I directed my torch beam past the pale, scarred trunks of the gums, down into the riverbed, where the pool had been.
Had been.
My skin prickled. My nose started to drip. I wiped it with the back of my hand and concentrated hard on keeping the torch steady.
‘See it?’
‘I see it.’
The rushing sound wasn’t the wind in the trees. It was the river. Its level had risen to almost a ruler’s length clear of the top of the bank. The water was dark and I couldn’t see the bottom. The current raced, dragging clumps of debris, spinning branches around and around then dragging them under and spitting them back out downstream.
‘I came to see if the pool was still full, but it was gone,’ Bree yelled over the noise.
I had been worrying about the lack of water, certain the Brown curse couldn’t show itself out there on the edge of a desert a hundred kilometres from anywhere. Even with my doubts about Vivienne and her stories, that didn’t explain why fear had my gut all twisted up like a balloon animal.
I took a step away from the bank. It was starting to soften and crumble in places, as if the river was trying to cut a new path. As we watched, a piece broke away and dissolved, leaving a tangle of exposed tree roots. Where our lagoon had been that afternoon there was now a whirlpool of current.
I wiped my nose again.
‘Your nose is bleeding,’ Bree said. Her eyes were wide and fearful. She took the torch and shone it on my hand.
My wrist and thumb were smeared with red.
Silence was staring at the blood. He turned white and gripped a branch to steady himself. He seemed to be waiting for me to answer him, except I hadn’t heard a question.
‘It’s only blood,’ I said.
He nodded at the river.
‘Oh, that. It’s only water.’ I could tell he wasn’t convinced. ‘It happened pretty fast,’ I went on, trying to keep my voice steady. I pinched the bridge of my nose and cupped my hand to catch the drips. ‘It could be raining a lot somewhere upstream and this is the run-off. I don’t know…I need a tissue. It’ll be okay.’ To prove it, I stepped closer to the bank, leaned down and scooped a handful of water. The current was freezing and strong as a spa-bath jet. I rinsed my nose and my arms, but the more I added water, the more blood there seemed to be. I could feel pressure forcing its way up behind my nasal passage, into my ears.
Silence came up behind me and held on to my T-shirt as I leaned over.
‘I’m okay,’ I said, sniffing. ‘We should go back and tell the others.’
‘Maybe Arden will let us go home now.’ Bree picked up a stick and threw it into the river. It spun crazily, dancing on the surface, then dunked and disappeared. ‘Did we do this? By piling up the stones?’
I shook my head. The movement made me dizzy. ‘There’s no way we could have done that.’
It’s me,
I thought.
It’s the curse. I did this.
But that was stupid. Irrational. We’d seen signs of it when we arrived—clumps of grass and leaves matted together, stranded up high in the cracks of the buildings. Old tide marks, like sweat-stains, on the walls.
A picture-perfect postcard town, abandoned, for no apparent reason.
Murungal Creek.
Thunder
Creek.
That’s the noise it made, the river—rolling and booming like storm clouds rubbing together.
Back at the fire, only Carrie, Joe and Darcy were still up.
‘Don’t go in there. Arden and Malik are going at it,’ Carrie informed us.
‘So, where’s AiAi?’ Bree said.
‘Ah, shit,’ Carrie smacked her forehead. ‘He said he was going for a leak ages ago.’ She stood unsteadily. ‘Better go find him. What happened to you?’ She pointed to the bloodstains on my T-shirt.
‘My nose,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing. It’s stopped.’ As soon as we’d come away from the river, the pressure had eased and the flow had slowed down. ‘Which way did he go?’
Darcy looked at Bree. ‘I thought he was with you?’
‘Nope. Didn’t see him.’ Bree picked up the cask of vodka and poured from the tap straight into her throat.
Silence stared off into the dark.
I moved away from the fire and stepped into the sparse shrubbery behind the church. I made a funnel with my hands. ‘AiAi!’
Carrie came and stood next to me. She shone her torch into the blackness. ‘AiAi!’ she called.
‘He wouldn’t have gone near the river, would he?’
‘How would I know? Who knows what goes through
his head. Why, what’s wrong with the river?’ she asked.
‘If he fell in he would’ve been swept away. It’s nearly overflowing,’ I said.
‘No way!’ She smacked her forehead again. ‘Oh, shit.’
Across the clearing, the others had their torches flickering. Their calls bounced back.
