Free The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind by Meg Medina Page B

dashed madly in happy circles, barking and upending a chair with their muscular legs.
    “Here they are!” Eva called from somewhere ahead.
    Sonia followed her friend’s voice down the hall to the last bedroom, where she found her digging inside a claw-footed wardrobe in the corner. In a moment Eva emerged, red-faced and triumphant.
    “This is my favorite part of the capital!” She dragged out a box of old books and reached inside. Spiderwebs clung to the binding of the volume she pulled out.
    “Books?” Sonia didn’t remember Eva ever being studious for Irina Gomez.
    “Not just books! Timeless stories of love!” Eva pressed her lips to the curly gold script on the cover. “Thank God they’re safe.”
    They were old romances. Sonia thought that none of those stories could possibly compare to Pancho’s inventions, but she kept her lips sealed on the matter, remembering the shame of her classmates’ teasing. Instead, she looked around carefully at her new room. The plaster walls of their bedroom were cracked in several places, but otherwise the room was pleasant — clean and simple, with two small beds, a wardrobe, and nightstand. The next room was more or less a duplicate, except for the view. From the arched window between Sonia’s and Eva’s beds, one had a sweeping vista of the grounds.
    She stepped out to the balcony and took in a deep breath of winter jasmine. Sonia felt like the victorious girl in Pancho’s story, the one who had brandished a golden sword, slayed her uncle, and fled from her captors on horseback.
    “Of course, you’ve taken the best room for yourselves.”
    The cold voice made Sonia turn. Dalia was standing at the bedroom door with Sonia’s suitcases.
    “I will have to resign myself to the room right across the hall, I suppose,” she continued.
    Sonia, still bruised from their encounter on the train, did not reply.
    Dalia was not fazed in the least.
    “Here.” She tossed a set of keys roughly at Sonia. “Don’t lose them.”
    Sonia studied the keys curiously. At home no one used more than an eye hook to hold a door shut. Looking now, Sonia noticed dead bolts on each of the bedroom doors.
    “Locks? Even on the inside of the house?” She turned to Eva. “Are there bandits here?”
    But Eva was already languishing in bed, entranced by the first pages of her favorite saga. It was Dalia who replied.
    “Lesson one: There are criminals everywhere, Sonia.” She smiled wryly. “Sometimes we can barely trust our own housemates.”

S ONIA WAS SURE it was Rafael pulling on her braid when she opened her eyes in the darkness. Her whole life she had been awakened by his nonsense, followed by the piercing crows of their neighbor’s rooster and her mother bringing cinnamon milk to her in bed.
    “Stop it or I’ll bite you, I swear it!” she muttered as she dug inside her covers.
    It took a moment to realize it wasn’t her brother at all.
    “ Despierta, mi amor. We’ll be late.”
    Eva, her hair set in pin curls, was leaning over her.
    Sonia sat up groggily; the trip had exhausted her more than she’d realized. The first light of dawn was glowing through the slats in the shutters.
    Eva buzzed around the room to get ready. One hand yanked her curls loose as she tried to unfasten the stubborn buttons of her uniform with the other. She slipped the shapeless black sheath over her head, and the curves and slopes of her youth disappeared.
    “Yours is in the wardrobe,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she studied her reflection. “Don’t worry about the size. Nothing helps. You’ll look just as dreadful as the rest of us. Open the shutters, cariño. ”
    Outside, the ground staff was already busy. Stable boys carried hay, and the old gardener was watering roses. The milkman was making his delivery at the back gate. Sonia spied Ramona and Dalia crossing the wet grass toward the main house, too. From here, they looked like old crows, identical in their black uniforms, opaque stockings,