Pip and the Very Big Question

At the edge of a big golden field, under a hawthorn hedge, lived a hedgehog called Pip.

Pip was very small. When he curled up, he was no bigger than a pine cone. But he had a teal scarf that his grandma had knitted, a nose that never stopped twitching, and more questions than there are prickles on a hedgehog.

"Why are puddles always round?" he asked in the morning.

"Do worms have birthdays?" he asked at lunch.

"If a snail goes into its shell, does it say goodnight first?" he asked at teatime.

Grandma Hedgehog, who had greyer spines and a slower walk, always listened. Sometimes she knew the answer. Sometimes she said, "Hmm, now that's a good one," which meant she didn't.

"Questions are like seeds," she told him. "Plant one, and you never know what will grow."

Pip liked that. He planted questions everywhere he went.

But he had never yet asked a question as big as the one that blew in that very afternoon.

Pip was sitting outside the hedge with a crunchy beetle on a lovely flat leaf, about to have his lunch, when along came the wind.

Whoosh!

It lifted the leaf, beetle and all, right out from under his nose. The leaf twirled up, up, up, over the hedge, over the field, and away. The beetle, who was very sensible, jumped off and scuttled into the grass.

Pip's spines stood up in surprise.

"Grandma!" he called. "Where does the wind go?"

Grandma Hedgehog poked her nose out of the hedge and thought about it for a long time.

"Nobody knows," she said at last. "It comes, and it goes, and it never stays to tell us."

Pip's nose twitched. Twitch, twitch, twitch. That was the biggest question he had ever had, and nobody knew the answer. Which meant somebody would have to find out.

He wrapped his teal scarf twice around his neck.

"Where does the wind go?
Nobody knows!
Pip will find out.
Off Pip goes!"

The wind was not hard to follow at first. It went rushing across the meadow, and wherever it went, things moved.

The grass bowed. The clover nodded. And the dandelion clocks, those round white puffs on their tall green stalks, let go of their seeds all at once.

Puff!

Hundreds of tiny umbrellas floated up into the sunshine and sailed away. Pip trotted after them, his little feet going pitter-patter, his nose pointed up.

"Excuse me," he said to a harvest mouse who was swinging on a grass stem. "Have you seen where the wind goes?"

The mouse swung back and forth, back and forth.

"Into the wheat," she said. "Every day. It runs in and it never comes out the same way."

"Thank you!" said Pip.

He looked up at the dandelion seeds, drifting like tiny parachutes. They were going toward the wheat field too.

"Where does the wind go?
Nobody knows!
Pip will find out.
Off Pip goes!"

The wheat field was enormous. To a hedgehog the size of a pine cone, it was a golden forest, and every stalk was taller than a house.

And the wind was there.

Pip could see it! Not the wind itself, because nobody can see the wind. But he could see where it ran. It made long golden waves roll across the field, one after another, like the sea he had heard about but never seen. The stalks leaned and swished and whispered. Shhhh. Shhhh.

Pip pushed his way in between the stalks. It was warm and dusty and smelled like bread. Grains pattered down onto his spines like soft rain.

"Wind?" he called. "Are you in here?"

The wheat whispered back, shhhh. But when Pip came out on the far side, all golden and dusty, the wind had already gone.

He could see it moving away across the next field, bending the poppies one by one, heading for the farm.

Pip sneezed a wheat-dust sneeze. Ah-choo! Then he shook himself, and on he went.

At the farm, there was a washing line strung between two posts. On it hung sheets and towels and shirts and socks, and the wind was playing with every one of them.

The sheets billowed like sails. The shirts waved their arms. The socks kicked their legs as if they were dancing.

"That's where the wind goes!" said Pip. "Into the washing!"

He went closer to look. And just then, the wind gave a cheeky tug, and a big woolly sock came loose from its peg, flipped through the air, and landed right on top of Pip.

Flump.

Everything went dark and woolly.

"Hello?" said Pip, from inside the sock. "Is anybody out there?"

A big wet nose snuffled at the sock. Then a big black-and-white face appeared. It was the farm dog, whose name was Biscuit.

"Well, well," said Biscuit, wagging so hard her whole back end wagged too. "That's the first sock I've ever seen with a hedgehog in it."

Pip wriggled out, his spines full of fluff. Biscuit laughed a big woofing laugh, and so did Pip.