‘Surely he wouldn’t take off by himself? He’s afraid of the dark,’ Carrie said.
‘What’s going on? What’s all the noise?’ Arden beamed us full in the face with her Maglite.
‘AiAi’s missing.’
‘How long for?’
‘Probably half an hour or so,’ Carrie answered, shamefaced. ‘Maybe more. I didn’t really notice.’
‘He’ll turn up. Keep it down. I’ve got a headache and I’m trying to sleep.’
‘AiAi. Is. Missing,’ Carrie repeated. ‘How can you even think of going back to sleep?’
‘Easy.’ Arden’s colourless eyes didn’t blink. ‘I’m tired and my fucking head hurts.’ She spun on her bare feet and left a trail of man-sized footprints in the dust.
Carrie looked at me with her mouth open.
‘Come on. We’ll find him,’ I said and slung my arm over her shoulder. ‘He can’t have gone too far. AiAi!’
We did find him, not far away, crouched under a tree and looking miserable.
‘I saw a snake. I think it was a snake. And Friday told me not to move and to be very quiet if I saw a s…sn… snake.’ His teeth chattered.
‘You did good,’ I told him. ‘Let’s get you warmed up.’
Carrie piggybacked him all the way to the campfire and called to the others.
I was seething. My skin was crawling, like there were bugs under it. I burst into the church with my torch still on high beam. Arden was sitting up reading, Malik lying stretched out next to her, apparently asleep.
‘We found him. I thought you’d want to know. Since you were so concerned and all.’
Arden jumped and stuffed something under the edge of her swag. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Tell the others to get some sleep.’
‘You tell them.’
‘What?’
‘Tell them yourself.’
‘Come here and say that.’ She got up and assumed her combat stance. Her elbows stuck out at sharp angles. ‘You shut your mouth.’
‘Which is it? Speak or shut my mouth?’ I was trembling and she saw it.
‘Want me to shut it for her?’ Malik drawled.
Arden ignored him. ‘What’s up your arse?’
‘Have you seen the river? It’s flooding. We need to get out of here. It isn’t safe. AiAi could have died out there tonight.’
‘Stop acting like you know everything. You make me sick,’ she spat.
‘We need to leave,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Remember what I said to you?’
‘You say a lot of things.’
‘About not being able to survive alone?’
‘You said I wasn’t
street
,’ I said. I took another few steps towards her. With less distance between us I could see she was shaking, too. ‘Well, I happen to think that’s just a matter of location.’
‘You can go,’ she said in an offhand way. She smiled sweetly. ‘You can leave. We’ll drop you at the nearest town on the next supply run.’
‘Silence, too.’
‘If he wants to go with you. Sure. No problem.’
‘Good,’ I said, surprised that she would give in so easily. I should have known better. ‘He will.’
‘Really? You think so? You’ve known him for, like, five minutes. You don’t know anything about him. Or me.’
‘Yeah, you’re a real enigma, Arden.’ I turned and headed for the door.
‘You have no fucking idea,’ she said.
I stopped. Her expression was so smug I wanted to slap it off her face. I hissed, ‘Silence tells me
everything
.’
Her gaze wavered. There was a tiny crack in her performance. A flicker of fear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The next morning was pale and clear. Not a breath of wind.
Silence and I packed our things and left our gear piled up in the shadow of the car. We’d slept outside by the fire, partly because I didn’t want to be near Arden, partly because Silence was wheezy and the dust made his throat close over. That day there was a swagger in his step, a limping gangsta roll that made me laugh, which made him ham it up even more.
‘Wish we were going, too,’ Joe sulked. He was preparing coffee over the coals with the precision of a surgeon.
‘Why don’t you?’ I asked him.
‘Nah. I don’t fancy hitching anywhere. It’ll be easier, just the two of you. I’m a liability. I’ll stick it out ’til she
gets sick of being here. Can’t be much longer. We’ll catch you back in the big smoke.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Some day.’ I had other plans. We wouldn’t be going back to the city.
Silence and I hadn’t slept much. We’d whispered to each other and I’d told him stories about how it could be if we made it all the way up north. I told him about the rainforests, where the bugs were as big as your hand and slower than a rainy day; about the time I watched a cane field burn and it seemed like the whole planet was on fire; how riding out a cyclone in a weatherboard shack can take a year off your life for fear and give you two back for sheer exhilaration. I gave him accounts of my true life, the stuff I could remember. Not Vivienne’s fairytale versions of truth.
