Jasper and the Riddle of Riley's Mine

  Praise for Blue Birds

  Winner of the Virginia Library Association’s 2016 Jefferson Cup for Young Readers

  “Composed in varying formats, the descriptive and finely crafted poems reveal the similarities the two girls share, from loved ones lost to hatred between the English and the Roanoke to a desire for peace . . . Fans of Karen Hesse and the author’s May B. (2012) will delight in this offering.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A memorable account of a friendship that transcends culture and prejudice.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An excellent historical offering . . . belongs on public and school library shelves.”

  —VOYA

  “With two compelling main characters and an abundance of rich historical detail, Rose’s latest novel offers much to discuss and much to appreciate.”

  —School Library Journal

  “An imaginative historical novel with two sympathetic protagonists.”

  —Booklist

  “Themes of fear and freedom will appeal to a wide audience.”

  —School Library Connection

  “Using language that’s both plain and exquisite, Caroline Starr Rose weaves history seamlessly into the stories of two girls with distinct backgrounds and voices. The crossing lives gave me a big world that lingered past the pages.”

  —Jeannine Atkins, author of Borrowed Names

  “Rose has given us a complex story, a real and researched story, a story that, despite its roots in late-sixteenth-century America, feels contemporary. In bringing readers Alis and Kimi, Rose has not just brought us a distant era. She’s brought her readers a way of sinking in with real questions about difference—and a credible suggestion that such differences might be overcome.”

  —Beth Kephart, author of This Is the Story of You

  Also by Caroline Starr Rose

  Blue Birds

  May B.

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Caroline Starr Rose.

  Map illustration copyright © 2017 by Richard Amari.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698174009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Craig Phillips

  Cover design by Theresa Evangelista

  Version_1

  To Noah and Caleb,

  with all my love

  Contents

  Praise for Blue Birds

  Also by Caroline Starr Rose

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The blanket over my head don’t block out the sound, a tapping at the window sharp as hailstones. I roll over and try to get on back to sleep, but the noise gets louder. Then a second sound starts in, this one soft and breathy.

  “Jasper,” it says.

  That ain’t a storm I hear.

  The room’s dark, but a faint light glows outside, enough to see Pa’s bed is as jumbled as usual. No telling, though, if he’s in there or not.

  “Come on, wake up,” the voice whispers.

  Melvin? My brother’s on the porch? I listen close for that funny whistle Mel makes when he sleeps heavy, but don’t hear it. Mel ain’t in his bed like he should be.

  A groan escapes Pa’s lumpy blanket as three sharp raps rattle the windowpane. Don’t know how I missed him earlier, blowing in how he does, loud and clumsy as a blind moose. Usually mad as one, too. I grab my glasses, race across them worn floorboards as quick as I can, and crack open the door. There’s my brother on the other side. He hoots and grins as he swings a newspaper over his head. The lantern he holds jitters, casting jagged shadows.

  “You need to hush!” I slip out onto the porch, shut the door real gentle.

  Mel quiets some, but he still dances around. If I didn’t know him better, the way he’s acting, pure crazy on his face, I’d think he’d got into Pa’s liquor. Any second now I expect Pa to fly out of bed, cussing like a kicked cat, and knock some sense into him.

  “Where’ve you been?” I take the lantern from Mel’s hand, set it on the top step for safekeeping. “What’re you doing out here, anyhow?”

  “I was talking with the men at the wool mill and lost track of time.” The lantern hardly gives off any light, but even so, Mel’s eyes shine unnatural-like. He smiles as though he can’t hardly help himself. “Then I had to get to Hansen’s for a newspaper before the others beat me to it.”

  I don’t know what Melvin’s on about. “But it’s the middle of the night.”

  “Jasper, there’s something I’ve got to tell you that can’t wait until morning. That’s why I called you out here.” Mel glances at the darkened window. “I didn’t want to wake Pa.”

  Mel ain’t one to come home late, and he certainly don’t run around all hours. My hands feel funny, all hot and cold at once. “What is it?”

  “Wait till you see this.” Mel smacks that newspaper he’s holding. “Mr. Hansen sold me one of the very last copies.”

  We ain’t had a newspaper for years. It’s one of them luxuries we can’t afford.

  “‘July 17, 1897,’” I read aloud. “‘Latest News from the Klondike. Nine O’Clock Edition.’” It’s this morning’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The words run bold across the middle:

  GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!

  SIXTY-EIGHT RICH MEN ON

  THE STEAMER PORTLAND.

  STACKS OF YELLOW METAL!

  “Gold,” I say again. The word feels warm and round and strange on my tongue.

  Below the story is a map, a spiderweb of wavy lines that lead to a river labeled Klondike. The paper says the whole place is called the Klondike for the river that passes through. It’s in some part of Canada far above Washington, right up against Alaska, about as distant as the moon.

