Chapter 1

Tiger was the first who saw the dark glider whirling around in the pale of night. He had peeked behind the sleep-shades, as was his occasional custom, while all the others in the Great School of the Outside were fast asleep. Usually when he did this, he just saw clouds; sometimes clouds in interesting shapes, like faraway mountains or the outlines of a dragon's mouth. Mostly, they were the same lumps of water repeating in the same familiar patterns over and over again. But on rare occasions, if he was lucky, he would catch a secret glimpse of something extraordinary.

Tonight* was one of those nights.

Like the great cat from which he took his name, he had hunted this object for quite some time. It did not appear often, sometimes going weeks or even months between its flights. Yet here it was once more, and Tiger was enraptured, his heart pounded with forbidden thrill, for to look behind the sleep shades was strictly forbidden. Tiger's dorm mates slept like drunken men and Teachers did not by custom come into the rooms of Students--unless called, of course. The risk, however, was still there, and the punishments would be severe. Still, night after night,Tiger would sacrifice his sleep for the chance to look behind the veil of black cloth for but a chance to see the glider.

It seems a bit silly to risk so much to gain so little. And why? For a glimpse of a flying speck?

In truth, though he did not have the words for it, Tiger was a starving boy. Not for food, but for experience. There was not a day when Tiger did not remember living in the Tower, eating the same meals, drinking the same flat water harvested from the sky. Beyond the single floor allowed to him and his Classmates, there was nowhere else to go. Tiger could deal with the same foods, and drink the same water. But Tiger hungered for new things; things to see and hear and feel and experience and discover. Every day, for all of his life, Tiger looked at the same people, sat in the same chairs (they were assigned), stared at the same uncolored walls, walked the same pathways, and dreamt the same boring, colorless dreams. Each day was like the last, an it would be like the next, every day for the rest of his life.

Until one day, when he saw the glider.

Now he had become a boy obsessed, checking furtively and secretly each night that he might see it again. In the endless brightness when all the School should have been asleep, the glider would swoop around and through a forest of giant columns not too far from Tiger's dorm. There Tiger could watch the beautiful creature or contraption whirl and twirl through columns and clouds, playing with the wind. And then, when it had its fill, it would gather up enormous speed and tear its way through, shooting out like a dart into the empty sky.

And on those nights, Tiger would dream of a lark ascending, its brown feathers pushing forward into the brightest blue sky that he had ever seen.

For a boy who did not know what a 'lark' was until he researched it in the Great Library, or who lived beneath a pall of perpetual grey, the colors alone were enough to break all the rules.

Now the glider had returned, whirling its way around and around. It had been flying through the columns for nearly fifteen minutes and Tiger watched, mesmerized, as the little thing traveled so light and free where all other people could not, gathering great speed. Now it rounded the last column, and soon would burst forth. Perhaps towards him. Perhaps at the right angle and just in the right light. It was such a little, harmless rule to break. All the others were still asleep and the window shade was only cracked just ever so slightly, just enough so he could get a glimpse of the empty world outside. His heart pounded in his neck. He gripped his bedsheets with sweaty palms, his mouth aching with anticipation.

The glider disappeared from his view. Did it go some other way? He peeked behind the shade just a little more

WHOOOOSH!

For a moment the entire room was blotted out in shadow. Tiger jumped away from the window, nearly out of his bed, heart pounding from the shock. But in the brief moment that his eyes were turned towards the emptiness outside, he got just the briefest, closest glimpse of…

"…a shoe," Tiger said softly, collapsing on to his pillow.

For a long time, Tiger wondered about the nature of the dark glider. Initially he thought it may be a bird—he had read about birds in his biology classes, although he had never seen one. Birds could fly, or so he had been told. But as far as he knew, birds could not wear shoes.

Only Students and Teachers wore shoes. But Students and Teachers cannot fly. He laid back down on his bed, hands folded behind his head, blinking and muttering to himself.

"It wears shoes…how can it wear shoes?"

