For the Love of the Fight

Milo swung his gleaming sword before him, fending off the swarms of snarling, grotesque monsters with mighty thrusts. He was a noble squire—no, a knight! —and he was the most skilled fighter in all the realms, the champion against evil, in whatever shape it may come.

A fanged goblin lunged from the depths of the dense pack of creatures, growling gutturally and stabbed its horrid, clawed hand into Milo’s face, somehow penetrating his immaculate armor. With a swift strike of his trusty blade, Milo fell the beast, watching in victory as it thumped to the ground on its diaper. The goblin started crying.

“Milo!” came the chiding call of his mom, striding through the mudroom-battleground towards the sobbing, pox-riddled fiend; Andy, his toddler brother. Sheepishly, Milo lowered his sword, resting its cardboard tip against the floor; the red wrapping paper along its length began to unfurl as he slackened his grip.

“Sorry, Mom,” Milo muttered.

“Don’t bother apologizing to me, Milo, apologize to your brother, you hit him right in the head!”

“Sorry, Andy. I didn’t mean to…” Milo patted his little brother on the shoulder. “Don’t cry, I said I’m sorry.” But Andy didn’t heed his brother’s instructions, his mushy, developing mind still reeling from the unexpected swat he had just received. His plump right cheek was a brilliant ruby red.

“You hurt him, Milo, sometimes ‘sorry’ isn’t enough. You can play knight all you want, honey, but you need to be more careful. You’re older than Andy is, that means you should protect him and protectors don’t hurt people, okay?”

“Okay, Mom. Sorry,” said Milo, his chin tucked against his chest and his gaze turned shamefully downwards.

Despite Mom’s soothing rocking and cooing words of comfort, Andy’s wails showed no signs of abating. She sighed and flicked her eyes to the door over Milo’s shoulder. “Just, go outside and play out there for a bit, okay, Milo?” She sounded tired.

“Okay,” Milo said and turned towards the door. After cinching the velcro tight on his light-up sneakers, he stepped outside.

He was sad that he had hurt Andy, he really hadn’t meant to. He didn’t like hurting people, especially not Andy, he was just a little baby still, not even two years old. But Milo was a big boy, almost seven already; he was old enough to do things like play knight and not get hurt doing it. But of course, he was always the one holding the safe end of the imaginary sword.

Milo loved playing knight, more than any of his other games, but he always felt sad when Andy started crying. He had never been able to reconcile those feelings with the joy he had for pretend-sword fighting, he didn’t understand how people could get hurt so easily—sword fighting was just so cool. The only thing cooler than normal sword fighting was lightsaber fighting and that’s just because the swords could glow.

Milo had left his wrapping paper tube inside but as he meandered across the lawn, thinking his deep thoughts, he spotted a magnificent stick discarded beneath the pine tree in front of his house. The stick was almost perfectly straight, marred only by the tiniest of wiggles in the bottom six inches of its length. It was about three feet long, almost as tall as Milo, and he found that the wiggly bottom section actually formed perfectly to his hand, his fingers settling comfortably around the curves. He brought it up before his face and examined it rapturously, as if he was a smith inspecting the rarest of steels. Although he still felt bad about his brother, it wasn’t bad enough to forgo the most perfect sword-stick Milo had ever found.

Gripping the wooden rod with both hands, Milo assumed a wide-legged stance, mimicking an amalgam of cartoons and movies he and his friends endlessly consumed. He whipped the stick—now, in his mind, a long, cross-hilted sword like the knights used—across his frame, imagining the trunk of the tree as an old-timey straw dummy. He struck the tree with gentle precision; he knew better than to put all his strength into a single hit, he couldn’t risk shattering such a wonderful find.

After a few strikes, however, Milo stopped, finding himself at a loss. Hitting a dummy was no fun, but Milo didn’t want to go too far; he didn’t want to get lost in the battle again. He really didn’t want to hurt anyone. He stood in the yard for a moment, the vaguely overcast day doing little to evaporate the sweat that had begun to build on his brow. Then, he remembered what his mom had said; she had called him a ‘protector.’ He thought that that was something like a knight, but the way his mom had said it made him think that maybe he had been wrong to imagine his brother as a goblin.

That gave Milo an idea: he could still play sword fighting, but he could do it for his brother. Regripping the stick in his hands, Milo moved his feet into a different stance, picturing the samurai and ninjas he had seen in the old black and white movies his dad liked to watch. Taking a deep breath, Milo raised the stick, now an angled, single edged samurai sword, and thrust it over his shoulder. No longer was he facing a single straw training dummy; now, he saw a vast hoard of shadowy, hooded figures approaching him, clearly aiming to siege and destroy his home. But not if Milo had anything to say about it.

With a brave cry and short, alternating slashes of his sword, Milo wadded amongst the attacking army, defending Andy, Mom and Dad (as well as their old, lazy dog, Barry). Left, right, forward and back, Milo danced a little dance of glee as he darted to and fro, making wooshing sounds with his mouth and mimicking slow-motion dodges of blades millimeters away from his nose.

It felt like only moments after he started playing that the battle shifted and morphed into a different paradigm. Suddenly, as he blinked, he realized he was no longer amidst an army of shadowy, blade-wielding warriors, but a crimson-lit phalanx of Dark Side Force users from Star Wars, Milo’s favorite universe. Last summer, he, his brother and his dad had watched all the movies; Milo had liked the middle three the most, the battles with the droids had been really exciting to watch.

