Let the River Run
Copyright© 2026 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 7
The Lowveld rolled beneath us in that endless patchwork of green—riverine ribbons, mopane blocks, the occasional pale scar of a road still recovering from the floods. Jessie purred along happily at cruise, needles steady, turbines singing their expensive little song.
Kaitlyn had drifted off, dozing in the right seat.
Head tilted slightly toward the window, her hair splayed against the headset strap, one hand still loosely curled in her lap. Occasionally she’d sigh, the kind of deep, healing breath that tells you the body is finally catching up with the drama.
I kept one eye on the gauges and the other on the horizon, and my mind wandered back to my call with Gustav the night before.
“Tell me more about that Kaitlyn Fourie of yours...” he had said.
“Kaitlyn Fourie of mine? I don’t think so. She’s not mine, as you make it sound.”
He chuckled. I could hear the ice in his glass over the phone. “You found her. You pulled her out of the mud. You brought her flowers ... Now she’s taking you home to meet-the-parents. I say she’s yours!”
“It’s not like she’s a puppy that followed me home, and now I get to keep her...”
“Never mind all that, just tell me about her. She seems a clever girl and not your run-of-the-mill game ranger.”
“She’s not a game ranger,” I said. “She’s a field guide and a TV presenter.”
“Yeah, yeah, but powder-puff TV girls don’t rattle off environmental conservation and road rehabilitation data like a civil engineer.”
“There’s no such thing as a civil engineer,” I replied. “They’re all assholes.”
He laughed. “Well, Kaitlyn knows what she’s talking about.”
And that’s when I gave him the proper briefing.
“She holds an B.Sc. Honours in Wildlife Management. Main subjects: Wildlife Ecology & Population Management, Habitat & Vegetation Management, and Wildlife Management Techniques. And she’s completed her Master’s on eco-friendly infrastructure in game parks—balancing tourism development with environmental protection. Sustainable, low-impact designs for lodges, roads, waste systems, the lot.”
There was a pause on the line. Then Gustav, in full operational mode:
“Dammit, Adrian. I need that girl! I can’t offer her a paid job because she’ll be too expensive, but a part-time contract as a consultant on the rehabilitation programme is the best I can do for now.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes! Tell her to phone me as soon as she feels like talking serious business. I need that girl!”
Then, as if that wasn’t enough:
“Better still—bring her along on Monday when all the big bosses are here...”
“She’s still on sick leave and needs to heal up...”
“I won’t put her to work. I just need to talk to her and see what the big bosses say.”
“What about a finder’s fee for me?”
“Go play on the railway tracks!”
We both laughed.
“I’ll ask her, Gustav. That’s the least I can do.”
“Do it.”
“But it’s expensive to fly her back to Levubu after your chat...”
“The park will foot the bill for the fuel and hourly rate as per your contract.”
“Okay, Gustav. See you Monday...”
“Cheers, buddy.”
Back in the present, Jessie cut through a layer of warm rising air and gave a gentle shudder. Nothing serious—just hitting the escarpment that borders the Lowveld and the thermals doing their thing.
I glanced over at Kaitlyn again.
Here was Gustav talking about her like a strategic asset for the park, the bosses wanting to meet her, consultants and contracts being casually thrown into the air—while she was currently asleep in my helicopter wearing borrowed sunglasses and clutching a hospital discharge packet like a boarding pass.
Life is weird like that.
Ahead of us, the land slowly began to change. The greens deepened, the folds of the terrain grew more pronounced. Levubu country.
I trimmed the helicopter, checked our ground speed, and nudged the heading a degree right to stay on the purple line.
“Two rivers,” I muttered to myself. “Flowing to a confluence somewhere along the future path.”
Jessie purred on, riding the air currents over the escarpment like a ship on the calm sea.
”I can feel the morning sunlight.
I can smell the new-mown hay.
I can hear God’s voice is calling,
For my golden skylight way...
Una paloma blanca
I’m just a bird in the sky
Una paloma blanca
Over the mountains I fly
No one can take my freedom away...