"Biscuit," said Pip, when they had both stopped laughing, "do you know where the wind goes?"

Biscuit put her head on her paws and thought. Dogs think best lying down.

"Sometimes it goes in the washing," she said. "Sometimes it goes in my ears and makes them flap. Sometimes, when I'm in the farmer's truck with my head out of the window, it goes right in my mouth and all down my throat." She gave a happy shiver. "That's the best."

"But where does it go after that?" asked Pip.

Biscuit's ears flopped. "I don't know," she said. "I've never thought to ask. I'm usually too busy chasing it."

She lifted her nose and sniffed. Sniff, sniff, sniff. The wind was blowing past the barn, down the lane, toward the trees.

"It smells like river," said Biscuit. "It's going to the river."

"Thank you, Biscuit," said Pip. He tucked a bit of sock fluff into his scarf, for a souvenir.

"Where does the wind go?
Nobody knows!
Pip will find out.
Off Pip goes!"

The river was wide and slow and brown-green, and it was covered in tiny wrinkles.

"The wind's here!" said Pip. "It's making the water shiver."

And so it was. The wind ran across the river like fingers across a blanket, and the reeds on the bank bent over and rattled together. Tikka-tikka-tikka.

But on the other side of the river, the wind went on without stopping, up toward the roofs of an old town that Pip had never visited.

Pip stood at the very edge of the water. It was a long way across for someone the size of a pine cone. Hedgehogs can swim, a little. But not that far.

In the shallows stood a grey heron, perfectly still, on one long leg. She was so still that Pip had thought she was a stick.

"Excuse me," said Pip. "I'm following the wind, and it's gone across the river. Do you know how I could get over?"

The heron looked down her long beak at him. She looked at the river. She looked at the wind ruffling the water.

"Hmm," she said. "Perhaps."

The heron picked up a big, flat sycamore leaf with her beak and laid it on the water. It floated like a little green raft.

"Climb aboard," she said.

Pip climbed aboard. The leaf wobbled. Pip wobbled. He held on very tight.

"Now," said the heron, "you wanted to know where the wind goes. Let's ask it to take you."

She lifted one long wing and, with a soft swoosh, the wind came. It filled the curled-up edge of the leaf like a sail, and off the little boat went, gliding across the water.

The heron waded alongside, step, step, step, on her long legs, keeping the leaf steady with the tip of her beak whenever it wobbled.

Pip's scarf fluttered out behind him like a flag. The river sparkled. A dragonfly zipped past, and a fish blew a bubble, bloop.

"I'm sailing!" shouted Pip. "I'm sailing on the wind!"

"So you are," said the heron, and if herons could smile, she would have.

The leaf bumped gently against the far bank. Pip hopped off onto dry land.

On the other side of the river was the old town.

It had cobbled lanes, very bumpy for small feet. It had houses made of honey-coloured stone, with blue shutters and red flowers in window boxes. And above everything, up high, were the rooftops: hundreds of them, terracotta and slate, with chimneys poking up like birthday candles.

The wind was up there. Pip could hear it whistling between the chimney pots.

A duck was waddling down the lane, quack, quack, with a crust of bread.

"Excuse me," said Pip. "Do you know where the wind goes?"

"Up," said the duck at once. "It always goes up. I fly on it, don't I? Up and up, and then it drops me in the pond." She waddled off. "Quack. Lovely day for it."

Pip looked up at the rooftops. They were very, very high.

He took a deep breath. He thought about the dandelions and the wheat and the washing and the river. He had come so far already.

"Up it is," said Pip.

On the side of the oldest house grew an ivy plant, thick and twisty, with stems like ropes and leaves like little green hands.

Pip had never climbed anything taller than a molehill. But ivy, it turns out, is very good for climbing, if you go slowly and hold on tight.

Paw over paw, Pip went up.

Past the first window, where a cat was sleeping on the sill, her tail curled round her like a scarf.

Past the second window, where a canary sang in a cage and stopped to stare.

Past the gutter, where a family of sparrows were having a squabble about crumbs.

He did not look down. He looked at the leaf in front of him, and then the next one, and then the next one after that.

The wind grew stronger as he climbed. It tugged at his scarf and made his spines tremble. But it didn't feel like it wanted to blow him away. It felt more like it was saying, "Come on, come on, nearly there."

And then, with one last wriggle, Pip popped over the edge of the roof.

