I wonder if the Enemy has watchers too?  Small spirits who sit in the shadows and spy on the light?  Either they do, or else the Violence sent against Joanna was chosen for its truly perfect timing.  If I had not been extremely blessed, I would have lost her today.

At a particular moment this afternoon, Christy was out at the grocery store, while Mariah was working on a leak in the upstairs shower.  Lucas had taken his work and Joanna out into the sunshine beside the pool, setting up a small pen so that Joanna could nap in the grass.  He took a moment to run inside for something he’d forgotten, and no sooner had he slipped through the open door than one of the panels of Joanna’s pen wobbled and fell over.

The creature was quick, and brave, too, to dart right under my gaze.  Even blind I could not have missed it, its wings brushing against my side.  I snatched at the intruder, but it was already fleeing, a faint whining the only remnant.

And behind me, woken by the noise, Joanna got to her little feet and started to cry.  She, too, felt the cold of the Fallen, like a bad dream on the back of her neck.  With her fists covering her eyes, she started to run—and fell right into the pool.

I screamed aloud, but no one heard, and the tiny splash had not been enough to rise up to where her parents were in the big house.  Lucas had only been gone thirty seconds!  I panicked, thinking that I myself would have to get her out, knowing that I might not have the strength.

But there was someone else nearby—two of the boys from the neighborhood riding by on their bikes.

I threw my terror over the fence as if it were a javelin, and it landed in the chest of one of the boys, who slammed on his brakes so fast he nearly fell.  He had heard the splash, and he didn’t even consider that it wasn’t his fright that came after it.  Looking over the fence, he saw the ripples in the pool and the tiny figure, sinking.

“Fuck,” he said and spun his bike.

What happened next was a miracle.  Patrick, just thirteen and not known for his athletic ability, rode right up to the fence, used his bike as a ladder while it was still moving, and vaulted over and onto his feet.  He was screaming for the Lambeths as he ran, but he didn’t wait for them—he dove head-first into the shallow end of the pool and came up right underneath the child, springing up through the surface with her in his arms.

He was terrified the entire time, even after she coughed and started to wail against his shoulder.  I know, because I was there with him for every awful second.  I felt the straining of his young muscles, felt that pounding of his heart, and drove him to the limits of his strength and mine.  We did it together, he and I, when only an instant before we had been strangers.

Of course there was a frenzy of panic afterward—Lucas tumbling down the stairs, Mariah all but springing out of the window.  The young parents both burst into tears to find their daughter unharmed, and both of them hugged Patrick more than once.  Patrick stood there in his soaked sneakers, dumbfounded, unable to explain how he had gotten from his bike to here.  Then Joanna had to be comforted, and both of them were brought inside to be dried off, and then Christy came home, so the whole story had to be told again.  Through all the horror and the relief and the gratitude, I trailed behind, trembling from one wingtip to the other.  It had been such a very near thing.

Eventually, everyone having calmed down just a bit, Christy walked across the street with Patrick to his house.  His parents had already heard the story, as Patrick’s friend had seen the whole thing and had come to tell them of it, but they listened again in amazement as Christy told them what had happened.

“We owe your son absolutely everything,” she told them, her hand firm on Patrick’s shoulder.  “If he had hesitated even a second, my granddaughter would be dead.”  She paused a moment to clear her throat, but continued to speak with the same resolute honesty.  “I just wanted you to know what kind of man you are raising, and to thank you as well as him.  You should be very proud.”

Patrick’s ears burned, and he ducked his head, suddenly feeling guilty under such praise.  “I didn’t…” he mumbled.

The others didn’t hear him, but I could see what was troubling him.  Though he is too old to know an angel when he hears one, he had the confused sense that it hadn’t really been him who had saved Joanna.  In the heat of the moment, he’d felt my wings under his arms, my heart behind his own.

“Just because you did not do it on your own does not make it worthless,” I whispered to him.  “And just as you could not have done it without me, I certainly could not have done it without you.”  And I washed him with warmth, sinking the knowledge deep into his heart that he saved a precious life.  He can carry that with him for all of his days.

By the grace of God I managed to protect two futures today, rather than just one.  When I might have lost everything, instead I gained more than I expected.  How can I do anything but sing praise?  Even in these troubled times, miracles do happen.