The River That Waits

“Quiet’s supposed to mean safe. But this was the kind of quiet that holds its breath—and wants you to hold yours too.”

It wasn’t a campground in the way you’d think—not neat or marked or signposted. Just a clearing, carved roughly out of the bush like someone had hacked a chunk out with a blunt knife and decided that was good enough. The ground sloped gently toward a narrow river that glimmered with the moon’s reflection—silver streaks across sluggish water, barely moving.

Across the clearing, under a cluster of ghost gums that stood white and still like statues in uniform, were two campervans. Not near each other—no one ever parks close unless they know each other—but within sight. The nearest was a pale yellowing cream, its sides streaked with rust that reminded me of dried tears. A folding chair sat beneath a stripy awning, sagging a little in the middle, and from the edge of it hung a gas lantern swaying gently in the air, as if someone had just let go of it.

But there were no lights inside the vans. No footsteps. No radio hum or laughter or clatter of dishes—none of the things you might expect from people living, even quietly, even temporarily. The clearing felt frozen, like we’d stepped into a moment someone had taken a photo of and then forgotten to come back to. It looked like people had been here. But it didn’t feel like they still were.

Mum eased our car into a dusty patch right on the edge of everything, far from the vans, tucked into the most shadowed corner she could find. The grass was long here, wild and dry, brushing against the car with a whispering scrape that made my skin crawl—like the land was trying to warn us, or maybe just remind us we didn’t belong. I turned to look out the window and saw only trees, tall and pale and endless, leaning slightly as if they were listening.

“We’ll stop here,” Mum said.

Not we could or should we. Just we will. Her voice had that flatness again—the same one she used when she told people over the phone that things were “fine” or “under control.” It wasn’t the voice of someone making a choice. It was the voice of someone who had run out of them.

I sat still with Ribbons clutched against my chest, both of us listening to the kind of silence that feels like it’s waiting. Waiting for someone to speak. Or maybe just waiting for whatever came next.

Mack opened his door first, slow and stiff like an old man easing himself out of bed on a cold morning. The door creaked open with a reluctant groan, and he swung his legs out carefully, pausing on the edge of the seat as if the ground might have changed while we’d been driving. He stood up with a grimace and began stamping his feet in the dust, thudding heel then toe like someone trying to convince their body to belong to them again.

I followed, clutching Ribbons under one arm and bracing my other hand against the car door as I swung it open. The air outside hit my face with the kind of coolness that didn’t refresh so much as remind—it made me aware of how sore I was, how long we’d been sitting, how little rest we’d really had. My legs felt shaky and hollow, like I was walking on stilts made of twigs. Each step sent a dull ache up my spine, and my shoulders were stiff from curling around Ribbons for too many hours in too many awkward positions. Everything inside me felt slightly out of place, like I'd been folded up wrong and never quite unfolded properly.

The air smelled of eucalyptus and something else—something dry and smoky and old, like the memory of a fire rather than a fire itself. It drifted on the breeze, faint but persistent, clinging to the backs of my teeth. Maybe the campervan people had lit something earlier, a little campfire with damper and billy tea, and the smoke had tangled itself in the leaves, unwilling to move on. Or maybe it was the land itself, letting off steam at the end of another long, hot day.

Underneath that, there were other smells too. The wet, sour scent of river mud and decomposing leaves, sharp floral notes that might have been from hidden wattle blooms, and something metallic—faint but insistent—that reminded me of Grandpa Greg’s shed. Not when it was open and full of him, but when it had been locked up for the winter, and the air inside was heavy with rust and oil and silence.

Mum got out last. She shut her door softly, like she was afraid of drawing attention, then walked around to the boot and opened it with a soft click. Her voice was clipped, brisk, like she was reading from a list. “We’ll sleep in the car again. It’s easier. Safer.”

She didn’t look at us when she said it.

Safer.

The word floated in the stillness, hovering in the cooling air like mist. Safer than what? Safer than whatever might be in those silent vans across the clearing? Safer than being seen by the people in the next town? Safer than the dark?

We didn’t ask.

There was a time when we would’ve. When Mack would have frowned and said, “What do you mean?” and I would have echoed him, eager to understand. But not anymore. Now we understood that some answers were worse than silence.