In the dark, anything seemed possible. I wondered if I’d promised him too much, made it all seem bigger and brighter than it really was. What if my idea of freedom wasn’t what
he
wanted? What if I was just like Vivienne, building castles in the sky?
While we were waiting, Silence, Bree and I checked out the river. It seemed to have stopped rising. A dirty, brown current meandered along, oily bubbles floating on the surface. The level was a little higher but without the fury of the night before.
By lunchtime, we were still waiting to leave.
Arden seemed in no rush. She dithered about, fired drill-sergeant orders for lunch and dinner, and ignored Silence and me as if we’d already gone. She had a
saucepan perched too close to the flame and I could hear the contents sizzling.
‘I thought you were dropping us off in town,’ I said carefully.
‘Next supply run,’ she said without looking up. ‘Not today.’ There was a trip-wire tension in her body. Her focus on the intricacies of opening a can of corn was unsettling, her movements sluggish, as if she was drugged.
‘So, tomorrow?’ I pressed.
‘Maybe,’ she said vaguely. ‘Yes, tomorrow. We’ll see.’
Darcy sighed. ‘I thought you were taking them today. I need some…you know. Girl stuff.’
‘No. Too many chances. Stolen car. We’ll wait,’ she said in her strange, robotic tone.
I broke the news to Silence gently. His shoulders slumped. He refused to unpack his swag and sat on top of his pile of stuff like a roadside refugee. Carrie brought him a sandwich but he let it go dry in the sun.
Don’t leave without me,
he said fiercely.
‘How can I leave without you?’ I said. ‘I’m not exactly going to flap my wings and fly out of here, am I?’
He dug around for his notebook and flipped to the back. He pointed to a blank page.
‘What’s wrong?’
Gone.
He spread his hands.
‘What’s gone?’
He showed me the ragged butts where some pages had been torn out. Our eyes met.
‘You can tell me later. You can write it all down again when we get out of here.’
He nodded. He walked over to the fire and made a great show of burning the notebook in front of Arden. It took a while to catch, then began to curl slowly at the edges. Blue flame ate a hole right through the middle and the book dissolved into ash.
Arden watched.
‘Bored, bored, bored,’ Darcy whined. She kicked a stump that didn’t give and limped over to where Carrie and AiAi were playing cards. ‘What’s going on with him?’ she poked a thumb over her shoulder at Silence.
Silence was still guarding his stuff even though the sun was belting down, the patch of shade gone. It was his version of a protest, but it wasn’t working.
Arden and Malik were hooking up the trailer, working around him.
‘He’s making a stand,’ I said.
‘Didn’t ask you.’
‘Give it a rest, Darce,’ Joe said. ‘It’s boring.’
Carrie snorted, then cocked her head. She stood and put a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘What’s that?’
AiAi scampered up the bonnet of the troop carrier. ‘Car,’ he said. ‘There’s a car coming.’
Arden froze. She climbed up next to AiAi and surveyed the landscape. Her cogs were turning.
I stood on the bull-bar. ‘It’s a long way off yet.’ There was a cloud of dust on the horizon, moving slowly in our direction.
Malik let the trailer-coupling fall to the ground. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked Arden.
She was breathing hard, nostrils flared like a spooked animal. ‘Get the trailer hooked up now,’ she said. ‘The rest of you, start putting your stuff in the back.’
‘What for?’ Joe asked. ‘We’re allowed to camp here, surely?’
Arden turned. ‘We’re driving a stolen vehicle, you idiot,’ she spat. ‘Go, go, go!’
Malik fumbled, Arden swore. The rest of us threw everything in a dusty pile in the trailer. I kicked dirt over the campfire but it wouldn’t go out. In desperation, Arden poured a whole container of water over the coals. A spiral of smoke and steam stained the sky.
‘Subtle,’ I said.
‘Can you drive?’ she yelled at Joe.
‘Yeah, but not that thing. It’s manual.’
‘I can drive,’ I said quietly, dusting off my jeans.
Give me the keys, Arden.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do—take Silence and go, just drive off, leave her there to rot?—but I wanted the keys. The keys meant control.
Arden looked at me. She read resolution on my face. She didn’t like it.
‘I can drive,’ I said again and held out my hand.