Free City of Hawks by Gary Gygax Page B

opened the box and found it empty-no food, no coins, nothing. Frowning at the container, she had growled, “Who would play such a bad trick on old Leena?”
    Then, to her amazement, the bottom of the box seemed to disappear, revealing some items beneath it-but still inside the container! She reached in carefully and withdrew several sheets of parchment. Some of them contained writing she couldn’t read and didn’t care about anyway; on other scraps there were pictures of people, and Leena was immediately drawn to one of these portraits in particular.
    It was a picture of a girl. Leena wondered if she was a princess. After all, princesses had their pictures drawn, didn’t they? “Not like this,” she said aloud. “How do you know?!” The response was cross.
    The ink markings on the scrap were carefully drawn, and the detail showed a young and pretty face, a face without lines and wrinkles, framed by long, flowing hair. “I wish I were that lady!” she said, continuing to converse with herself. “You will be, silly girl, but it takes a long time to grow young and pretty…,” Tears made marks on the leathery cheeks of the crone, washing away the dust and grime of Old City’s slums.
    “I didn’t wait for so long when I grew ancient and ugly!” she sobbed. Then a thick veil came over her thoughts. Leena toppled over onto her heaped rags and slept, still clutching the drawing of the beautiful girl. At the bottom was written a word, but only the first two letters-“ME”-were legible. Below that pair of letters was written the number “100”. Perhaps, the crazy old hag imagined, she would become like the drawing when she reached a hundred years old, or a hundred years from now…
     
    ***
     
    Finding wood or anything else to use as fuel was no easy task. Old City was a vast place to the little boy. He didn’t dare venture very far from his home. Even though that location changed every few months, he soon exhausted all the ready sources within a quarter-mile of where he and Leena lived at the moment. This was now the case. He could find not even any dried horse-apples to use for fuel, so it was time to begin exploring some of the dark and dangerous old buildings on the fringe of his territory.
    “Hey, sonny!”
    The boy nearly jumped a foot at that, and he began running away from the sound immediately. A hand grabbed his garment, which was merely an old sack converted into a one-piece outfit.
    “Don’t you remember me?” The voice was rough but bore no hint of menace or threat of punishment.
    The urchin gathered his courage and turned his narrow face toward the voice. “Oh,” he finally managed to say.
    The big, bearded face split into a friendly grin. “A clever lad like you can say more than that. I’ll give you a little something to help you speak-here,” the man said, producing an apple. “Try eating that up, and I’ll bet you’ll be able to say a whole lot more after it’s inside. It’s a magic apple, you know.”
    The lad didn’t care if it was magical or otherwise. He was always, always hungry. He grabbed the little red sphere and bit into it without a word to the man. Eat it up first, then see what happens afterward. The fruit was soon gone, core and seeds included.
    “Well?”
    “Gotta nuther one?” the grubby boy asked seriously through the last mouthful.
    The fellow took him gently by the shoulder, smiling and chuckling. “That and more, lad. My place is just there,” he informed the waif. “Let’s you and I go there for a bit. You can eat all you want, and I’ll just talk a bit-sort of fill in the gaps until you’re ready to take over. Sound all right?”
    The man was big, much bigger than Leena, so undoubtedly he could hit very hard. His laugh was nice, though, not like the old hag’s. Besides, this was the same man who had saved him from a pair of bigger boys who had been pummeling him just a couple of days ago-and so far the two hadn’t come back to beat him up again. The