“In a minute.” Bear bends down for another stone. “I bet you can’t beat me.”
“You sure about that?”
I reach for a pebble but there’s a shriek and Bear’s calling my name. “Juniper! She’s back!”
Ghost. Our silver spotted lynx is stepping on to the island. She’s found us, and Bear and I are running forward and she’s pushing her head into our waists.
I bury my face into Ghost’s fur, breathing her in, glad there’s only Bear to see my tears.
Bear’s whooping. “I can’t believe we tamed a lynx cat, Ju! We’re wilder than Ennerdale!”
Ghost breaks away from us and goes to the lake to drink. To the water, where the stars are all reflected back, the whole of the night sky like a huge canvas. Bear and I stand next to her, making our calls. Our ululations. Like war cries.
Mum and Dad. For taking me to the trees and the sea and the mountains. The places I went as a child are so special to me, especially the Lake District, where it feels I find younger versions of myself, and all my grandparents too. Thanks for the bedtime stories, the library visits and the books you bought for me to keep as my own. Writers are readers first and foremost and I have so much to thank you for.
My wonderful sister, Emma, for finding the best books first and always passing them back to me.
Dom. From our beginning, you not only loved that I wanted to be a writer, you believed I was one. You’re not always right, but on this one I’ll let you have it! This whole adventure was possible because of you.
Matilda, Daisy, Freddie, Bea. Our own little tribe. You made everything new. I rediscovered the woods with you and I rediscovered children’s literature too. This book is for you, but it is you too. My beautiful, crazy children, who remind me what it is to run wild.
My friends and family members, Dom’s family as well as my own. I’m terrified of leaving someone out if I list you, but for everything, and each and every time you’ve asked about my book, thank you, all of you.
Roisin Heycock and Cara Lovelock. For reading Juniper and Bear’s story in its earliest incarnation and telling me to keep going. For our late night, gin-fuelled writing groups and Friday morning book chat in Beans and Barley while our children went feral in the play area. It was the best of times, and I still haven’t quite forgiven you for moving away, Cara, even though I have basically written a whole book about why leaving the city would be a good thing.
All the cats I’ve loved, but especially Bo, our beautiful Burmese, who died very soon after this book’s conception. Ghost is for you.
SCBWI’s Undiscovered Voices anthology for featuring my first few chapters in 2018. I am so grateful to everyone involved, also Alex Antscherl who critiqued my UV submission as part of Authors for Grenfell. Extra special thanks to my fellow writers and illustrators, and writer Sara Grant, who was the fairy godmother of the whole operation and got us to the ball with so much generosity and kindness.
Lizza Aiken and Julia Churchill for shortlisting my book for the inaugural Joan Aiken Future Classics Prize in 2017.
Peter Fiennes for kindly allowing me to quote from Oak and Ash and Thorn. I urge anyone who cares about our woodland to read this remarkable book.
The people I’ve connected with on Twitter – the writers, illustrators, bloggers, teachers, librarians, environmentalists. Book Twitter and Nature Twitter, I’ve learned so much! Extra special thanks here to the Swaggers – a dazzlingly brilliant group of children’s writers debuting in 2019 and 2020. For the solidarity, the wisdom, the distraction, the GIFs.
Gillie Russell, my incredible agent, for seeing Juniper and Bear exactly as they are. I couldn’t find a better ally.
Stripes for wholeheartedly embracing my world and characters and making them everything I wanted them to be. Particular thanks to: Sara Mognol for designing the absolutely perfect cover and inside imagery; Kate Forrester for realizing Sara’s design so beautifully – it’s a piece of art now and Juniper would be delighted; Lauren Ace and Charlie Morris; Leilah Skelton, for creative and environmentally aware marketing and publicity, and for hailing from my hometown of Doncaster and making me feel extra welcome; the hive mind editorial team that is Mattie Whitehead, Ella Whiddett and Ruth Bennett. Lastly, Katie Jennings, my extraordinary editor, who made the most incredible leaps and connections to make Where the World Turns Wild the very best it could be. I am frankly in awe, Katie. Thank you!
My final thanks are to you, reader. It’s with you that Juniper and Bear get to go on their journey. They’ve been such a big part of my life for three years now and it’s hard to let them go. But they’ve hung around long enough. Please watch over them for me – they’ve still got so much to learn!
About the Author
Nicola Penfold was born in Merseyside and grew up in Doncaster. She studied English at Cambridge, before completing a Computing Science Master’s programme at Imperial College London. Nicola has worked in a reference library and for a health charity, but being a writer was always the job she wanted most. Where the World Turns Wild was shortlisted for the first Joan Aiken Future Classics Prize in 2017. It was also selected for SCBWI’s 2018 Undiscovered Voices anthology. Nicola writes in the coffee shops and green spaces of North London, where she lives with her husband, four children and two cats, and escapes when she can to wilder corners of the UK for adventures.
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING LIMITED
An imprint of the Little Tiger Group
1 Coda Studios, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
www.littletiger.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Stripes Publishing Limited in 2020
Text copyright © Nicola Penfold, 2020
Cover image © Kate Forrester, 2020
Quote from Oak and Ash and Thorn: The Ancient Woods and New Forests of Britain by Peter Fiennes, published by Oneworld Publications, 2017
eISBN: 978–1–78895–258–3
The right of Nicola Penfold and Kate Forrester to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition, being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Where the World Turns Wild Page 22