And night came down around us like a curtain.

Mack helped rearrange the backseat without being told. He moved like someone with a checklist inside his head—no fuss, no questions, just the steadiness of someone who knew what needed doing and had stopped expecting help to arrive.

He didn’t speak. None of us really did anymore. It was as if the words we’d used up in the last week had cost something, and now we were rationing them. Keeping quiet, the way you do when you're somewhere you don’t belong.

I slipped away while he worked, my footsteps light on the dry ground. The earth crunched under my shoes, littered with curled leaves and twigs that snapped with small, brittle sounds. I stopped just far enough from the car that I could see the river properly through the twisted tea-trees that leaned toward the water like they were thirsty for it.

At first glance, the river looked still—flat and dull, like melted metal. But if you stared at it long enough, you could see it shift, just a little, as though it was breathing slowly in its sleep. A quiet, sluggish drift that seemed too tired to be called a current.

I tried to picture fish beneath the surface, silver-scaled and darting, maybe making ripples where the light hit just right. I imagined frogs crouched in the reeds, searching for the stars. But it was all pretend. Nothing moved. No rings of insects, no sudden flick of water, no sound at all.

Even the birds were missing. I waited for the warble of a magpie or the mad cackle of a kookaburra winding down the day—but the bush was silent. My ears felt too open, straining for something familiar, something living. Instead, there was only the breeze, soft and aimless, brushing the leaves like fingers trying not to wake a sleeping house.

“Too quiet,” Mack murmured, appearing next to me. He didn’t look at me—just kept his eyes on the water, his brow furrowed slightly like the silence was something he was trying to decode.

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if I agreed or just wanted to agree with him. Quiet was supposed to mean safe, wasn’t it? At school, when the teacher said, “Let’s have some quiet,” it was a good thing. At home, when the telly was turned down and the grown-ups whispered in the kitchen, quiet meant everything was fine.

But this wasn’t that kind of quiet.

This was the kind of quiet that came after something ended. The kind that settled over empty rooms when the people were gone but the air hadn’t figured it out yet. The kind that made you want to hold your breath just so you didn’t disturb it.

The campsite had everything it was supposed to—at least on the surface. A squat toilet block with "GENTS" and "LADIES" stencilled in paint that had started to flake like dry skin. A metal tap that dripped steadily into a patch of thin brown grass, the water splashing like a slow clock. And the sign—Welcome Travellers—cheerful and peeling in equal measure, its yellow letters dulled by sun and neglect.

But nothing felt lived in. No voices, no laughter, no clink of cutlery or radio music from inside the campervans. No smell of cooked meat or citronella candles. Just the stillness of a place that had been built for people who’d stopped coming.

It felt like a model town in a museum, frozen in time. Like if I reached out to touch something, it might crumble under my fingers.

“Maybe they’re just inside,” I whispered, not really believing it.

“Maybe,” Mack replied. But his eyes didn’t leave the river.

We didn’t light a fire, even though there was a proper ring of soot-blackened stones and a neatly stacked pile of dead branches nearby, like someone before us had meant to use them and then changed their mind. It seemed almost wasteful not to. The air had that bite to it now, the chill creeping in through the trees like it had a purpose. But when Mack suggested it, just quietly, Mum shut him down with that voice. The one with the edges.

“Draws attention,” she said, brisk and low, like the words themselves were a warning. Like attention was something dangerous now, something we should be afraid of. It didn’t really make sense—we were already here, already visible—but we didn’t argue. That voice meant the door was closed.

So we sat in the deepening dark and ate our dinner cold.

For a moment, I shut my eyes and tried to go somewhere else. My room. Home. I imagined my bed with its lumpy mattress and Mack's poster of the solar system that glowed when you turned the lights off. I imagined the hum of the fridge and the sound of traffic through the window and Mum’s voice calling down the hallway for us to brush our teeth.

I held onto it for as long as I could.

But when I opened my eyes again, we were still here.

Still in the clearing.

Still surrounded by trees that moved like they had secrets.

And the darkness—it hadn’t let go. It had just closed in tighter, like a fist around something small and breakable.