The Finger of Fire

Before any of this happened, the rock had no holy name. People called it Mont Tombe — the Mound of the Dead. Old folk said it marked the passage between this world and whatever waits beyond. The tides in that bay moved, as Victor Hugo would later write, as swiftly as a galloping horse. The sands could swallow a grown man to the waist, and the sea could cut off your retreat before you knew you were trapped. Only hermits lived there, half-starved men fed by a priest from the village of Astériac, who sent bread and supplies on the back of a donkey.