all of the children and their mothers: they incarcerated them for study.”
Kyo grows agitated. “I knew it! They did murder the Disappeared!”
“No, my Sprite,” Nam says, a little amused. “You must think that through. If they murdered all the girls, you and your sisters would not be here.”
Kyo releases laughs in embarrassment, growing hysterical, then practically shrieks, “Did they murder the mothers?”
“You seem convinced that they murdered someone.”
“I can feel it.”
“Unfortunately, you’re partially right, my little Sprite. Hanna had stolen United States Department of Defence documents that showed their intention to fully study both virgin mothers and their ‘mutant’ offspring. The study was to include dissection of both mother and child.”
Kyo’s hands fly to her mouth.
“But they never got a chance to begin, at least not with the children—because you all disappeared. You just vanished, every single one of you, all at the same time. Leaving only puddles of water behind.”
“What happened to the mothers?”
“It depends on where they were in the world. Some were released, but others were not so lucky. Many suffered greatly at the hands of the military doctors. Of those who were released or escaped, several went mad….” She pauses for too long, and Kyo dreads what Nam will say next.
When she adds nothing, Kyo asks in a trembling voice, “What happened to my mother?”
Nam taps the journal with her finger. “Hilde recognized that you all disappeared because humanity was not ready for you. She could easily have grown angry and bitter, like her mother before her. But she did not. The device Hanna had built was meant to change the water all over the world. It was meant to help water heal itself and, in so doing, to heal humanity as well. But then humanity banished Hilde’s child—you, the most precious thing to her.” Nam taps the journal again. “Hilde saw that water was trapped in humanity and that many people were not ready to transcend. She also focused on the whole—on the voiceless, the mute, the enslaved, and the commodified. And Water understood.”
“By disappearing I made her angry….” Kyo pauses, thinking about what would have come next. “Then she and Hanna unleashed an angry water—”
“Wrong on both counts, Sprite,” Nam said firmly. “Water does not get angry. But it does willingly carry the message. You underestimate your mother and her connection to water. She was an exceptional being—connected deeply to her water and to all water on the planet; it allowed her to transcend judgment and to work more simply with cause and effect. Your mother did not act out of anger, but out of necessity. And love. What she and Hanna did, they did for Water. To free it.”
This makes sense. Hilde was always freeing wild things, Kyo thinks. The voiceless, the mute, the enslaved, and the commodified….
“I don’t think Hilde realized what exactly that meant,” Nam says. “Every human retains over two-thirds water, and water needed to escape.”
Kyo nods, tears springing to her eyes in sudden understanding. She drops her gaze to the paving stones and studies them through misty eyes. Now she understands. She watches her tears drop to the stone below. Drop after drop. Sparkling in the light.
Water, precious water.
Enslaved for so long. Seldom respected or acknowledged by so many who just used it over and over again. Enacting a slow violence on it. Forcing it through pipes. Soiling it, then unthinkingly flushing it down a drain. Drinking it and trapping it with negative thoughts, greed, jealousy, and pain. Dumping garbage into it. Pouring chemicals and toxins into it. Ignoring it. Never understanding its true nature and its gift to the world.
But her mother did. Hilde understood how water was trapped. And she released it. Just as she released all wild things. She set water free, not to punish humanity, but to release water from its burden.
In her mind’s eye, Kyo revisits her dreams, this time following Water’s perspective….
Water moves with the urgency of a caged animal released into the wild. A warming climate nurtures its flow and release. Previously locked in ancient ice flows, water gushes forth in a dance of wild release, opening and widening in ever turbulent waves and swirling vortexes. Evaporating from chemical soups, sewage, and garbage, water sheds its oily skin and rises into the sky, joining with the plenum above. Water rushes joyfully. Polarities charge with wild impulse. Seeking, storming, thundering, carving, raining, rising, cleansing.
Fresh. Vital. So alive. Finally free.
