Guardian Angels II

Protection from the Sword: Ed

D is at work and the three brothers (all of primary school age) are at home under the supervision of a neighbour. It's a sunny afternoon and the boys are playing in the garden on the climbing frame. They are climbing up one side of the frame, crawling across the top ladder and before a descent prestissimo furioso on the slide.

What could possibly go wrong?

An eye-witness later described the scene. As part of the game, Ed, a battle-hardened six year-old, I believe, had decided he needed a weapon for the hero's part he had adopted. To him, it was perhaps Gandalf's  great Glamdring or the mighty Andùril of Aragorn. To the less imaginative eye, it might have looked like a short length of harmless metal pipe. 

Ed fearlessly scaled the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and triumphantly leapt onto the slide to make good his escape. Durin's Bane, however, had one last evil stroke to play and he caused one end of Ed's sword (the pipe) to stick fast in the ground at the foot of the slide. The other end, although blunt, could easily have skewered our little hero.

In the event, the intervention of his Angelus Dei diverted the weapon's mortal thrust. He sustained a superficial but nasty graze that was healed by Elfin lore at the Whittington Lothlôrien. D.G.

PS: The Tolkien films had, of course, not appeared at the time of Ed's tale of combat. The Lord of the Rings volumes had, however, been in the family a number of years.