Nicola Penfold

The earth is thriving – with wilderness status protecting land and wildlife, and scientific organisations researching new ways to support human life sustainably. Rory’s mum is a geologist on one of these projects, and Rory is beyond excited to join her on a work trip to the Arctic. 
But the project isn’t all that it seems, and Rory soon learns what’s at stake for the people and animals that live there. Will she be able to help uncover the truth before it's too late?

Beyond the Frozen Horizon 

Eilidh 

It feels unnatural. A subversion of all the laws of physics, and all the Climate Laws too. Humans don't belong in the air. 

There's a strange tone to her voice. Not like the girls at school, when they throw jokes back and forth and ignore any attempts I make to join in. Ths is more a general disbelief that the world will ever be any different than it is now. 

It's going to be a true adventure, like in the books Dad read to me when I was small. Tales of forests and frozen lakes and more stars than you ever would have believed existed, burning in galaxies light years away. Here we're even further north than most of those stories. 

People are a slippery slope. If you say yes to one person, how can you say no to the next? And it doesn't take many people before a wilderness isn't really wild any more. 

Longyearbyen started out as a mining town,making money from extracting coal, back in the days before people knew what they were doing to the planet. Or if they did know, they didn't care. Didn't care about the blackening air and invisible gases collecting in the atmosphere, absorbing far more heat from the sun than our planet can stand. 

It's nighttime here, or a strange kind if twilight because the streets still have their snow glow, reflecting back the moonlight 

Mum exhales beside me. "It's like a painting, isn't it? It doesn't seem real."

Beyond the Frozen Horizon

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