Ooh-ooh-ooh,
Ooh-ooh-ooh,
Ooh-ooh-ooh,
Ooh-ooh-ooh,
No one can take my freedom Away...
Yes, no one can take my freedom...
Away!”
With Tzaneen winking off my left shoulder like a conspirator, I eased the collective and brought us up to eleven thousand feet. The air was smooth up there, thin and glassy, the kind of sky that makes a pilot feel like he’s been granted a private corridor through the world. I thumbed the transmit button and made the call—calm, measured—letting anyone with a radio and an interest informed that I was transiting the Transvaal Middle Fly Area and skirting the military FAR -71 between one-zero-five and one-niner-five Mean Sea Level.
It always gave me a small thrill, that ritual: the clipped phraseology, the knowledge that somewhere a controller or a bored signals operator might be nodding, pencil hovering over a logbook, acknowledging our passage through a slice of controlled sky.
Twelve minutes later the world began to swell up toward us again as I lowered the nose and bled altitude down to eight thousand five hundred. The direct line to Fourie Farm lay ahead like an invisible thread pulled taut across the Limpopo Highveld.
The Middle Letaba Dam appeared first—an oval of dull silver framed by dusty green bushveld. Sunlight flashed off the distant ribbon of the Levubu River, a quick mirror-glint that came and went between folds of terrain. I eased us down to four thousand five hundred feet MSL, giving us a comfortable thousand feet above the ground—low enough to read the land, high enough to stay unhurried.
Beside me Kaitlyn stirred in the left seat, a small movement, the rustle of fabric, the faintest intake of breath.
“Sorry, Adrian ... I didn’t mean to go dark on you.”
I smiled without looking at her, keeping my scan moving—attitude, torque, temperatures, horizon. “It’s alright. You’re relaxed. That’s what matters. Forty winks are part of the service.”
“Still. It was rude.”
“Think nothing of it,” I said, and meant it. “A passenger who sleeps is a passenger who trusts you.”
She leaned forward, peering through the windscreen. “Is that the Letaba Dam there on the right?”
“Yes. And just ahead, see that silver thread? That’s the Levubu, winding left to right.”
“Is that why you went lower?”
“Ja. We’re close now.”
There was a pause while she oriented herself, mapping memory onto landscape. Then: “Do you see just across the river—where it runs almost straight west to east—there’s a big dam about a kilometre away?”
“I have it.”
“On the right there’s a gravel clearing. Just east of that, through the trees, a farmhouse with a green lawn.”
“Got it.”
“That’s us.”
I let the helicopter—Jessie—drift into a wide, lazy orbit over the property. From above, the farmyard opened like a diagram: the house, the steel shed, the dusty tracks etched into the earth by years of bakkie tyres. Small figures gathered below, hands raised, faces tilted skyward.
“Can I put down between the house and the shed?”
“Yes.”
“Any wires?”
“No. Overhead lines come in from the north. Everything else is buried.”
“Then we’re going down.”
On the second circuit one of the figures broke away, trotting a few paces to the right. A moment later a yellow smoke grenade bloomed—mustard-coloured vapour curling upward, then drifting lazily east.
“West wind,” I said. “We’ll come in from the east, over that road, into wind. Clear approach.”
“Good old daddy!” Kaitlyn giggled. “He was in the Air Force, you know. Flew as a Navigator on Dakotas and Skymasters. I wonder where he got that smoke grenade from. Maybe from the Farm-watch or the local Community Police Forum...”
“I’ll ask him,” I said, grinning as I lowered the collective and brought the nose up, trading forward speed for lift. The yard was generous—room enough to park a small squadron of helicopters.
We descended slow and deliberate, the familiar ballet of pedals, cyclic, collective. The ground rose, details sharpening—the ripple of grass, the glint of a corrugated roof, the lazy sway of the smoke.
The skids kissed the earth with barely a tremor.
I turned to Kaitlyn as I rolled the throttle back. “Welcome home, Kait.”
She beamed at me, all composure gone, replaced by that irrepressible schoolgirl delight. “Thanks for bringing me home in style!”