Without warning, something large and soft hit him in the face—he reeled back as he gripped the offending object; a pillow, stained nearly yellow with years of use and too-infrequent washing. From behind the pillow, its owner began to complain: "Ai ya! If you're gonna dream about shoes, you can do it silently, OK?"

Tiger threw the pillow back in the offending direction of his dorm mate, Youhan, who snatched the pillow from the air. Like an armadillo (another animal he had learned about but that he had never seen), he jumped himself back into bed, wrapping himself into as tight of a blanket-ball as he possibly could.

"Still too early and you woke me up! Go trade for shoes if you want to dream about them so loud."

"I'm not dreaming about shoes!" said Tiger defensively. "I just—I saw something Outside."

The word left his mouth before he could stop it. Outside.

Tiger squinted his eyes shut, cursing himself for his indiscretion. The entire room became unbearably silent; both Youhan and Tiger did not dare to so much as breathe—Youhan from shock, Tiger from fear.

It was early, but not that early. If someone had heard…

Youhan said nothing for a while. Or even made a sound. Then, the quiet sounds of rustling covers shot up out of his bedroll, his wide in in the darkness. All thought of sleep vanished from his face. Youhuan looked around the room—nobody else in the dorm was awake, or if they were, they gave no sign of it. Then Youhan, just as slowly, turned his face back to Tiger. An unspoken moment passed between them—Tiger's lapse of sense in the early morning now put them in danger. They listened for the sleep-breath of their four dorm-mates, each posted in a bunk-bed on other sides of the room. Two of them at least were snoring, and the gentle saw of their breath falling in and out of sync with each other. Two others, were either deep in sleep…or listening.

"Sounds like a bad dream," Youhan said carefully. "You should be more careful what you dream, , you'll cause a panic if you're not careful."

Tiger stared ahead towards an empty spot on the wall.

"What did you see?" Youhan asked.

"I don't know," said Tiger, giving in to a sudden urge to lie. "Maybe it was just a dark cloud or something.

Youhan groaned, slamming his head down on his bed. "'A cloud' he says….you know, maybe there's a reason why the Teachers don't want us looking—" he stopped himself. "Look, I don't care that what you do, but you almost just gave me a heart attack!"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," sighed Youhan. "But maybe give the Outside a rest for a week or two--at least until the Teachers calm down. They're already so nervous already--"

"I just want to look!" Tiger said a bit more defensively than he intended. "It's not like I'm hurting anyone."

Youhan sat up in his bed, rubbing at his head. "Ai ya..." he began, " ...all the Teachers say the Outside is dangerous and that weird things happen out there--especially when we are sleeping. And you know what? It's probably not true. Personally, I think they're just saying things to make us get more sleep. When I look—yes, even I look sometimes, but this isn't about me—you know what I see? Clouds. Everything is clouds. Big clouds, small clouds, clouds shaped like schoolbooks, clouds shaped like people. Outside has everything that could ever exist, as long as it's a cloud. But every time the Teachers catch us looking outside by ourselves, they panic! And when they panic, we all get punished. I don't know why they're so afraid--maybe they tell us so many stories that they believe them now. But really, Tiger, it's not worth making them panic to look at a bunch of clouds.

A groan came from one of the other bunkbeds. "Shut up!" they said, "It's too early for stupid talk."

"You shut up!" hissed Tiger.

But the complains only rose into a chorus, growing so much that even Tiger had to agree. He laid back on his bed, feeling hurt, when Youhan had one more thing to say:

"Just go back to sleep, Tiger! Don't talk anymore about Outside things!"

Tiger did his best to shut the window blinds, and Youhan curled back into his bed and to be asleep—not that it would matter, as it would soon be time to wake anyway. A crack of the Outside light dripped in through a break in the curtain, and remembering his promise. He said that he would not talk about the Outside—and he would honor his promise. But it would not hurt to look one more time.

Tiger peeked behind the curtain and watched a patch of faraway clouds spin and crackle, darkening with unspent thunder.

*Though the Outside has no sun, and therefore no day or night, these words still remain in the language for times of work and rest. It is a curious linguistic quirk, but one little examined by the people of the Outside, for such questions arouse in them an unexplainable, powerful discomfort;