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For the longest time, the hedgehog did not know the name of the man who moved into her garden. He appeared suddenly (or, at least, he seemed too, for the hedgehog had been asleep all winter).
The hedgehog did not make her presence known the first time that she saw him. Her mother had taught her to be wary of humans until you were absolutely sure of them, and the hedgehog was not yet sure of the man in her garden. He was quiet at first. He would come and stand on the back stoop in the evening, just as the hedgehog was rising for the night, eyes flicking up towards the Hawthorne tree or down at the overgrown weeds that had choked out what remained of a past someone’s garden; he seemed almost sad – listless in the way he tapped his foot and lonely in how he crossed his arms.
Perhaps a sad person might enjoy meeting a small creature, thought the hedgehog after she had begun to grow accustomed to the man’s evening stalk around the garden, but then perhaps they might be strange.
She tried not to rustle the bushes when he was outdoors, tried not to snuffle too excitedly when she spotted a fat insect, but sometimes he did seem to hear her and would come over and part the bushes, squinting into the shadows, but the hedgehog was always quicker, darting into her burrow or further back to where the evening light couldn’t reach. All in all, however, she quite liked the man’s garden.
Perhaps it had been nice when no one lived there at all (for she had not been around in the world whenever the previous gardener had cut out the rows and planted the seeds that had long since grown weak and old for lack of care), but the man was interesting to watch, and though it could be a dangerous thing for a hedgehog, the hedgehog found herself curious. Besides, she had heard of much worse gardens.
She couldn’t often see into his windows, small as she was, but sometimes, when he was just at the right angle, she could watch his goings-on: his pensive face as he waited for a kettle to boil, his smile as he read letters in the upstairs window.
When spring arrived (well and truly, in all its beauty), the garden and the man were transformed in equal measure. As the trees and the grass sprouted with young, bright leaves, and the flowers in the beds unfurled their petals – hurling themselves into life – smiles blossomed across the man’s face with more regularity and he began to work in the garden rather than simply stand about in it, whistling pleasantly as he did so, and it did not take long to understand why.
A second man appeared towards the end of April. He came into the garden alone, and for a moment, the hedgehog feared that the familiar man had left and given his garden over to another, but he followed close behind the second man out the door and stood close to him, a hand on his back.
“It needs work, as you said,” the second man said thoughtfully, and the hedgehog couldn’t help but notice the stiffness of his posture, the way his arms were held tightly across his chest as she had known the familiar man to do when he first arrived.
“But don’t you think it could be just lovely? Something to grow along with us.”
“Do you know anything about gardening?” the second man asked, and there was something in his voice – a hint of nervousness, something stuck between hope and fear.
The familiar man tilted his head and almost seemed to laugh before leaning in and kissing the other man, bending him back slightly as he pulled him in at the waist.
By the time they pulled apart, the hedgehog noticed that there were no longer any tense shoulders, no longer any furrowed brows. Now there were only rosy cheeks and hands that reached for each other – hovering clasped in the air between them.
“As if we couldn’t learn…” the familiar man said fondly.
“Whatever you say, darling.”
And the hedgehog was glad to finally know his name.
It did not take her long to learn the second man’s name then, as Darling was always there to call it.
Thomas Love was a sight to see in the garden as it happened, whatever his own reservations may have been. The hedgehog watched all spring as he tore out weeds and dug holes with a fury only to turn around and plant seeds with a meticulous and gentle-handed sort of care. Darling would stand by, leaning on a shovel and laughing about something from the day only to reach across and brush the dirt from Thomas Love’s cheeks whenever he griped that Darling “might like to lend a hand seeing at it was his garden first,” though the griping never lasted long as Darling could always remind him that it was their garden now.
And even though they did not know that she scurried around the bushes and flower beds whenever the sun hung low in the sky, the hedgehog always felt a little warm inside thinking that perhaps it meant that it was her garden to share, too.