I kept Jessie at idle, letting the turbines stabilise, watching the exhaust temperature sink toward four hundred degrees. The machine breathed in the still Highveld air, cooling, settling, her energy unwinding. When the needles were where I wanted them, I shut her down.
There was the familiar shudder, the diminishing whine, the slow majestic wind-down of the rotors above us. I raised a touch of collective to hasten the decay, then eased in rotor brake at sixty RPM. Four minutes later the blades came to rest, one final twitch, then silence.
Kaitlyn was already half out of her harness, coiled like a racehorse in the gate. I helped her with the buckle, and she was gone in a flash, sprinting toward the waiting figures.
I stayed behind a moment longer, moving through the ritual—fuel off, switches cold and dark, red safety switch and button covers secure. Only when Jessie was properly tucked in did I step out into the cooler Highveld air of Limpopo Province, the smell of dust and cut grass, and the sound of voices rising in welcome. The air was a degree or two cooler than the Lowveld on the other side of the escarpment we just came from.
I walked over to the knot of people wrapped around Kaitlyn in what could only be described as a family scrum—arms, laughter, the rustle of farm clothes and the faint smell of sun and dust. She looked up from the middle of it and spotted me coming.
“Mom, Dad ... This is Adrian Grobler. Pilot and contractor to SANParks.”
There was a spark in her eyes when she said it—something quick and bright—but it was her father who held my attention.
“Adrian! Welcome to our humble farm! If I’m not ‘Dad’, I am Hannes Fourie, and when she’s not ‘Mom’, she’s my loving wife, Amelia.”
His grip was firm, work-roughened, the kind of handshake that tested bone and intent in one go.
“Pleased to meet you, Hannes ... Amelia,” I replied, shaking her hand as well. Her smile was warm, appraising without being unfriendly—the look of someone who had already heard more about me than I had been told.
Louise stood slightly apart, weight on one hip, that familiar smirk in place like a badge.
“Nice seeing you again, Mister Grobler...” she mumbled, then pivoted toward her mother. “I’ll go see if the kettle is boiling. I suppose you will offer our guest some coffee after flying Kaity all the way here...”
She strode off without waiting for a reply. Kaitlyn watched her go, expression unreadable for a moment.
“Come ... let’s all get settled on the patio,” Amelia said. “It’s cooler there while the sun is still on the other side of the house.”
“I’ll get your bags, Kait,” I offered.
“And yours!” she shot back, glancing over her shoulder to see if Louise had heard.
Hannes nodded toward the helicopter. “Nice bird. I saw you orbiting. Took the long way around for that west wind—good. Most youngsters today would have tried a downwind landing because the GPS says the pad is ‘right there.’ You fly the air, not the screen. I like that.”
“I learned from the best,” I said.
“Ex-SAAF?” he asked, one eyebrow climbing.
“Eighty-Seven Advanced Flying School. A-109s, BK-117s, Oryx airframes,” I replied. “And some time playing at Dragon Peaks in the Drakensberg.”
“Aha ... then you know about wind,” he chuckled.
We reached the patio, tiled and cool, the shade holding the night’s last breath while the sun crept around the flowerbeds in slow, golden fingers. Somewhere a wind pump creaked, and the smell of coffee drifted faintly from the kitchen.
“I like your idea of popping smoke on our landing, Hannes. Thanks.”
“Pleasure.”
“Come, Kaity,” Amelia sighed. “Let’s get the coffee. These two are starting to talk shop. Next they’ll be trading war stories, grunting and throwing dirt and sticks in the air.”
“But I want to hear war stories too...” Kaitlyn protested, pouting.
“Run along, little Ohlanya,” Hannes chuckled, using the isiZulu word for Wild One. I filed that away—Dad-Hannes had a nickname for her.
When she disappeared into the house, he turned back to me. “When I saw that familiar orbit to test the wind, I couldn’t help thinking of the old days.”
“Were you Air Force as well, Hannes?” I asked, pretending I didn’t already know Kaitlyn had told me.
