Rose and Red

On the fifth morning the balloon drifted across valleys of pink and red stone. The first light of the day struck the rock and set it glowing like the inside of a rose, and even the pigeons wheeling below them came up pink where the light caught their backs.

"A balloon has no wheel, and no engine that turns it," the pilot said. "We steer with the winds themselves. The low winds run one way, the high winds run another, and often there is a third somewhere in between doing something else again. So we climb, or we let ourselves sink, until we find the one that happens to be going our way." It struck Polly as a strange and rather beautiful way to travel, arriving by agreement rather than by force.

He let the balloon settle slowly down into the red valley. The stone walls rose close on either side of the basket, warm with reflected light. Polly stood on the rim in the narrow gap between the great curve of the envelope above her and the glowing rock below, and for a while nobody said anything at all.

Then they climbed, back up into the wide air above the land. Far off, a village stood clustered around one enormous outcrop of rock riddled from base to summit with carved rooms and windows. "Uçhisar," said the pilot. "The old castle rock. Stand on the top of that and you can see this entire country spread out in front of you."