Towers of Old Fire

That dawn, Polly rode in the basket rather than flying beside it. The balloon drifted low across the tops of the stone towers, close enough that she could lean out over the rim and run a wing along the smooth grey cap of rock sitting on top of one of them.

The pilot pointed toward the far horizon, where a white mountain stood alone in the morning light. "A very long time ago, that mountain was a volcano," he said. "Its ash fell across all of this land and hardened into the soft pale stone you can see below us."

Wind and rain then spent millions of years carving that soft stone into towers. Each tower kept a cap of harder, darker rock on its head, and the cap sheltered the softer stone underneath it, like a hat worn against the weather. People here call the towers fairy chimneys.

The stone is soft enough to cut when it is fresh, and it hardens once the air reaches it. So people carved doors, windows, staircases and entire rooms straight into the rock. Polly looked through one small carved window as the balloon floated past. Inside waited a cool, quiet room, cut by hand and still standing.