The Hedgehog's Winter

Brier poked her nose out from under the blackberry bush and sniffed the air. Something had changed. The wind carried a coolness that hadn't been there yesterday, and the leaves on the old oak tree had begun to turn the color of marmalade.

"September," she whispered to herself. Her small, prickly body gave a shiver — not from the cold, but from the knowing.

She had until March.

Six whole months of winter sleep stretched ahead of her, and every single bite she ate between now and the first frost would have to keep her alive until spring. Her tummy needed to be round and full, stuffed with enough food to last through all those long, cold, dreaming months beneath the ground.

Brier had a mission.

She waddled out into the golden evening light, her little black eyes shining with determination. First stop: the garden behind the blue cottage.

"Beetles," she muttered, flipping over a stone with her nose. "Beetles, beetles, beetles — HA!"

A fat, shiny beetle scrambled in the dirt. Brier crunched it up in two bites. Delicious. But one beetle was nothing. She needed hundreds. She needed thousands. She needed so many beetles and worms and berries that her belly would drag along the ground like a furry, prickly balloon.

She shuffled along the garden wall, snuffling and munching, when she heard a voice above her.

"What are you DOING down there?"

Brier looked up. A young robin was perched on the wall, his head tilted sideways, his orange chest puffed out like a little pillow.

"Eating," said Brier.

"Obviously eating," said the robin, whose name was Pip. "But you've been eating for forty-five minutes straight. I've been watching."

"Then you've been wasting forty-five minutes of good eating time," said Brier, and she went back to nosing through the leaves.

Pip fluttered down to the wall's edge. "Don't you want to come see the sunset? It's extraordinary tonight. Pinks and purples and a bit that looks like a melted orange lolly."

Brier paused. She did love sunsets. Especially the melted-orange-lolly kind.

But she shook her quills firmly. "Can't. I have a mission."

"A mission?" Pip's eyes went wide. "Like a spy mission? Are you a spy? I always thought hedgehogs might be spies."

"An eating mission," said Brier. "I have to eat enough to last me until March. Every night counts. Every worm matters. Every single beetle could be the difference between waking up in spring and..." She paused. "And being very, very hungry."

She said that last part quieter than she meant to.

Pip was silent for a moment. Then he ruffled his feathers. "Right," he said. "Right. Well then. I'll help."

"You don't have to —"

"I'm an EXCELLENT finder," Pip announced. "Best eyes in the garden. Possibly the whole village." He zoomed off the wall and landed near a pile of old leaves. "There's a centipede under here. Big one. Loads of legs. Very crunchy, I'd imagine."

Brier smiled — a rare thing for a hedgehog on a mission — and trundled over to investigate.

And so it went, night after night.

Every evening when the sky turned dusky, Brier emerged from her hiding spot and began her work. And every evening, Pip was waiting.

He'd scout ahead, swooping over the garden and the meadow and the little stream by the road. "Slugs by the rhubarb!" he'd call. "Earthworms near the compost! Something weird and wiggly under the broken flowerpot — might be worth a look!"

Brier ate and ate and ate.

She ate beetles and caterpillars and millipedes. She ate fallen blackberries, smooshed and sweet. She ate slugs (which were slimy but filling) and earthworms (which were squirmy but satisfying). She ate mushrooms growing in the damp corners of the stone wall, and she ate windfall apples that had gone soft and brown and wonderful.

"You're getting rounder," Pip observed one evening in October.

"Thank you," said Brier, because she meant it.

"No, I mean REALLY round. Like a — like a coconut with legs."

"That," said Brier, crunching a snail, "is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."

The nights grew longer. The air grew sharper. Frost began to creep across the grass in the early mornings, making everything glitter like it had been sprinkled with tiny diamonds.

Brier could feel the heaviness settling into her bones. The deep, pulling sleepiness that came every year, tugging at her like a warm blanket she couldn't resist.

"Not yet," she told herself, stuffing down another mouthful of earthworm. "Three more nights. Two more nights. One more."

On the last night of October, Brier found the perfect spot — a heap of dry leaves piled against the garden shed, layered thick and deep. She nosed her way under, turning in circles, packing the leaves tight around her body until she'd made a cozy, rustling nest.

Pip landed on the shed roof and peered down. "Is this it, then?"

Brier's eyes were already half-closed. "This is it."

"Until March?"

"Until March."

Pip was quiet. He hopped along the roof edge, then back again. "That's a terribly long time, Brier."

"Mmm," she murmured. She was so warm. So heavy. So beautifully, wonderfully full.

"What if you get lonely?" Pip asked, his voice smaller than usual.

"I'll be asleep," Brier said softly. "I won't feel a thing. Just dreams. Long, slow, warm dreams."

"What will you dream about?"

Brier smiled, her little nose twitching. "Beetles, probably. Big, shiny ones." She opened one eye. "And a bossy robin who helped me find them."

Pip puffed up his chest, but his eyes were bright and shiny. "I'm not bossy. I'm enthusiastic. There's a difference."

"Pip?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you. For every single beetle."

Pip opened his beak, closed it, opened it again. "You just make sure you wake up," he said firmly. "Because I am NOT finding beetles for some other hedgehog. They wouldn't appreciate my scouting skills."

"I'll wake up," said Brier. And she believed it. She could feel it in her round, full belly — all those weeks of work, all those nights of snuffling and searching and eating until she couldn't eat one more bite. She had done it. She was ready.

Her eyes closed.

The leaves rustled and settled around her like a quilt.

Her breathing slowed... slowed... slowed...

And Brier began her long winter dream.

The months crept by. November blew in cold and howling. December brought snow that covered the garden shed in white. January was iron-hard and frozen. February was grey and stubborn and seemed like it would never end.

Pip spent the winter in the garden. He ate from the bird feeder the cottage people put out. He sang on frosty mornings. And every few days, he'd land on the pile of leaves by the shed and sit there for a while, just listening.

He never heard anything. But he kept coming back.

Then one evening in early March, when the first brave crocuses were pushing up through the soil and the air smelled like damp earth and new beginnings, the leaf pile rustled.

Pip nearly fell off the fence.

The leaves shook and shifted and out came a nose — a small, dark, twitchy nose — followed by two black eyes, blinking in the pale spring light.

Brier was thinner now. Her belly no longer dragged on the ground. But she was here. She was awake. She had made it.

She looked up at the robin on the fence, who was hopping back and forth so fast he was practically a blur.

"Pip," she said, her voice rough and croaky from months of silence.

"Brier!" Pip half-shouted, half-sang. "You're AWAKE! You're awake, you're awake, you're — oh, you look TERRIBLE. You've gone all thin. We need to find you a beetle IMMEDIATELY."

Brier laughed. It came out rusty and wonderful.

"I know just where to look," said Pip, already zooming toward the garden wall. "There's been a whole family of beetles living under the broken flowerpot all winter. I've been keeping an eye on them. Saving them. Well — not saving them, exactly, more like — COME ON, BRIER, KEEP UP!"

Brier waddled after him, slow and stiff and blinking in the newness of everything.

The air smelled like spring.

And she was absolutely, magnificently starving.