There is a little cluster of trees, down by the river, that the older kids whisper is haunted. The most popular story is that a murderer managed to escape from Central's stern prisons and found his way there, only to hang himself on one of those trees to avoid being taken alive. To this day, the story ends, he haunts that place, seeking companions for his eternal damnation.

His mother says that the stories are just stories; they have no power unless he lets them. Auntie Pinako says a lot worse, though she tries not to use those words when Ed and the others are listening in. "The only ghosts that haunt Rizenbul," she'd say, puffing on her pipe, her round old face a strange blank mask, "are the ones that the people bring with them."

Even so, Al and Winry refuse to even go too near to that place; when Al goes to the river to sulk, he always stays far away from the clustered trees. The one time they strayed too close as it began to grow dark, Winry began to cry, and they were made to promise never to bring her back.

("Winry's such a crybaby," Ed tells Al, as they're getting ready for bed that night. "We'll just have to be careful next time.")

But Ed is now almost ten, and he's too old to believe in ghost stories. He isn't afraid, has never been afraid of that place. So when Nelly's brother, newly-returned from school in East City, dares him to spend the night within those trees, he readily agrees. Al frets, but promises to keep it a secret from their mother.

Ed goes armed with his mother's lantern and a light blanket. Summer has been gentle this year; he and Al and Winry have already camped out several nights under the stars without problem. The long thick grass tickles his bare ankles as he walks under the eye of a full moon.

When he's close enough to the trees to reach out and lay his palm against one, he hears the sound of an old woman crying. Surprised, he stops for a moment. The crying gets louder. Ed looks at the lantern he holds, takes a deep breath, and peeks through the gaps of the trees. It cannot be the ghost, he tells himself, because all of the stories say the ghost is a man.

When he peers inside, though, he sees only one figure, sitting with his back to the tree, directly across from him. The sound of crying stops when he looks through, and the figure tilts its head a little. He sees the other person is wearing a dark cloak, and all Ed sees is a straight nose and a chin that's somehow familiar.

"H-- hey." His voice cracks a little, but he forces himself to hold firm. He is almost ten; he is not afraid of ghosts. "Hey, who are you?"

The figure tilts its head at him. "I'm resting," it says in a man's voice, and like the line of his chin, his voice is, somehow, familiar. "It's late, and I'm tired. That's all right, isn't it?"

Ed frowns. "This isn't the best place to do that," he says. "You should go into the village and see if someone will let you stay there --"

"That'll take too long," the man says, and shrugs, waving a hand. "I'm just passing through." He smiles, and the smile is strange and sharp-edged in the moonlight, and his teeth look filed to points. "I'm looking for someone."

"Oh?" Ed hugs the blanket to his chest, taking a step back. There are more frightening things than ghosts, he knows; he remembers seeing, over his mother's shoulder, the dusty lines of marching soldiers, grimly returning from battle. "Like what?"

"It's not really something kids should know," the man says. Ed bristles.

"Yeah, and who're you calling so small and stupid that he's nothing more than a kid?! I --"

"I didn't go that far, you know," the man tells him. "It's a secret, though everyone knows about it."

"Like what?"

The figure leans forward, and picks up a stick from the ground. He stabs the tip into the damp ground, and draws himself a wide circle. In spite of himself, Ed scoots forward to try and get a better look.

The array looks like nothing he's ever seen before: it's complicated and the circle is spliced with lines, with S curves that spiral outside of the set boundaries. After a long moment, he can feel the beginnings of a headache throbbing in his skull, there behind his eyes.

"Like this," the man tells him. "The perfect unity of a human soul to a new body." He touches one hand to the array, and it sparks. Ed draws back instinctively.

"But," he says, "homunculus --"

"-- It's a doll with no heart --"

The man clicks his tongue, like a disapproving schoolteacher. "Not a homunculus," he corrects. "Second life. Eternal life. Alchemy should be able to do that sort of thing, don't you think?"

Ed hesitates. He can vaguely remember his father performing alchemy: little things, like transmuting the leaves and grass off their clothing into flowers, for his mother to wear at her wrist, pinned to her breast, in her hair. Some of the excess vegetables from her garden met the same fate. It's making life out of something that is technically dying. Second life.

There aren't any flowers in their house any more, except the ones he and Al will sometimes pick, coming home from being out all day.

"Alchemy's not perfect," he says, frowning. "It can't do something like that. The Principle of Equivalent Exchange --"

"Lead isn't worth the same as gold," the man says. "They're not even the same element, when you break them down. But alchemy can make one into the other, easy as drawing an array." He draws another S on his array; it looks like a nest of snakes, now, curling outwards from a central round eye. "But a homunculus, see, they're nothing more than golems made of flesh -- they're just vessels. They've no heart, and they've no humanity. There's a trick to being *human*. That's what I'm looking for."

