Ed grimaces. "We... I decided we were gonna bring mom back to life."

"There's something you gotta understand about alchemy: even though we can do pretty much anything we want as long as we obey the Law of Equivalent Exchange—conservation of mass and all that—there are some things we just don't do. Transmuting human beings is one of those, and there's a good reason for it: most people who try don't survive. So it's taboo.

"And we knew that. Every time it came up in one of Dad's books, there was always something about how very, very bad it was. Illegal, even. I barreled ahead anyway."