Oh! The rooftops!

They went on and on, up and down, like a sea of red and grey hills. Chimney pots stood about in little groups, as if they were chatting. TV aerials stuck up like the skeletons of trees. And the sky up here was huge, much bigger than it looked from the hedge.

The wind was everywhere.

It hummed across the tiles. It sang over the gutters. And when it blew past the tops of the chimney pots, it made a low, round sound, like someone blowing gently over the top of a bottle.

Hoooo. Hoooo.

"Hello, Wind," said Pip, a little breathlessly. "I've followed you all the way from the hedge. Through the dandelions and the wheat and the washing and over the river. And now I want to ask you something."

The wind went on humming.

"Where do you go?"

Hoooo, said the chimneys. Hoooo.

Pip waited. But the wind did not answer. It is not, it turns out, very good at answering questions. It is too busy going.

On the very top of the town hall roof stood something shiny. It was a copper fish, green with age, balanced on a pole, and it turned and turned whenever the wind changed.

A plump grey pigeon sat beside it, puffing out her chest.

"That," said the pigeon proudly, "is the weathervane. It tells you which way the wind goes. Everybody knows that."

"Oh!" said Pip. "So the wind goes where the fish points?"

The pigeon coughed. "Well. Not exactly. It points to where the wind comes from. Not where it goes."

Pip frowned. "So where does it go?"

"The other way," said the pigeon.

"Which other way?"

"The way the fish isn't pointing," said the pigeon. "Obviously."

Pip looked at the fish. The fish swung to the left. Then to the right. Then all the way round in a circle.

"It's pointing everywhere," said Pip.

The pigeon looked at the fish for a long moment. "Well," she said. "There you are, then." And she flew off in a huff of feathers.

Suddenly the air was full of screaming.

Not a frightening scream. A happy, wild, whee-ing scream. Sree! Sree! Sree!

A flock of swifts came racing over the rooftops, so fast they were just dark crescents in the sky. They swooped down, skimmed past Pip's nose, and zoomed back up again, curving and tumbling and diving.

"Swifts!" called Pip. "Swifts! Where does the wind go?"

"Everywhere!" sang the swifts, as they flashed past.

"Over the mountains!"

"Across the sea!"

"Round the whole world and back again!"

"We sleep on it! We eat on it! We ride it everywhere! Sree! Sree!"

And they were gone, round the church spire and away, like a handful of arrows thrown into the sky.

Pip sat down on a warm roof tile. The swifts were the fastest, cleverest flyers in the world. And they said the wind went everywhere.

"Everywhere," Pip said slowly, trying the word in his mouth. It was a very big word for a very small hedgehog.

Pip climbed to the highest roof in the town, the one with the bell tower, and sat on the very top, where the tiles met in a ridge.

From up here he could see everything.

He could see the town, all its roofs glowing orange in the late sun. He could see the river, the heron a tiny grey dot in the shallows. He could see the farm, the washing line, the wheat field rolling with golden waves. And far, far away, at the very edge of the world, he could see a small dark line that was his hedge.

The wind blew softly around him and ruffled his spines.

And Pip had a thought.

The wind had been in the dandelions. And in the wheat. And in the washing, and in Biscuit's ears, and on the river, and in the chimneys, and under the swifts' wings.

"You go everywhere," Pip whispered. "Everywhere I went today, you were already there."

The wind hummed, very gently, as if to say: "Now you're getting it."

The sun dipped lower. The sky turned the colour of peaches.

Something was changing.

The wind, which had been rushing and whooshing all day, was slowing down. The weathervane fish turned more and more lazily, and then stopped. The swifts had gone quiet. The washing far away hung still on its line.

Even the chimney pots had stopped going hoooo.

"Wind?" said Pip. "Are you tired?"

A single grey feather came drifting down from the sky, slowly, slowly, rocking from side to side like a cradle, and landed beside him.

The sun was sinking into the hills now, coral and gold, and the sky above it was turning a deep, soft blue. One star came out, then another.

Pip yawned. He had walked through a meadow and a wheat field and a farm. He had sailed across a river and climbed a whole house. He had talked to a mouse and a dog and a heron and a duck and a pigeon and a flock of swifts.

That is a lot for a hedgehog the size of a pine cone.

"I think," said Pip, "that it's time for everybody to go home."

