Chapter 22: The Masked Man

At the Curtis meat shop, Sig worries whether the boys will survive Yock Island alone, but Izumi assures him that raw experience will teach alchemy's nature better than any book, describing the island as warm, well-stocked with game and plants, and free of dangerous beasts. In that same moment, young Edward and Alphonse are set upon by a feral masked man. Their clumsy fighting proves useless, so they flee into the woods and hide until dawn. Resolved to fend for themselves, the boys build traps and tools, though their squeamishness at killing small animals and their failure to catch fish nearly break them. When luck finally grants them a fish, the masked man attacks again, steals the meal, thrashes them, and claims the island as his own. For two grueling weeks they struggle with traps, meager fishing, useless plant experiments, and constant assaults.

Worn down by starvation and defeat, Al erupts, demanding what any of this has to do with alchemy. After another beating, Edward watches ants strip a dead cicada and weeps, seeing his own likely fate. When the masked man crouches over them and orders them to fight on, Ed insists he does not want to die but collapses in despair. The brothers wake to find that their attacker has lit a fire and cooked two large fish for them, and they eat gratefully with tears in their eyes. Renewed by the brush with death, they return to the daily grind, and over the next two weeks they learn to tell edible plants from poison, fish well, hunt with solemn respect, and hold off the masked man. In doing so they grasp that as humans they are only a tiny part of an immense flowing whole, that their bodies will one day break down to feed plants which feed animals which feed people, completing the cycle. Tapping into that flow to deconstruct and rebuild is the very heart of alchemy, the answer to Izumi's riddle.

On the thirtieth day Izumi returns by boat, and when the strengthened brothers answer her riddle correctly, she declares them her apprentices and promises warm beds and food back in Dublith. As they celebrate, the masked man leaps into their boat, earning Izumi's praise. She reveals he is Mason, her butcher-shop employee, whom she had asked to stay on the island and watch over them. When Al demands why she made him attack, Izumi explains the fights were meant to toughen them physically, then warns that their real training will be far harsher.

The Elrics endure a month of starvation and repeated attacks by a masked wild man on Yock Island, saved once from death when he unexpectedly feeds them. Through the ordeal they arrive at alchemy's central concept, the flow of the cosmos through deconstruction and reconstruction, and solve Izumi's riddle. She accepts them as apprentices and reveals the masked man was her employee Mason, planted to strengthen them before the true training begins.

The chapter reveals that Izumi's own alchemy apprenticeship took place on Mount Briggs, where she too was left alone for a month, much like the Elrics.