Into the Tiger's Hour

Chapter One

She is seventeen and restless. This is nothing new--teenagers, after all, are often restless as they chafe beneath the confines of childhood and yearn for the perceived freedom of adulthood--but for her, it is especially confining.

Harsh words have had little place in her life, and the few people who've offered them, she's sought their company. Actively tried to make them a part of her day and often turned their early displeasure or superficial scorn into enjoyment. Not many people dislike her, and those that genuinely do aren't given the chance to make their feelings known.

She has always been beautiful, but it was the beauty of a delicate figurine that no one dares touch, save on the rare Sundays when dusting simply must be done. And, because of that, she has missed much of what a more mundane beauty might have given her--casual flirtations, innocent kisses exchanged as a child, unpleasant catcalling, frightening mishandling by strangers. She doesn't know what she's missed, save through what she's heard from others and read in books.

But even that has been closely guarded. Her reading is as supervised as her daily routine, as is her choice in music, her taste in films and her pleasurable outings. Gardening was encouraged from an early age, as was her initial interest in animals. She is kept from most harsh reality and is the center of a well-meaning conspiracy to keep her, for lack of a better word, safe.

Everything has been provided for her from the moment she first arrived in the city. Wealth is something she's come to take for granted, as she has little concept of what poverty is or what it might be like. Even her education has been carefully regimented, and the recent two years of public schooling--a hard-fought battle, that, and only won after much consultation with the staff of the scrutinized school eventually approved--has not done much to change her way of thinking.

There is a streak of meanness in her. Even she couldn't name where it comes from, only that there are times when she feels like lashing out at whoever is available, and she knows that the consequences for such things are light. If things were different, her cantankerous moments might be tempered to a more mundane rebellion--dyeing her hair in strange colors, experimenting with alcohol in the company of peers, staying out too late on school nights.

But such things are denied to her and always have been; she has no concept of what is considered normal. Only what her own life is and has been. And because she loves the father that has provided everything for her, loves him down to the polished jet of his skin, so wildly different from her own pale, unblemished flesh, she obeys the gentle dictatorship that has given her every rule that keeps her life so strictly regimented.

She is named for the goddess of the rainbow, a charming hint of symbolism that was explained to her from a young age--she is the beauty after the storm, a treasure that was costly and all the more valuable for what was endured to obtain her. Adopted, she believes this is what it refers to.

Her name is Iris Foster, and she is seventeen and restless and living with lies.