Ed takes a step back, still holding both the blanket and the lantern tightly. He remembers Winry's crying face, when the news of her parents arrived. My mom and dad are dead, she'd cried, and he'd thought about homunculi, seeing Mister and Missus Rockbell in borrowed bodies, so that Winry could never say something like that again.

There's a trick to being human. Ed swallows hard, trying to clear his throat of a sudden lump. "That's ..."

"Well, then, what do you think?" The man leans back and folds his arms over his chest. "If you're so wise, you should have an opinion, right?"

He lifts his chin a little. "A homunculus is the closest alchemy can get to creating life. But it's supposed to be next to impossible to create them, because they're living creatures without souls -- they don't really exist except in theory --"

"Oho." The man laces his fingers together, looking thoughtful. "Very well said. Got that out of a book, did you?"

Ed scowls. "I didn't --"

"I heard there used to be a great alchemist that lived in this village," the man goes on, ignoring Ed. "He was living here, wasn't he?"

Cold rises in the pit of Ed's belly. You're certainly that man's sons. There are a thousand things he could say in answer to this; what comes to him is merely, "He's gone."

"Oh?" The man's mouth goes to a flat line for a moment. Distantly, Ed wonders if he has to run -- the expression reminds him of Den, the few times he's seen the dog get angry, and actually try to attack. "That's too bad. I was certain I could find him here."

"He's gone," Ed says again. "He left a long time ago."

Overhead, the moon is slowly beginning to sink; he guesses it to be about midnight, which is later than he's ever managed to stay up before -- though now he feels almost desperately awake, too alert to even think of sleeping. The man sighs, and then jabs his stick hard into the array he's drawn. "If you see him, please let him know that I was here."

"How do I do that?" Ed demands. "I don't even know who you are --"

"He'll know me," the man says with perfect confidence. "We ... go back a long way, see."

"Who are you?!" Ed backs up another step. He's ashamed to hear how his voice cracks; for a moment, he feels almost like an actual child, afraid and uncertain of his place. There's something strange in the way the man's mouth turns up at the corners: it's a smile, but it's not. "What do you want? What --"

"I already told you," the man says. "I'm searching for something. I thought I could find it here, but ..." He shrugs, and spreads his hands. "Possibly not. Still, if that man comes back ... "

The man stands: he's tall, and under his old-fashioned cloak his shoulders are broad, though the rest of his body tapers down into something lean and narrow. He's tall, too, and though it pains Ed to admit -- he's taller than Ed thinks he'll ever be. With an oddly flowing gait, he strolls forward, reaching up to pull the hood back from his face.

Ed sees the man's face for a moment, stark and stern in the moonlight; there are thick blocks of shadows under his cheekbones, and even in the bleaching light, his eyes are as brightly gold as Ed's own. And the whole thing looks familiar, like someone he should recognize. He reaches into his cloak, never breaking eye-contact with Ed, and pulls something out in his fist; with his free hand, he takes Ed's own and presses something against his palm. It's cold and smooth, and something about it makes his skin crawl.

"Take care, kid," he says, with an odd little smile. "I'll be seeing you."

Before Ed can says anything, he turns and he disappears into the woods. All he leaves behind is the scratched-out array in the mud, and the thing in Ed's hand -- he opens his fingers, and sees it's a river stone, polished smooth -- but the same array drawn in the mud is on its smooth surface. Ed pauses, staring at it, then kneels on the ground.

Some part of him expects a reaction to go off when he touches his fingers to the array. When nothing happens, he uses his fingers to scratch away some of the dirt, opening up a small hole in the ground. Into this, he drops the stone, blank side up, then presses the dirt back down as flat as he can over it. He reaches out and yanks up a handful of grass, which he scatters over the makeshift grave.

And then he gets to his feet and walks out of the trees and back to his house.

In the morning, he makes Al swear not to tell he came back early, and spends the rest of the day brooding by the window. Some part of him keeps expecting to see the man walk up the road to their house. When he's questioned, later, he swears he spent the whole night there, and Al loyally agrees that he never snuck home.

Al never asks what Ed saw that night; he's still barely eight and scared of ghosts. Ed says nothing, and keeps saying nothing, until he almost forgets.

It's not until years later he places that face.

And as he chokes on the blood welling up from his throat, he looks down into it, still barely half-familiar, and thinks, absurdly, you never found what you were looking for.