What, exactly, is sand enhancing her into?
“How long have you known?” she finally asks Will. “About my mother?”
“I’ve always known,” he replies.
Her anger rises again. He’s always known. From the instant she mentioned it at the Odyssey, from the instant he brought her here for the first time.
“Then why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Why would I do that?” he says with a sigh. “So it could hurt you sooner? So you could run off and try to get revenge before you were ready?”
“So you waited, because then you could force me to dothat?” she snaps, nodding back toward the building.
He smiles thinly at her accusation. “No alchemist can be forced into a transmutation,” he says. “Your soul won’t come to you unless it wants to be called forth. There was a part of you that wanted to do it, Miss Lang. Just as you did last night.”
And he’s right, of course. She had reached out and aimed to hurt, had pictured the alchemists in the restaurant and what she wanted to do to them in retaliation. She had done it because the man deserved it, becausehe was friends with the fox and the fox had been the one who’d hurt her mother and nearly destroyed their lives. Because this is justice. And the feeling in her chest is so sure, so true, that she recoils from it in fright.
“You’ll get used to it.” Will looks at her. “I’ll show you how.”
Sam tries to nod, but her heart feels numb. She has crossed an irreversible line, destroying what is alive. Her body heaves, nursing the loss of a piece of her soul, and her stomach growls, famished.
“I don’t want to get used to it,” she says.
For a moment, Will walks in silence. There is a new light in his eyes, as if she has just become useful to him, as if he has suddenly seen something valuable in her. And in that instant, Sam finally processes his words.
I’ll show you how.
He is graduating her. He is taking her under his wing. He is going to train her himself.
“You were right, Miss Lang,” Will finally says. “You don’t belong in that class.”
Prosecutor:And what does it feel like?
Defendant:What, taking sand?
Prosecutor:Yes.
Defendant:I don’t know. Sorry. It feels like you are everything. Like you can do anything. Like you know yourself better than you have ever known yourself. It feels like you can hold the entire world in the palm of your hands.
Prosecutor:And you always want more?
Defendant:Always.
Excerpt from the transcript ofJohansson v. State of Massachusetts,2009