“Navigator. DC-3 TP, DC-3, DC-4 and DC-6. I was too young for the Shackleton, and the Hercs were just coming in when I left for this farm.”
“That explains the smoke grenade.”
He went quiet for a moment, eyes drifting toward the fields as if they were a map only he could read. Then he chuckled.
“She’s a clean-looking bird, Adrian. But tell me—if that fancy glass cockpit goes dark over the escarpment and you’re caught in the soup, can you still find your way home with a pencil and a prayer, or are you just a passenger in a high-speed computer?”
“I can. Check the map case in the cockpit—sectionals, one-to-ten-thousand paper maps. GPS doesn’t show all the little villages and nooks and cranny valleys.”
“So my joke won’t work on you?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.
“What joke? Try me.”
“You know the difference between a pilot and a navigator, son?”
“Smoke on—go. Give me your side first.”
His grin widened. “You do know the world of aviation. Not many know that term. Anyway—the difference between a pilot and a navigator: a pilot thinks he knows where he is; a navigator knows the pilot is lost.”
We both laughed, and I felt something settle into place. He wouldn’t have tried that on just any pilot. I’d been weighed and found good—not excellent, but good. That was enough.
Hannes tilted his head toward the door. “Code Red,” he whispered. “Here comes the female contingent...”
A refreshing coffee on the patio and a plate of snack sandwiches that looked far too neat and symmetrical to have been assembled in a hurry confirmed my suspicion that the Fouries had been warned not only of Kaitlyn’s arrival but of mine as well. Amelia had that quiet efficiency about her—cups appearing before you realised you were thirsty, napkins folded just so.
After we had finished, I excused myself to fetch the luggage. The helicopter still ticked softly in the heat, metal cooling with little clicks like a contented animal. I grabbed both bags and carried them inside, the house smelling faintly of polish, coffee and something baking.
Kaitlyn led the way down the passage and flung open a door with a little flourish.
“This is the guest room. Well, it used to be my aunt’s room when she visited but now it’s the guest room and sometimes Louise uses it when she’s in a mood and doesn’t want to share a bathroom with me which is often because she says I use all the hot water and—oh, sorry, you don’t need that level of detail.”
The room was surprisingly modern for a farmhouse—high ceiling with exposed beams, a proper double bed with a thick duvet, built-in cupboards that could swallow a small army, and a dresser that had probably seen more decades than the helicopter. A sliding glass door opened onto the wraparound stoep, looking out over the garden where a bougainvillea climbed the wall in a riot of colour. It felt more like a small hotel room than a farm spare room, complete with an en suite bathroom that gleamed with recent cleaning.
“Nice,” I said, setting the bags down.
“If you’re finished, I can show you the yard and the farm and the dam and the windmill and the old tractor that doesn’t work, but Dad refuses to sell because apparently it has ‘sentimental value’ which means it’s just going to rust there forever and—oh! Wear comfortable shoes. And a hat. The sun is really hot today, and you might get sunburn, and we’re going to be outside for a while and there are thorns near the dam and—”
“Kait?”
“Yes?”
“Just go show me...” I chuckled.
“Am I rambling again?”
“No. Just breathe between paragraphs, otherwise I might have to resuscitate you, and I’m not very good at mouth-to-mouth.”
She froze, stared at me for a long second, then burst out laughing so hard she had to grab the doorframe.
“I would not mind that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation thing—” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oooo ... that did not come out right, did it? I mean—well—no, I mean it did, but not like that, I mean—oh my word, I’m just going to stop talking now.”
“I think it came out just right,” I said.
Her blush went from pink to a full farm-sunset red. “Right. Yes. Good. Excellent. Let’s go look at animals before I say something else that requires medical intervention.”
She grabbed my sleeve and tugged me toward the door.
“Come! I’ll show you the horses and the cattle and the chickens and the ducks, but watch out for the rooster—he’s evil—and the turkey is worse because he pretends to be friendly and then attacks your shoelaces and there’s a goose that hates men for some reason and—did I mention the dam? There’s fish. And frogs. And sometimes a snake but don’t worry it’s only a puff adder there once and Dad relocated it and—okay, I’m rambling again.”