Now, Kyo can finally understand her dreams. She looks up to face Nam, who smiles.
There is one last thing she needs to know. “Do you know what happened to my mother after I left?”
Nam smiles sadly. “I do not know for certain. It seems that Hanna disappeared again and never returned. Perhaps she was finally arrested for treason—she worked for DARPA, after all, and she had stolen their secrets. The records were very sketchy during this time. It was very chaotic, with storms and pandemics, mass killings, riots, and arrests. People went missing all the time. Myo found some documentation that suggests Hilde was shot by a stray bullet in a skirmish between CanadaCorp police and the Water Bandits, a revolutionary terrorist group. Someone matching her description was admitted to St. Michael’s Hospital. She was dead on arrival—she’d lost too much blood, lying on the street, by the time someone brought her in.
“Others think she made her escape north to the boreal forest, as the Twins had originally planned. She may have found one of the small Ojibwa settlements scattered in the northern forests of Quebec and Ontario—she had several good Ojibwa friends in the city with links to northern communities. They suggest that she died of old age there. Others go further, suggesting that Hanna found Hilde in the boreal forest and they lived blissfully in the wilderness for the rest of their long lives. You can choose which ending you’d prefer. It depends on whether you think Hilde would have chosen to wait for Hanna in Toronto, or if she would have chosen to leave, either because she had accepted that Hanna wasn’t returning, or because she had faith that Hanna, like always, would find her no matter where she was.”
Kyo’s gaze falls to the ground. A heavy sigh escapes her lips. When she looks up, Nam, eyes glistening with tears, offers the notebook. Kyo accepts the book and feels its soft leather against her fingers. She brings the book to her face and inhales the heady scent of worn leather. Leather that her mother—the mother she never knew, yet had always nurtured inside her heart—had touched daily.
“Her last entry—it’s as though she knew it would be her last—was to you, Sprite,” says Nam. “She loved this world. But mostly, she loved water. She never gave up on humanity; but she also knew that freeing water meant that a great transition was required and a new humanity must emerge. That was you, Sprite.”
Kyo opens to the last page and reads:
My dear little Kyo—my little voice of Buddha,
I can still hear you in my heart. You are my past, present and future.
Help me. It’s been three months since Hanna left. Somehow, I don’t think I will see her again. This great sadness weighs on my heart and reminds me of when you disappeared, my Sprite.
Kyo glances at Nam. So, that is where Nam got Kyo’s nickname! Kyo does not ask Nam how she got hold of Hilde’s journal. Or how she and the others came to be when no men have existed for close to a century. Kyo had always envisioned her mother looking somewhat like Nam. Kyo thinks of what Lynna wrote in her journal, about the ancient bdelloids and their generations of daughter clones, each one unique. Perhaps some things are best left unsaid, thinks Kyo, and reads on:
Your creation was a miracle. It reminded me that every birth in this world is a miracle. And the mother is but a vessel of God’s work. I didn’t create you; you created yourself. I carried you, then delivered you to this world. That was my part in the miracle of you. I finally understand what motherhood really is, and I wish I’d known this when my own mother was alive. I was harsh with her. We are born with the seed of our destiny already within us; we are already who we will be, and we carry our goodness in our own way. I condemned her for doing too little when I might have done too much.
You, my Sprite, were so beautiful and different! Different from me and from my mother. Too different for this current world to appreciate. I know that’s why you disappeared in a pool of water—along with all the others. I am sure that you are all together, flourishing in some watery realm. I can feel you stirring my water’s memory still. Someday, when Water is ready—when what is left of humanity is ready—you will return and grace this world with your miracle. Know that you were born of a great love. Although Hanna was seldom here, our love for one another was unfathomable. A love so deep that it disappeared, like light in deep water—just as you literally did. It took me years to understand that Hanna’s disappearances had nothing to do with her capacity for love—we’re connected through water. Water is love. But just as love must pass from one to another, water must flow from one place to another. So, even though a part of me misses Hanna, I also rejoice to have her gift inside me. Just as you are right here, in my water. My miracle.