Sith, each with a different, red lightsaber, surrounded him on all sides. Milo should’ve been scared, but he felt ready; the siege of shadowy ninjas had only been a warmup.

Drawing his stick close to his chest, his hands clasped around its hilt, he flicked the switch in his mind and its length rippled with a vibrant, electric blue. The hum of his lightsaber joined the choir of the Sith’s. “Um, hello there,” Milo said. The swarm of red blades attacked.

Milo resumed his dance, darting amongst the buzzing crimson laser swords, sliding his feet gracefully across the autumn dew-soaked lawn. He was in his domain; he fought for justice, the Jedi way (which Milo understood to consist of dressing in robes like the ones his mom wore after showering and talking about your feelings, which both his parents already encouraged,) and of course, he fought to protect his family. He would not let the evil space wizards hurt his mom, dad, brother or Barry, even if he didn’t fetch the ball when Milo threw it. The Sith didn’t have a chance or, so he thought.

As he ducked, dipped, dove and dodged the slashing, hacking red lightsabers, Milo started to doubt himself; there were just too many of them. He could only block so many strikes. At the beginning of the fight, he had thought himself a true master, but as his breath started coming in heavy pants and his arms began to numb from deflecting attack after attack, Milo had the gut-wrenching realization that he was still merely a Padawan; there was much he had left to learn.

Milo’s imagination had always been vivid, but never scary. He had never fought a foe he couldn’t vanquish; after all, he was the knight, he was the hero of the battle. Why then, was he losing? A blood-red, hissing blade found his thigh and Milo dropped, crying out in pain. There were just too many of them and he was alone. All alone. He had always fought by himself, for himself in the past but as he tried to protect his family against the Dark Side horde, he realized he could not do it alone. He could not win, he could not protect his home, alone.

The Sith closed in, their many glowing blades poised to deliver the final blow. Milo could barely raise his arms, his eyes stung with repressed tears, he felt so weak. As he picked out the yellow, cat-like eyes of one sneering red-skinned figure directly before him, Milo heard a new sound—distinct among the cacophony of humming lightsabers—echo out from behind him. It came from the direction of his home, the sound of a door opening and then closing. From the way the red-skinned Sith looked up, Milo could tell someone had come outside; and from the way the Dark Side user’s eyes widened in fear, he could tell that that someone had come to help.

Milo threw his gaze back and saw his little brother, Andy. No longer did he carry the boil-ridden visage of a stinky goblin; no, now he was clad in long, flowing brown robes, a hood pulled low over his eyes. He strode across the grass, his hands folded together inside his billowing sleeves. As he came to a halt at the perimeter of the clustered, frozen Sith, a deep stillness radiated from his diminutive frame. For a long moment, no one moved; the yard remained silent, as if a leaden mist had engulfed them all. Then, Andy spoke.

“Milo!” burbled his little brother excitedly.

“Andy!” Milo called back. He had an idea and, while the Sith were still distracted, summoned all his energy and brought his blue lightsaber—his once-in-a-lifetime perfect sword-stick—down over his knee. It snapped dryly in half.

“Andy, catch!” yelled Milo and tossed his toddler-brother half of the sword-stick.

The short length of wood clattered to the ground and with a tottering couple steps, Andy bent to pick it up from the grass; but not in Milo’s mind. He saw the still glowing half of his broken blue lightsaber soar through the air, straight into Andy’s palm. Then, in a matter of moments, pulled from thin air, a handle of an elegant, silvery design formed around the humming blade and Milo watched as his little brother wrapped his tiny sausage-like fingers around it and drew it close. Its sapphire luminescence lit up his chubby cheeks and twinkling, determined eyes. With a warbling warcry of, “Ahhwaahhwaaahhwaaa!” Andy charged forward and beat back the stunned Sith surrounding Milo. The big brother clambered to his feet and nodded his thanks to the little brother; then, side by side, their lightsabers held stoically against their chests, they attacked as one.

“How long have they been at it?” Asked Dad, sidling up next to Mom at the kitchen counter to join her in staring out the window at their two boys in the yard. They were both slashing and stabbing madly at the air with knobbly sticks; their biggest, Milo, pranced jerkily back and forth like a fencing marionette, his light-up sneakers pulsing blue, while little Andy toddled around wearing nothing but a onesie, diaper and a massive, toothless smile.

“Oh just a few minutes,” said Mom, “There was a little accident earlier but Milo apologized and included his brother just now without me telling him to.”

“Oh good, no one got hurt then?” Dad couldn’t take his eyes off the kids. A smile of his own was creeping across his cheeks; he recognized a few of the poses Milo seemed to be attempting to mimic from RotS and... was that a Kurosawa move?

“No, nothing serious,” Mom assured. She wondered whether she should’ve ignored Andy’s crying protests and put shoes on him anyways when he had insisted upon going out to play with his brother; he loved walking in the grass barefoot but the cones that fell from the pine tree out front could be awfully sharp.

Dad chuckled, “Still better than playing video games though, huh?” Mom smiled. Barry, their lackadaisical Lab, padded into the room behind them and slurped some water noisily from the bowl in the corner. The parents kept watching out the window as the kids continued playing in the yard, together.