Thomas Love was the one who finally discovered her (or thought he did, at least, because of course, she had been there all along). Perhaps she squealed too loud at the sight of the first berries of the season, or perhaps she sniffed too closely at the ants that climbed over the recently planted carrots, she couldn’t be sure, but Thomas Love parted the bushes just in time to catch her trying to burrow away, and she curled up into a ball, her spines facing outward, because even though he treated the seeds gently, she had seen how he went after the weeds.
“I knew it!” Thomas Love breathed excitedly and then called out, “Come here, darling – look here. Didn’t I say? I thought it must be a hedgehog.”
“You said it could be a badger.”
And the hedgehog shivered at that, curling tighter, but their voices were light and happy above her.
“Well yes, but I also said it could be a hedgehog, and wasn’t I right?”
“You also said they’re a menace, didn’t you? One burrowed all through my aunt’s garden when I was a child. I still remember; she showed us the holes.”
“Isn’t it darling, though?”
The hedgehog uncurled just a little at that. She liked being called by the same name, she found.
“Aren’t you ever getting soft…” Darling laughed, and Thomas Love scoffed, stood up and away.
“I am not.”
“You are,” Darling said, and the hedgehog heard the sound of a kiss, of Thomas Love’s fond and surprised intake of breath, “And I only love you all the more for it.”
“Maybe you’re getting soft in the head, is all.”
“If I am, I can’t be bothered to mind.”
The hedgehog snuck back down into her hole under the bushes, distracted as they were, but with her ear turned to the grass above her head, she heard Thomas Love sigh, “Oh, it’s gone… I do hope the little thing comes back, don’t you?” and then with a quiet laugh, continued, “Don’t you tease…”
“I wouldn’t dare. It’s nice to have a friend in the garden.”
Yes, thought the hedgehog, snuffling happily in her small, warm home. Friends in the garden, that’s just what they are.
And she spent that evening feeling quite content.
In the summertime, the men changed with the season once more – or one of them did, at least, one more than the other.
Thomas Love did not seem to enjoy the garden so much as stew in it as the weather turned warm. Cigarette smoke curled out from the stoop into the Hawthorne branches and lingered in the spaces between the petunia plants, tickling the hedgehog’s nose in a way that was unpleasant and made her want to stay down in her burrow, but she didn’t.
“Thomas, love, you’ll make yourself sick, smoking like that…” Darling said gently, carefully, one evening as he came to sit on the stoop as well, one step above him.
Thomas Love didn’t answer, only seemed to hunch his shoulders further over, but when Darling reached around and slipped the cigarette from his fingers, he didn’t resist.
“What if it does...” he shrugged, glum, and the hedgehog wanted to curl into a ball, let her spines pin down that ache so that it didn’t have to settle between her tiny ribs.
Darling sighed and wrapped his arms around Thomas Love’s shoulders, squeezing, and rested his chin on his shoulder. “Think of the birds then, the hedgehogs,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to his cheek, his neck, with each word, and Thomas Love closed his eyes. He let his head rest back against Darling. “Surely it can’t be good for them either.”
“You think the hedgehog is still around, then? I haven’t seen her in so long…”
The hedgehog snuffled at that. Of course, she was still here. How sad they thought she might have left.
She gathered her courage and left her shadowy spot in the bushes, scurrying quickly across the edge of the garden to the other side, feeling light and brave and full of nerves for doing such a thing.
Darling gasped, “Goodness! Would you look at that! It’s as if she heard us… Hello, little one,” he called out to her, and she wondered suddenly if she perhaps hadn’t been given a name as well.
She smiled to herself from the other side of the garden and shivered a little with delight.
“Oh,” was all Thomas Love said, but he sounded a little breathless, and when Little One looked back at them, she found him pressed even closer to Darling’s chest, wrapped a little bit tighter, and the cigarettes were forgotten on the cement step.