  A light breeze ruffles Mel’s sandy hair, sets the lantern flame to sputtering. “The paper says the Portland pulled into Seattle this morning,” he says. “Everyone on board was loaded down with gold.”

  What I wouldn’t give to see some gold up close. Only got to once before, a couple years ago, when Mama showed me Pa’s
pocket watch. “Think any of them fellows will come out to Kirkland and show us what they found?”

  “No one will come to this nothing town.” Mel loses his gooney look and puts on the practical face he wears near about all the time, the one where his eyebrows pinch together and his lips flatten into a firm line. “Don’t know why I stay sometimes.”

  “Well, I do,” I tell him. “You stick around because you’ve still got money to earn. You stay because of me.”

  Mel gives half his pay from the mill to Pa. What Pa don’t know is that when he’s out carousing, my brother pries back the loose floorboard under his bed and hides the other half in the cigar box Mama once used for recipes. He’s saving for the two of us. As soon as he’s got enough, we’ll leave Kirkland together. Because here’s the thing: ever since Mama left, Pa’s gone from bad to worse.

  Mel shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “I could save every penny I earn and come nowhere near what those men on the Portland have. A man in the Klondike makes more money in one week than I’ll ever have in my whole life.”

  There’s a prickly feeling at the back of my neck as I think on what Mel said. Gold’s worth loads of money, and money’s what we need. I don’t know one family with enough, but even Cyril’s, with them five kids, knows how to make a paycheck last. Once Pa touches the money Mel gives him, it’s as good as gone. “There ain’t no reason for us to wait,” I say. “We could make it on our own right now. In the Klondike.” I ain’t ever been outside Kirkland, let alone Washington, and here’s our chance to go. Not somewhere close by, neither, but to Canada, on the top of the world.

  “Listen, Jasper.” Mel steps away from me a bit. “About that.”

  “We could leave next week. Or even tomorrow.” I can’t slow down what’s bubbling up inside. “Sure, I’d miss Cyril and fishing at the lake, and—”

  “Jasper,” Mel says. “You’ve got to listen to me.”

  That’s when the front door swings open. Pa stands in the frame, tall and terrible. His eyes are bloodshot slits, his wild hair points in all directions. “Shut your traps,” he says, “and put out that god-awful light! What’re you boys doing, anyhow? Get inside and go to bed.”

  There ain’t nothing we can do but obey.

  My mind don’t settle when I cross them floorboards that creak beneath me or when I climb in under my ragged quilt. Mel’s whistle says he’s drifted off long before that word quits echoing my heartbeat—gold, gold, gold.

  • • •

  Next morning, I’m extra quiet as I make my bed and boil the same coffee grounds I used yesterday. Second-day coffee ain’t much different than hot water, but it’s what I got to do to make the coffee stretch. There’s no sense rattling Pa again, if I can help it. The newspaper Mel carried on about last night is spread across the table. I wrap my hands around my warm tin cup and dig right into the story about the gold. It says that a few days ago, a steamboat arrived in San Francisco, full of men called prospectors and their Klondike treasure. Word got out that another Klondike steamer named the Portland was headed to Seattle right behind them. News reporters were so hungry for the story, they rode a tugboat to meet the Portland offshore.

  The coffee burns as I swallow it down. Men struck it rich last summer, and the rest of the world knew nothing about it until now—a whole year later.

  The map below the story is called The Land of Gold and nearly covers the whole bottom half of the page. I run my finger over its wiggly river lines. There’s so many of them. The biggest river, named the Yukon, starts in the mountains of Canada, then heads north and crosses into Alaska, which it cuts clear in half, then snakes west until it meets the sea. From the Yukon on the Canada side flows the Klondike River. The land south of it is where them men on the Portland made their fortunes, where me and Melvin are headed as soon as he says go.

  Pa stumbles to the table and yanks the paper from me. I reach for my cup but can’t steady it in time. Coffee spills everywhere. Pa holds the paper before him like he didn’t just snatch it, like he’s been reading it all morning. “Don’t just sit there,” he says. “Clean up that dripping mess.”

  That’s Pa. He makes problems of his own and tells others to fix them. Ain’t no way I’d answer back, though sometimes I sorely want to. Arguing with Pa leads to nothing but sorrow. That and the fire of his belt across my legs. Believe me, I don’t run my mouth no more. I’ve learned that lesson good.

  I wipe the table, then kneel down to clean the floor.

  Pa fans the paper open. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Mel brought it home from Hansen’s yesterday.”

  “Mel.” He shakes his head. “Throwing away money on a newspaper. And you. Don’t know what you two were up to out there on the porch. Loud enough to wake the dead.”

