Read Online The Guardian Stones by Eric Reed - Free Book Online

church, they were given biscuits to eat while their escort lectured them on rural life and proper behavior. Reggie paid no attention. He sat with the Finch brothers. The three whispered and snickered as they tried to decide what animal was ugly enough to resemble the lecturer, a middle-aged woman dressed as if for a funeral.
    A crow,” suggested Reggie.
    â€œNaw,” Mike said. “Crows is all shiny black, not dull like her. A vulture maybe.”
    â€œYou ain’t never seen a vulture,” snorted Len. “I know what she looks like. I seen some kid get hold of a cat once and beat it with a board and burn it. That’s what she looks like, an old, beat-up, burnt cat!”
    Reggie wanted to stay with the Finch brothers, but before long the evacuees were ushered into the street and lined up as if they’d joined the army.
    A handful of men—farmers, Reggie understood later—had come into the village for the first pick. Farming was important to the war effort and manpower in short supply. Len and Mike went off with a fat man with hardly any hair. When the farmers were done, Reggie was the only boy left behind older than a toddler. Even the lump of blubber with sticking plaster on his glasses had been chosen. Bert someone had called him, went with the Finch brothers.
    Then the Burnt Cat, as Reggie now thought of her, humiliated as he was, led the girls and young kids and Reggie, all carrying their suitcases and gas masks, from house to house. A woman would emerge from each and walk up and down the line, peering and ruffling hair and turning heads this way and that. Reggie felt like a vegetable at the market. And who would want a tomato with a worm hole? As soon as anyone saw Reggie’s leg brace they immediately looked away and didn’t glance in his direction again.
    Most of the older, stronger girls were chosen before the pretty ones.
    Finally even the crying toddler in threadbare, stained shorts was taken.
    Limping painfully by now, Reggie followed the Burnt Cat from door to door, meeting with one refusal after another. “Why would you billet children like this on us?” one woman scolded. “What do you expect of us? There’s a war on, you know.”
    They arrived at a single-story cottage that looked like a picture in the book of fairy tales Reggie had stolen from the library. He recalled the boy who had gone into that house had been baked into a pie or suffered some equally horrible fate. As the door swung open, Reggie hung back but the Cat got her claws into his shoulder and dragged him around in front of her.
    The woman who appeared in the doorway towered over the Cat. She was scrawny, with a mean face and wore her hair cut as short as a man’s.
    â€œI am sorry to have to ask—” the Cat began.
    â€œPolio,” the homely woman said, interrupting her. “Poor child.”
    â€œDo you suppose you—?”
    â€œI have retired from teaching, madam, but I will never retire from looking after the welfare of children. Come in, young man.”
    Reggie supposed he should have felt more grateful to Miss Radbone, as her name was. Perhaps he was an ungrateful little bugger like his old man always said. Not that he wasn’t grateful at all. Still, it would have been better if Miss Radbone hadn’t immediately shaved his head and burned his clothes. “We don’t want lice or fleas, do we?”
    Now, as he lay on the bank of the pond, the sun was beginning to burn Reggie’s bare scalp. Where had the frogs gone? He surely couldn’t have caught them all. Perhaps they weren’t as dull-witted as he supposed.
    As usual, as soon as he was sure the hunt would be futile, he spotted the green periscope of a head push up a scrap of pond scum. Two bulging eyes, half submerged, goggled at him.
    Reggie’s hand shot out into the water. The frog instantly vanished. He didn’t aim for where he saw the frog, but where he guessed it would