Summary:
At the Curtis butcher shop in Dublith, Sig asks Izumi if Elric’s boys will be okay on Yock Island by themselves. Izumi replies that this kind of direct experience will serve to teach them the true nature of alchemy better than any text, and quells her husband’s concerns by stating that Yock is perfectly safe with its warm climate, abundant wildlife and vegetation, and lack of wild animals . .Just then, however, young Edward and Alphonse find themselves under attack by a strangely bestial masked wild man. Finding their own meager attempts to fight ineffective, the boys flee into the dense forest and hide in terror until morning. Realizing that they were on their own for the next month, the Elrics decided to fend for themselves and make traps and tools the next day to catch their own meat. However, the initial discomfort of slaughtering small animals and the inability to catch any fish drives them to despair. And when their luck changes and allows them to catch a fish for dinner, they are once again attacked by a masked man who steals their food and beats them both up, declaring that the island belongs to him alone. In the morning, still determined to survive the trial and learn alchemy, the boys prepare more thoroughly for their long stay. They make camp and spend the next two weeks struggling with game traps, failing to catch enough fish, unsuccessfully experimenting with local vegetation, and fending off frequent attacks by a masked man. But two weeks of bare wilderness, near-starvation, and losing skirmishes bring the brothers close to their breaking point. Fearing a hard death at such a young age, Al angrily demands what this toil has to do with learning alchemy. After another attack leaves the boys battered and bruised from their hunger, Edward spots a dead cicada being dissected and devoured by ants, pouncing and tearing as he realizes that the insects’ fate may soon be his own. The masked man crouches over them and demands that they get up and continue fighting, but although Edward claims he doesn’t want to die, he is too weak to move and passes out in despair. When the boys wake up, they are shocked to find that the masked man has built a fire and cooked two large fish for them to eat. Desperate and hungry, they accept food with tears of gratitude.Restored by their encounter with death, the boys return to their daily work. Over the next two weeks, they put their experience to good use, distinguishing between edible and inedible plants, fishing successfully, hunting game with reverential fortitude, and vigorously fending off further attacks from the masked man, all the while understanding that as humans they were but a tiny and insignificant part of a vast and flowing universe that itself consists entirely of minute and insignificant parts. Like cicadas, their bodies are destined to decompose and serve as nutrients for plants, which then feed animals, which in turn feed humans, completing the cycle. Understanding this cyclical system and the way it flows, the Elrics realize the answer to Izumi’s riddle and that tapping into this massive current to deconstruct and reconstruct is a concept at the heart of alchemy itself.Izumi returns by ship on the thirtieth day, and when the boys – physically and mentally strengthened by their ordeal – correctly answer her riddle, she announces that they are to be her apprentices from that day forward, and that warm beds and food await them. Dublith. While the boys are rejoicing, a masked man jumps out of the forest and lands in their boat, earning some praise from Izumi, who explains that the masked man is Mason, her butcher’s employee, and that she should have asked him to stay on the island and watched over them. Al demands to know why she made him attack, and Izumi replies that the skirmishes were meant to make them physically stronger, before stating that their “real training” will be much more rigorous.