  Pa’s eyes are as dull as they were last night. He’s got a stink like that mouse stuck in Miss Stapleton’s desk all summer long. But even so, he don’t seem too fierce this morning, not as riled as he could be. It’s best to keep him that way.

  I wring out the rags, set them aside for the laundry I’ll have to get to soon.

  “Bring me some coffee,” Pa says. “And don’t you leave a drop for that lazy brother of yours.”

  Mel stirs in his bed, like he’s heard us talking. Ain’t no way he couldn’t in a house this small.

  I hand Pa his cup as he hunches over the newspaper. He mutters to himself. “Klondike gold. Bunch of fools.”

  Mel shuffles to the stove in his red underdrawers, a union suit that bags around his kneecaps and has worn clean through at the elbows, and reaches for the empty coffepot. He looks a sight. Probably didn’t sleep a wink.

  Pa lowers the paper. “You read this newspaper yet?”

  Mel nods.

  “You mark my words,” Pa says. “Now that gold’s been discovered in Canada, a whole load of idiots will head up there and try to find some for themselves.”

  I wonder what Pa will say when he learns me and Melvin plan to do exactly that.

  Leave here. For good. To get us some gold.

  “Them fellows are chumps,” I chime in for Pa’s sake. “Idiots.” The whole time I say it, I make eyes at Mel, try to catch his notice and figure out what he’s thinking. But all his attention’s on Pa.

  “It’s the sort of man who ain’t worked an honest day in his life that would try something so stupid,” Pa says. “The type who wants things easy.”

  Mel holds the coffeepot like he’s forgotten all about it. “What’s so easy about leaving everything you know?”

  I want to swat my brother with a dishrag, step on his toes and make him holler, anything to draw him back, because this conversation ain’t headed nowhere good. Melvin should be quiet after last night’s hooting and dancing on the porch.

  But he plows ahead. “Familiar is what’s easy. It’s brave to leave what you know behind.”

  Pa’s lip curls. “You contradicting me, boy?”

  I grab the broom, busy myself with the dust that’s crept in under the door, get as far as I can from whatever storm Mel’s stirring up with Pa. Of course I want to tell Pa exactly what I think, ask him straight out what he remembers about honest work when it’s surprising if he gets himself to his job at Hansen’s more than a few days a week. But I ain’t stupid, either.

  Lay low and stay out of the way, that’s the rule around here. Melvin taught it to me when Pa lost his job at the mill six months before he got his own there. Mel’s always been the one to keep the peace, the one who slows Pa’s anger when my mouth runs on its own. So how come all of a sudden Mel’s acting like he’s forgotten everything?

  Mel slams the empty pot on the stove.

  “I said”—Pa’s words are sharp and loud—“are you contradicting me?”

  Mel still don’t answer. He stomps straight from the kitchen, pulls out his crate of clothes from underneath his bed, yanks on his tr
ousers, and shoves his arms through his shirtsleeves. The whole time he mumbles but don’t look once at Pa.

  Oh, my heart thunders to see him act so reckless.

  “Don’t you talk under your breath,” Pa says. “You got something to tell me, Melvin Johnson, you say it outright.”

  That gets him to stop. Something about Mel looks almost grown, him who’s barely sixteen. “Who are you to judge the man who wants a better life?”

  “Who am I?” Pa lunges forward. His hand flies out, strikes Melvin square on the cheek. “I’m your pa. Don’t you ever forget it.”

  I duck behind the table, my fists balled up so tight, my fingernails cut through my skin. “Hush, Mel, hush. Just hush,” I say.

  Mel’s face burns red where Pa hit him, but he don’t stop. “You want to know what they say about you at the mill, Pa? That you’re good-for-nothing. That once Mama died, you took to drinking like it was the only thing you remembered how to do.”

  “Don’t you bring your mama into this!” Pa bellows. He moves in so close, Mel’s backed against the wall.

  “You could have saved her.” Mel’s eyes flash. “You could have if you’d wanted to.”

  I hold my hands against my ears, but it don’t keep their voices out.

  Pa’s like a firecracker set to explode. “What do you mean, if I’d wanted to?”

  “You could have taken help the first time it was offered. But you didn’t.” Mel’s jaw is clenched, and his head’s pressed hard on the wooden boards behind him. “Want to know what else the men at the mill told me?” He takes a breath and lets it out slow. “They say I’m the one who’s the real man around here.”

  Pa storms across the room, grabs for the empty coffeepot, and lets it fly. It hits inches from Mel’s head. Brown streaks run down the wall. The pot clatters to the floor.

  Mel’s face is a mix of fear and anger, but anger wins out quick. He jerks the door open and slams it from the other side.

  Pa lowers himself into Mama’s rocker, still angled near the window the way she always liked it.