The Bandwagon of the 12

The whole 12/12/12 thing is apparently a pretty big deal, and apparently a lot of people are doing special things as celebration. One blogger I saw had the idea of posting the 12th page of her novel today. So I thought, why not do the same? Thus, here you go, a bit of the new edition of The Third Face.

“I've been ordered to do things differently today, boy,” said the interrogator, and he was gritting his teeth. “They're pushing the 'ways of the future' on us. I don't like it one bit. And if you want to complain, I can easily decide to have you executed, the way it ought to be done.”

The interrogator crossed his hands in a traditional sign of threatening. As he did Charos caught glance of the man's tattoos. Pious. Judgment.

Charos made a similar sign, but with his palms facing towards the interrogator. In this way it meant peace.

He looked again at his own tribal tattoos, placed there on the celebration of his birthdays—first the left on his eighth and then the right on his thirteenth. Every day he tried to fulfill the sense of honor he felt at their meaning: on his left arm was Pride, and on his right, Determination.

Well, today pride would certainly have to wait.

The man glared at him for a moment longer, then finally stood down—his hands rested again on the table. His eyes softened as an unspoken message passed between them: the sense of two comrades, paying what homage they could to their tribe's old ways, in a world disturbed by those from the outside.

“If it weren't for that damned boy Rasuke, I wouldn't have even been near that corpse,” Charos said. “The man was dead before I got there, you know. Even the kid told me he didn't know what happened, like he just woke up all of a sudden and it was over. Hah! I doubt that.”

The interrogator nodded. “I see. The child denies all of that now, though. Seems he doesn't want to open up any possibility that he could have done it. Which is curious, of course, because there was no reason for anyone to suspect him anyway.”

“The rocks,” Charos muttered.

“Yes. Now the doctors have confirmed that he was dead long before we caught up to you. So the superficial idea, the sight of you standing there holding up one of the rocks and dropping it, means very little.”

Charos thought for a minute. “There must be some explanation.”

“Of course. I cannot believe, any more than anyone else, that it was merely a landslide. It was too perfectly executed.”

Charos stared at the interrogator's arm, the one that said Pious. “Do you think maybe it could have been a spirit?”

The interrogator was silent for a long time. “I have suspected for a while that the spirits are trying to punish us for giving in to the ways of the new world, the outer lands that close in upon us. Many in our village seek to adapt to these changes. But I think that what Ephix would want, what Ius would want—what all the spirits of the world would want—is for us to stand our ground.”