In the land of Amestris, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst if the three of you go out to seek your fortunes.
Riza Hawkeye was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success! Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies' hat shop in the prosperous town of Resembool. True, her own mother died when Riza was two years old and her sister Winry was one year old, and their father married one of his shop assistants, a serious and pretty woman called Sarah. Sarah shortly gave birth to the third sister, May. This ought to have made Riza and Winry into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up to be very pretty indeed, though Winry was the one said to be the most beautiful. Sarah treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor May in the least.
Mr. Hawkeye was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town. Riza was the most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. This was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her sisters and grooming May to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Sarah was always busy in the shop, Riza was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of hair-pulling and screaming between those younger two. Winry was by no means resigned to being the the one who, next to Riza, was bound to be the least successful.
"It's not fair!" Winry would shout. "Why should May have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!"
To which May always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.
Then Riza would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with her needle. As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one cobalt blue outfit she made for Winry, the May Day before this story really begins, which Sarah said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shops in Central City.
About this time, everyone began talking about the Witch of Xerxes again. It was said that the Witch had threatened the life of the King's daughter and that the King had commanded his personal magician, Wizard Elric, to go into the Waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard Elric had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had got himself killed by her.
So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above Resembool, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly sure the Witch had moved out of Xerxes again and was about to terrorize the country the way she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly at night. What made it all the scarier was the castle did not stay in the same place. And by that, it most definitely moved around. Sometimes a distant black shadow to the east, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the northwest, and sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the fields only just outside the town. For a while, people were convinced that it would come all the way down to the city and there was talk of sending to the king for help.
But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Roy. Wizard Roy was bad enough. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some said her ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Riza, Winry, and May, along with all the other girls in Resembool, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them. They wondered what use Wizard Roy found for all the souls he collected.
They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Hawkeye died suddenly just as Riza was ready to leave school for good. It appeared that Mr. Hawkeye had been altogether too proud of his daughters, for the school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Sarah sat the girls down in the parlor and explained the situation.
"You'll all have to leave school, I'm afraid," she said. "I've been doing sums back and front and sideways, and the only way I can see to keep the shop running and take care of the three of you is to see you all settled in a promising apprenticeship somewhere. I can't have you all in the shop, I can't afford it. So this is what I've decided. Winry first…"
Winry looked up, glowing with golden-haired beauty that even sorrow and black clothes could not hide. "I want to go on learning," she said.
"So you shall," Sarah replied. "I've arranged for you to work for Izumi Curtis, the local butcher."
"The butcher?" Winry raised an eyebrow, "isn't she a witch?"
"Yes, a lovely woman with clients ranging all the way to Dublith." Sarah turned to May. "You, my dear, shall be apprenticed to Garfiel's Automail, away in Rush Valley. They've a named for treating their employees like kings and queens and I'm sure you'll be very happy there."
May laughed in a way that showed she was not at all pleased. "Well, isn't it a good thing I like helping people!"
Sarah seemed relieved. Both Winry and May could be uncomfortably strong minded at times. Riza thought that her stepmother had managed things very neatly, settling Winry down with a promising apprenticeship where she would learn useful skills and find a nice boy to marry, and May in another city, where she was sure to find a way to seek her fortune. As for Riza herself, she had no doubt what was coming. It did not surprise her when Sarah said, "Now, Riza dear, it seem only right and just that you should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So I've decided to take you on as an apprentice myself, to give you a chance to learn the trade. How do you feel about that?"
Riza could hardly say that she felt resigned to the hat trade, so she smiled and thanked her stepmother.
"So that's settled then!" Sarah said.
The next day Riza helped May pack her clothes in a box, and the morning after they saw her off on the carrier's cart, looking small and upright and nervous. For the way to Rush Valley, where Garfiel's Automail was, lay over the hills past Wizard Roy's moving castle. May was understandably scared.
"She'll be alright," said Winry. Winry refused all help with packing. When the cart and May were out of sight, she crammed all her possessions into a pillowcase and paid the neighbor's boot boy six cenz to wheel it in a wheelbarrow to Curtis' in Market Square. Winry marched behind the wheelbarrow looking more cheerful than Riza expected. Indeed, she had the air of shaking the dust if the hat shop off her feet.
The boot boy brought back a scribbled note from Winry, saying she had put her things in the girls dormitory and the Curtis' seemed quite fun if not a little frightening. A week later the carrier brought a letter from May to say that she had arrived safely and that Mr Garfiel was "a great dear and fond of his customers." That was all Riza heard of her sisters for quite a while, because she started her own apprenticeship the day they had left.