And the next day, as if Mother Nature realized that one of the men needed a little more brightness, the dahlias began to bloom as well.
Little One decided she ought to make her presence more known after that.
In the autumn, when Darling and Thomas Love hosted a party in their back garden to celebrate their first small harvest, they spoke of many things she did not understand: how Thomas Love had always wanted to host a party that he might get to celebrate as well as serve, how he set the perfect table and served the perfect wine, how a certain abbey already felt very far away but how it was good to have its people near that night, how Darling wished they had a gramophone so that they might play music outside but maybe the wireless peeling quietly out the window would do just as well (and Little One did always like when they opened the windows, letting music pour across the small, carefully-tended lawn. She had not known about music before, and often wondered that autumn how other hedgehogs in other gardens could go their lives without hearing it).
They spoke of one thing, however, that Little One did understand quite well. When the night grew late and the drinks were empty, and the small circle of guests were resting easy in their chairs, Thomas Love announced to everyone that they ought to keep an eye out as a little hedgehog lived in their garden, and the way he said it – it was if it were the loveliest thing in all the world.
As if it were something to be proud of.
And Little One quivered under a pile of leaves with all the pride suddenly carried over to her by his voice and the cool autumn breeze, and although she felt far too shy in that moment to make a dash across the flower bed and let these new people (people that Darling and Thomas Love cared for enough to let into their garden – a place that was always a little bit sacred) catch a glimpse of her, it hardly mattered.
The men knew that she was there, and they were glad.
And that gladness did not fade with time. After she awoke again from her winter slumber, Darling glanced at the bushes early morning as Little One snuffled about in the just-warming mulch, and although she curled into a tight ball despite herself, she caught a glimpse first of the way he covered his smile with the back of his hand in surprise and heard how he gasped, heard how, after a moment of squatting on the balls of his feet to watch her, he gently patted the leaves and walked quietly towards the back door, calling out, “Thomas, love, our little hedgehog is here after all!”
And she could hear Thomas Love laugh brightly from inside the kitchen.
Little One grew braver and braver that spring, burrowing under the fence to see what other gardens might lie beyond her own. It was, of course, as she had always been told. Some gardens had dogs that sniffed or growled and frightened her (and perhaps they did only wish to play, but Little One could never be sure, and besides, what would the men do if she didn’t return to them?); some gardens had beautiful flowers that perfumed the air in their terrific beauty; some had gardeners or children who chased after her, and she ran and ran and ran; some had children with quieter spirits, who build houses for faeries where Little One might take a rest until the sky grew light and she would return to her own home.
Because her own home, of course, was the loveliest of all.
And it was in her own home that she birthed five little ones of her own. If she had been proud before, that was nothing at all to how she felt in that spring. She nuzzled close to her own little ones at night and taught them all the things they had to know, like where to find insects and which berries were the most delicious and how to burrow a hole of their own (and although she thought that the men might not like all her little ones burrowing holes in their garden, she hoped, just this once, they might make an exception, and of course, the did). She led them carefully, proudly, across the garden at night, her heart full with their snuffles and squeals, and it was on one of these nights that the men finally spotted her children. They opened the upstairs window, and even from far down in the grass, Little One could see that Thomas Love had tears in his eyes.
“We ought to bring Lucy over to see them, don’t you think?”
And Darling agreed, his grin wide and glowing like the sun from the window. “I’ll call my sister tomorrow. What a perfect idea…”
A little girl came to the garden the next day, one of her hands in each of the men’s, and although Little One had taught her pups to be wary of humans, Thomas Love and Darling taught Lucy to be still and assured her that Little One wouldn’t prick her finger and told her just how they had watched Little One grow, and after a while, once they were all quiet, Little One uncurled herself and nudged her own little ones through the bushes into their burrow, because she knew quite well know that the wonder of children was something that ought to be encouraged.