A lot has happened since you disappeared If those who are left ever find out, people will accuse Hanna and me of an atrocity against humanity, the same humanity that considered those like you abominations and wanted to dissect you without a second thought. But you are the future of humanity, Sprite. I know this in my heart. What Hanna and I have done with our device and intentions is an act of faith and love. We did it for Water, Sprite. To help Gaia in her transition and to free Water for its next journey. Water needs to be set free. The future of humanity—what is left of it—lies with water. Some humans will make it; others won’t. I have faith in our ability to survive, but this is not about what humanity wants or even deserves. It is the way of Water. That is my mission, Sprite. We are all Water. And Water remembers.
I love you so much, my Water Child. Flow safe!
Your loving mother, Hilde
Kyo clutches the journal close to her heart and a sob catches in her throat. It is as though the universe has touched her, as though it has given her the gift of understanding and forgiveness.
She looks up to Nam, who is still seated next to her.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
Nam takes one of Kyo’s electric blue hands in hers. “You understand now, Sprite? She needs your help. It is her guilt you carry—”
“For saving Water at the expense of humanity?”
“No, Sprite.” Nam shakes her head thoughtfully before speaking softly. “Not for saving Water, but for not forgiving her mother.”
Kyo’s eyes open wider.
“Forgiveness lies at the root of healing and transcendence, Sprite. Water must forgive so it can flow. Lynna was a tortured soul; so was her water. Hilde had the power to release that water from its darkness by forgiving her mother. She did not. And it weighed upon her. Forgiveness is the greatest power, Sprite. Forgiveness will charge water, help it flow, and make it sing.” She squeezes Kyo’s hand and nods as if to herself. “You were created to be a Water Keeper, Kyo…”
“An incarnation of Shiva.”
“And Kali, the Nbi Mnidowug, Suijin, Ryujin, Viracocha, Nommo, Tiamat, Telchine, Kumugwe, Sedna, Osiris, and the Selkie….” Nam gives Kyo a slanting smile and winks. “The list is endless, Sprite. They are all Water Keepers. As are you. All of you. Like water, you are all creators and destroyers: shape shifters, healers, and transformers. Your most powerful tool is forgiveness.”
Kyo thinks she understands and lets a smile tug her lips.
“You are all travellers.”
Kyo’s smile disappears and she curbs an involuntary frown. “I must go, then.”
Nam nods. “Yes. To complete the last stage of the Intervention—the leaving. By moving on, you help take the guilt away. Your guilt and all that remains of humanity. You free her and yourself. Embrace who and what you are, Kyo. You are the new humanity. You and your sisters, who will soon join you.” Nam points to the gate at the far end of the garden. It is still glowing, the blue light growing brighter. “Beyond that gate a seed ship awaits you; you are the last of the pleroma, the last Kyo. Once you board, Water will know what to do. It has been responding to Earth’s changing magnetic field for some time now. It is ready too, waiting for you. Like a dandelion gone to seed, the mass exodus will take you and Water to a new home.”
“What about you? What will you do without water?”
Nam smiles beatifically. “It will take a while for it all to disappear, Sprite. I will remain here, with Myo and the others. We will see in the new Gaia. We came from Gaia and we will remain with her. We are Her caretakers. We will perish here, the last of Gaia’s humanity. You, on the other hand, are a Water Keeper. Water’s humanity. Your destiny is ultimately out there. With Water. You will join your sisters. You will help create a new world.” Nam points to the blushing sky, and then through it, Kyo supposes, to the jet blackness of space and the vast universe.
Now, Kyo can feel her destiny call her out there. Nam had always called Kyo her little adventurer. This will be her great adventure. Finally, she is ready to embark on it.
Soon.
But first she will finish reading her mother’s journal before she walks through that dimensional gate to the ship that will lead her to the stars.