I had to bite back a grin.
“Yes, Kait,” I said, laughing softly, “but let me sort out my bag first. I’ll meet you on the patio.”
“Okay, that’ll give me time to put on proper shoes. I usually just wear gumboots here, but takkies will do for now...” she said, already halfway out the door before finishing the sentence.
And then she was gone like a gust of wind that doesn’t ask permission before blowing through a room and rearranging everything.
I stood there for a second longer than necessary, staring at the doorway she’d just disappeared through.
This girl was going to be fun to be around.
I shook my head and turned back to my bag, busying myself with unpacking, folding, placing—anything to keep my hands occupied while my mind refused to do the same.
Why am I so comfortable around her?
Three days.
That’s all it’s been.
Three days, and somehow she’s already slipped past the usual barriers. No effort. No calculation. Just ... presence. And under my skin.
I exhaled slowly, placing my last shirt into the dresser.
She’s twenty-three. Divorced.
Who in their right mind marries a woman like that—full of life, full of light—and then lets her go?
No, scratch that. Doesn’t let her go. Throws her away.
I paused, my jaw tightening.
The idiot doesn’t need a psychiatric evaluation. I’m fairly certain I could phone a few veterinarians who’d assess the situation, shake their heads, and recommend immediate euthanasia for an incurable case of advanced stupidity.
Idiot.
I closed the drawer a little harder than necessary and leaned back against it, folding my arms.
And yet ... here she is.
Laughing. Talking. Rambling like the world hasn’t taken a swing at her.
Or maybe it has ... and she just refuses to stay down.
A small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.
Her dad calls her Ohlanya. The wild one. Yeah ... that fits.
She’s like a butterfly—never quite still, never contained. And those run-on sentences ... I don’t think she even breathes between thoughts. It’s like her mind is moving faster than the world can keep up with, and I’m just ... lucky enough to be standing close enough to catch pieces of it.
I let out a quiet chuckle, shaking my head.
And then it hit me.
A flicker of something unfamiliar.
Nerves.
I straightened slightly.
Nervous? Really?
I’ve dealt with far more complicated situations than a barefoot farm girl on a verbal overdrive setting.
So why does this feel different?
I rubbed the back of my neck, exhaling slowly. How did she get under my skin this quickly?
And that’s when it started.
The usual suspects.
The little angel dropped onto my right shoulder, neat as you please, folding her wings like she owned the place.
“It’s her personality, ” she said calmly. “Unpretentious. Genuine. What you see is what you get. WYSIWYG, if you prefer computer nerdy speak... ”
I nodded slightly. That ... made sense. Of course, it did.
And then—
Thud. The little red devil crash-landed on my left shoulder like he’d missed the memo about subtlety.
“Oh please, ” he scoffed, twirling that ridiculous little fork. “Nobody’s that pure. What’s the angle, hmm? Ain’t she got complications? Didn’t you hear the divorced part? You think life just hands you someone like that without the fine print?”
I frowned.
“That’s not—”
“And what if she’s just looking for stability?” he cut in, leaning closer. “A nice, reliable bloke. Maybe even a replacement plan. You don’t know what baggage comes with that smile, my friend.”
Before I could respond—
Flash.
The angel didn’t even hesitate. Flaming sword, clean swing—off went the devil’s tail.
“Take your cynicism somewhere else, ” she snapped. “You’re projecting nonsense. There’s no manipulation there. You’ve seen it yourself.”
The devil yelped, clutching what was left of his dignity.
“Oh, come now,” he muttered, scrambling back up. “You really think you know everything? Let me educate you—life, relationships, pretty faces—”
Another flash.
This time he lost an arm.
I winced slightly.
“Alright, alright!” he snapped, backing off. “Just saying—don’t be stupid.”
Silence.
I exhaled slowly, running a hand through my hair.
Whatever the outcome ... Miss Kaitlyn Fourie is under my skin.
Properly.
And the worst part? I don’t actually mind.
I pushed myself off the dresser and headed for the door, pausing just before stepping out.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.