Besides, if a child was taught to love and be gentle, it seemed that they must surely grow into an adult who wouldn’t mind a hedgehog someday in a garden of their own.
By the end of summer, her little ones were no longer quite so little, and they too ventured out into the world to find their own garden or perhaps even a field or an old acre of woods. The men spotted her alone one day from the window and cooed, “Poor thing… Mustn’t she be lonely now…” and she supposed that she was. Even with the bees and the sway of the plants and the birds chirping from their nests above, the garden felt quiet in a way it had never before seemed.
One a particularly clear and warm night, Darling laid a blanket out on the grass, holding a hand out to Thomas Love to join him, and once again they spoke of many things she did not understand and a few that she did, such as the stars up above and the gentle breeze that rustled her quills as it did their hair and how it felt to have people you loved both near and very far.
She did not approach them, did not rustle the bushes or disturb the flowers in their beds that evening, and after a while of watching them, even turned her small head away – letting them be in their evening as they let her. But still, their presence was a gift, and by the time they retreated back into the house when the hour was already desperately late, Little One began to feel once again in the garden that quiet sense of peace that so often lingered.
It wasn’t often disturbed – that peace – but she hated when it was. It was a rare occasion when the back door was slammed with enough force to hurt her ears, when a hoe was taken to the dirt with a force that, even from them, frightened her, and always she would beg from her burrow or where she was curled, don’t you see the love between you? Don’t you know how precious is that thing you hold? But she could also understand; badgers were frightening – they could sniff out a hedgehog, come at one with its claws. Perhaps their world, too, was filled with badgers.
Fear could make any creature do strange things.
She had learned, however, over time that the peace always returned to their simple plot of land, and she was always glad – could almost bask in it. She liked to watch them hold each other through the back window, to see them dance or sew or simply be. She liked to see their hands spread life in the garden, to jump when a cabbage began to emerge or pick out handfuls of flowers that would appear later in vases visible through the glass as they caught the light.
The years passed by easily, it seemed, one after the other. There were always new plants and new guests stopping by and new gray hairs and even new litters of pups of her own that she would care for and show proudly until they grew too old, and every season (winter and all) only felt warmer than the last as the gentle tide of contentment swelled and swelled within her.
And when she emerged from her burrow after her fifth winter, she could hardly find it within herself to mind that she had grown weak, that a few months under the ground had finally sapped her strength, that soon she might become one with the garden itself, as she only thought: there can’t be a lovelier place to rest, can there?
For the first time in her life, she did not curl into herself when the men approached; she no longer knew that she could. Instead, she only gazed up at their faces with gentle and tired eyes, and watched as Thomas Love slipped off his mittens despite the chill that hung low still that morning.
“Well, aren’t you getting on, little one, hm?” he murmured and picked out an old leaf stuck to her quills that she hadn’t even known was there.
It was then she realized that they had never before touched her, and he seemed to realize it at the same time, pulling his hand back in surprise, but she didn’t mind it. She snuffled softly at the ground and closed her eyes, and before she knew it, there were two gentle hands above her, smoothing back her spiny coat.
“Do you think we ought to take her inside?” asked Darling, his hand tickling just above her eyes.
“Perhaps…” replied Thomas Love, “Though if you were going to go, wouldn’t you rather it be where you felt the most comfortable?”
“Of course I would,” he whispered, “but I wouldn’t want to be cold, neither…”
“No... nor would I.”
And it wasn’t long before she found herself being wrapped in a warm blanket (a sensation that she had never felt before but was glad to experience now) and carried into the house. She opened her eyes, curious even in her old age to see the parts she had never been able to catch a glimpse of through the windows and tucked her snout as they reached the sitting room, the fire strong and roaring in the hearth.
They placed her on the sofa cushion and sat on each side of her, and she couldn’t tell them, of course, but despite the fact that the old burrow in the garden was her home, here – between them both – was where she felt the most comfortable.
For between them, the only thing she could feel was love.