Beyond the tunnel, a four-lane highway stretched across a level plain. Veronica’s dad checked the rearview mirror for the cloud.

“Well, that was a little close,” he said. “Girls, you can use the iPad if you like. We’ll be in the Cloud Forest in no time.”

Now, on a wide, flat road, Veronica was happy to have something to take her mind off the drive. She and Maddy played on the iPad, building—of all things—their own virtual volcanoes in their favorite app, LavaCraft.

With each passing mile, the world became more normal, the sun brighter, the sky less full of menace, as if the hellish scene unfolding sixty miles to the west had never happened at all. Veronica and Maddy watched the birds land lazily on the wildflowers and chatted about the pearls they hoped to find on the far side of Mount Mystery.

For the first time since the Pass, the lava car slowed, then turned sharply at an unmarked intersection. The smooth highway transformed into bone-crunching dirt road.

Higher and higher the car climbed, bumping along the dusty detour to a ridgeline more than a thousand feet high. Another tunnel marked the end of the road—only this was no normal tunnel. A tree, towering to the heavens, stood in the center of the road. A hole, big enough to fit a tractor-trailer, cut through the bottom of its massive trunk. 

Veronica read the sign hanging over the gaping entrance:

Here Stands Cloud Forest
Planetary Monument
Soul of Dirt and Sky