SOLVED. Book about two sisters one mute and magical and one who takes the task and avenging her people when they are killed.The genre was fantasy I read it in middle school but I wouldn't exactly call it middle grade fantasy. [s]

[Lily]

This contains spoilers.
This book was the weirdest book I have ever read and I have read quite a few weird books. I read the book around 2017 but the book itself was much older probably 10+ years old though I couldn't be sure. The cover had a girl in a hood in a canoe surrounded by forest. The story begins in this town that is fading away with little export and little note the people there just make it. But the people's luck might be changing when the main characters sister seems to be magical (some people have the ability to have their senses leaving their body so you can while physically being at a certain location your seeing something halfway across the continent) so the story begins with the two sisters the believed magical sister is soon going to be tested to see if she is truly magical, but the people in the town are starting to believe the sister isn't magical after all but for the sake of the town they need her to be magical so they plan to cheat the test. When the test is about to end something happens I can't remember it ends with the almost the whole town being slaughtered in a cave all the people went for safety. The non magical sister goes to avenge the death of her people she gets half a butterfly tattoo as is customary when she has found her "justice" then the second half of the butterfly is added. Back to the magic sister who can't speak the local language they find out she was magical and had spent her time with her senses all in this small mountain village and had learned their language, customs, and culture rather then her own. Non magic main character finds justice and finds out how all the magical people were killed (I forgot to mention when main characters whole tribe was killed so were most magical people except main characters sister) I guess this somewhere between young adult and middle grade fantasy. The book was very unique and while it was the weirdest book I read I liked it.

[Becca]

I think this is Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge, also published as The Lost Conspiracy. This might be the cover you remember:


Like you say, it's quite a weird book so the description on Goodreads doesn't really explain it all properly, but there's a copy on archive.org that you can check to make sure. I did a quick search for the word 'butterfly' and found reference to the tattoos you remember.
https://archive.org/details/gullstruc...

[Lily]

thank you!!! This is it.