Riza, of course, knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a tiny child, she had run in and out of the big workshop across the yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowers and fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who worked there. Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Rebecca, the only remaining shop assistant. She knew the customers who bought hats and the man who drove the cart out to the country to fetch raw straw hats into the shop to be shaped on the books in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you and felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Sarah could teach her, except perhaps the best way to sell a hat.
"You lead up to the right hat, dear," Sarah said. "Show them the ones that aren't quite right, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on."
In fact, Riza did not sell hats very much. She spent most of her time in the back of the shop trimming the hats. She was good at it. But she felt isolated and a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much fun, and Rebecca only talked about the soldier she was going to marry the week after May Day.
The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Riza sat in her alcove and stitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables, and that Wizard Roy's castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper… The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Roy, but Riza gathered that he had caught a girl down in the valley last month.
"Bluebeard!" said the whispers, and then became voices again to say that Jane Farrier was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That was one who would never attract even the Wizard Roy, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper of the Witch of Xerxes. Riza began to feel that Wizard Roy and the Witch of Xerxes should get together.
"They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match," she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.
But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all about Winry. The Curtis's, it seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying cuts of meat and demanding to be served by Winry. She had had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the Mayor's son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she was too young to make up her mind yet.
"I call that sensible of her," Riza said to a bonnet she was pleating silk into.
Sarah was pleased with this news. "I knew she'd be all right!" she said happily. It occured to Riza that Sarah was glad Winry was no longer around.
"Winry's bad for custom," she told the bonnet. "She would even make you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing.
Riza talked to the hats more and more as time went by. There was no one else much to talk to. Sarah was out bargaining and whipping up customers and Rebecca was busy serving everyone and talking about her wedding plans. Riza got into the habit of telling each hat what the body under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.
"You have mysterious allure," she told the one that was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide creamy hat with roses she said, "You are going to have to marry money!" and to a caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather, she said, "You are as young as a spring leaf." and so on.
A week before May Day, while sewing one night, Riza admitted to herself that her life was rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake. The gray dress she was wearing did not suit her, especially with her eyes red rimmed form sewing.
"I look like an old maid," Riza exclaimed. Not that she wanted to run off with a soldier or even wanted half the town offering her marriage. But she wanted to do something--she wasn't sure what--that had a bit more interest in it than trimming hats. She thought she would find time to got into town and talk to Winry.
But she did not go. She kept finding excuses. Oh, the shop was too busy, it looked like rain, or the Wizard's castle looked especially threatening that day… Anyway, every day she was finding it harder and harder just to leave the house. Finally, Riza swore she would go se Winry on May Day.
May Day came. Merry making filled the streets from dawn onward. Riza hurried to finish the hats. She sang as she worked. When she finally was able to put on a neat gray shawl and go out into the street, she felt very overwhelmed. She suspected it had something to do with living like an invalid for so long. She stayed close to the buildings and crept along, trying to avoid being trodden on. When there came a series of violent bangs overhead, Riza nearly jumped out of her skin. She looked up and noticed blue flames shooting out of all four turrets of Wizard Roy's castle, which was down just above the cliffs. The wizard must be offended by May Day. Or perhaps he was trying to participate in his own fashion. Riza was too terrified to care.
"What made me think I wanted life to be interesting?" She panted as she sped up into a run. "I'd be far too scared. That's what comes of being the eldest of three."
When she reached the main square, it was even worse, if that was possible. Young men swaggered beerily to and fro, calling loud remarks and accosting girls. The girls strolled in fine pairs, ready to be accosted. This was perfectly normal for May Day, but Riza was afraid of that, too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume decided to accost her, too, Riza shrank into a doorway and attempted to hide.
The young man looked at her in surprise. "It's all right, you little gray bird," he said, laughing rather pityingly, "I only want to buy you a drink. Don't look so scared."
The pitying look made Riza wish the ground would open up and swallow her. He was so handsome, too, despite a bit of a baby face, with elaborate blonde hair. His sleeves trailed longer than any other in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. "Oh, no thank you, if you please, sir," Riza stammered. "I-I'm on my way to see my sister."
"Then by all means, do so," laughed this advanced young man. "Who am I to keep a pretty lady from her sister?" and he stepped back to let her by.
Riza found Winry sitting at one of the tables outside a small cafe, surrounded by many admirers, her blonde hair and blue eyes shining in the sunlight. It took a few tries for Winry to notice Riza, but once she did, she shooed her posse off. They wandered away good-naturedly, heading to get treats, allowing Riza sit down across from her sister, panting rather. "Oh, Winry! I'm so glad to see you!" she gasped.
Winry pushed a glass of cool water into her hands. "Yes, and I'm glad you're sitting down. You see, I'm not Winry. I'm May."