Chapter 15
Finger led Colin out, carrying the laptop under one arm. There was no music in the chasm, the frescoes stayed on the walls,
and Finger effortlessly hoisted Colin up through the crevasse beneath that great dragon’s egg of a boulder. Colin wasn’t worried
about being torn in two. He still had the Cree hi-thrower.
Finger did not follow him above but peered through the crack under the rock. When Colin looked back he was the homeless derelict
again, with the stringy blond hair and patchy beard.
“Finger will tell you a secret, Colin Wren, if you would like to know it.”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t need that vial. You could’ve collected the blood leakin’ out of your dear friend as he lie dying. That was the
blood of a blessed man. We could smell it on him. And do you know why he wept at the very end? It wasn’t for himself and it
wasn’t for his beloved on a far coast neither.”
Colin waited for it.
“He wept for you,” Finger said, and laughed. “For you, Colin Wren.”
Colin felt cold and tired. The small of his back was sore and wet with blood. His knee felt as if it had swollen to twice
its previous size. He was all talked out. “Goodbye, Finger.”
“You’ll be seeing lots like Stu Finger online soon,” Finger said. “The world you’re making—that world of thought that exists
on the computer screens—that world belongs to us. To the trolls. And we thank ye for it, Colin Wren! We thank ye wery much!”
He was still laughing as Colin made his way across the clearing and back into the thorns and twisted whips of the briars.