Just then, Pip felt something on his nose.

A breeze. A small, soft, warm breeze. But it wasn't coming from the fields any more.

It was going back toward them.

Pip's eyes went wide. "Wind," he whispered, "you're turning round. You're going home too!"

And it was true. Every evening, when the sun goes down and the land begins to cool, the wind changes its mind and turns round. Grandma Hedgehog had once told him that, but he hadn't really been listening, because he had been asking about worms.

The breeze nudged him gently toward the edge of the roof, toward the ivy.

"All right," said Pip. "I'm coming."

Down he went, paw under paw, slowly and carefully. Past the sparrows, who were asleep in a heap. Past the canary, who had a cloth over her cage. Past the cat, who opened one green eye, and closed it again.

The cobbles were cool under his feet now. The houses had lit their windows, golden squares in the blue evening.

And the gentle wind went on ahead, showing him the way.

The heron was still standing in the shallows, on one leg, exactly as if she had never moved.

"Back again?" she said. "Did you find out where the wind goes?"

"Everywhere," said Pip. "And now it's going home. And so am I."

The heron nodded slowly, as if that were exactly the right answer.

She laid the sycamore leaf on the water once more. Pip climbed aboard. And this time, the heron didn't need to flap her wing at all. The evening breeze came by itself, soft as a sigh, and filled the curled-up edge of the leaf, and carried Pip back across the river.

The water was smooth and dark now, like a mirror. The first stars shivered in it. A moth fluttered by. Somewhere, a frog was singing a deep, slow song.

Pip lay down on his back on the leaf and looked up at the sky. The wind blew softly over his tummy.

"Thank you for the ride," he said.

The leaf bumped gently against the bank.

"Goodnight, Heron," said Pip.

"Goodnight, little question," said the heron.

Pip trotted home through the evening.

Past the farm, where the washing had all been taken in and Biscuit was asleep on the doorstep, her ears twitching as she dreamed. Pip didn't wake her. He just whispered, "Night, Biscuit," as he went by.

Through the wheat field, where the wind made only small waves now, slow and sleepy. Shhhh. Shhhh.

Across the meadow, where the dandelions had closed up for the night and the harvest mouse was curled in a nest of grass, snoring tiny snores.

Little green lights glowed in the grass. Glow-worms, lighting their lanterns. They made a path for Pip, a dot here and a dot there, all the way to the hedge.

And the wind came with him all the way. It didn't rush or whoosh any more. It walked beside him, quiet and warm, the way a friend walks you to your door.

At the edge of the field, Pip could see the hawthorn hedge. And in the dark under its roots, a pair of bright, waiting eyes.

"Pip!" said Grandma Hedgehog. "There you are. I was wondering where the wind had taken you."

Pip tumbled into the nest beside her, in the soft, crunchy leaves under the hedge. He smelled of wheat and sock fluff and river.

"Grandma," he said, "I found out. I found out where the wind goes."

"Did you indeed?" said Grandma. "Then tell me."

"It goes everywhere," said Pip. "It goes in the wheat and in the washing and on the river and over the rooftops and round the whole world. And then, at night, it turns round and comes home."

Grandma Hedgehog smiled her slow smile. "Well," she said, "that's more than anybody knew before."

Pip snuggled closer. Then he had one more thought, and it was the best one of all.

He breathed out, very softly, onto Grandma's nose. Hhhhh.

"Look," he said. "There's a little bit of wind in me, too."

Grandma laughed, a soft, crinkly laugh, and breathed out too. Hhhhh. And their two small winds went out into the night, to join all the others.

Outside the hedge, the night was blue and quiet.

The wheat was still. The river was still. The washing line was empty, and the weathervane fish had stopped turning.

But the wind was there, if you listened. It was moving very softly through the hawthorn leaves, just enough to make them whisper. Shhhh. Shhhh. Like someone tucking in a blanket.

Pip curled up into a little round ball, the size of a pine cone. His teal scarf was tucked under his chin. His nose stopped twitching, and then twitched one last time, and then stopped.

"Where does the wind go?" he murmured, very sleepily.

And then, so quietly you could hardly hear, he answered himself:

"Everywhere.
And home again.
Just like me."

Shhhh, said the leaves.

Shhhh, said the wind.

Where does the wind go?
Now Pip knows.
Softly, so softly,
the night wind blows.

Goodnight, Pip.