The Girl of Ink & Stars

1
They say the day the Governor arrived, the ravens did too. All the smaller birds flew backward into the sea, and that is why there are no songbirds on Joya. Only huge, ragged ravens. I’d watch them perch on the rooftops like omens, and try to squint them into the chaffinches and goldcrests Da drew from memory. If I imagined hard enough, I could al- most hear them singing.
“Why did the songbirds leave, Da?” I’d ask.
“Because they could, Isabella.”
“And the wolves? The deer?”
Da’s face would darken. “Seems the sea was better than what they were running from.”
Da would tell me another story then, about the girl- warrior Arinta, or Joya’s mythical past as a floating island, and refuse to say more about the wolves and the backward birds. But I kept asking, until the day came when I found my own answers.
The morning it began was like any other.
I woke in my narrow bed, sunrise just starting to brighten the mud walls of my room. The smell of burnt porridge hung on the air. Da must have been up for hours, as it took a long time for the fire to heat the heavy clay pot. I could hear Miss La, our hen, scratching about outside my room, seeking out crumbs. She was twelve years old, same as me, but even though it’s young for a person, it’s very, very old for a chicken. Her feathers were gray, her mood was black, and even our cat, Pep, was scared of her.
My tummy rumbled as I stretched out my arms. Pep was sprawled across my legs, and he yowled loudly as I sat up.
“You awake, Isabella?” Da called from the kitchen.
“Morning, Da.”
“Porridge is ready. A little overready, in fact…”
“Coming!” I eased my legs out and smoothed the cat’s rough fur where it had ruffled in the night. “Sorry, Pep.”
He purred and closed his green eyes.
I washed my face in the basin by the window and stuck a tongue out at the reflection in the polished metal above Gabo’s bed. I straightened his sheets, dustier every day but still made, and traced the voice line arched next to his pillow-a long, thin hollow Da had etched for us up the walls and over the ceiling. When we pressed our lips to it and whispered, it car- ried our voices so we could talk even when we were at each end of the room in our separate beds.
Three years now. Three years since I sat there, my twin’s hand fire in mine as he faded in the night, fast as a blown-out match.