Harriet the hedgehog woke up every morning in her little hawthorn-bush home, took one look at the happy, honey-golden sun — and immediately started worrying.
Not because anything was wrong.
Just… because.
That's how it was with Harriet. The worries arrived before breakfast, before she'd even put on her little scarf, before the world had really got started.
Harriet's worries were all kept in a little hidden pocket just beneath her quills, where nobody could see them. They were very small worries. But there were so very many of them.
That last one was Harriet's most persistent worry. She carried it everywhere, like a small, invisible stone in her sock.
"Hello, Harriet!" called Hedwig the hare from the top of the hill. "Hurry! The hillside is heavenly for rolling today!"
Harriet's tummy went: but what if we roll the wrong way?
She climbed the hill anyway, quills prickling with something that might have been excitement or might have been nervousness — it was hard to tell the difference sometimes.
The view from the top was actually quite spectacular.
Harriet's tummy went: yes but what if a cloud comes?
"Do you always worry this much?" asked Hedwig, hopping gently beside her.
"I don't worry," said Harriet, hastily. "I simply… think ahead. Very helpfully."
Hedwig nodded. She was a very kind hare and did not point out that Harriet had spent the last twenty minutes thinking ahead about a cloud that hadn't arrived.
"How long have you had all these… helpful thoughts?" she asked.
Harriet considered this.
"Since I was hatched," she said, quietly. "Hedgehogs don't hatch, actually. But you understand what I mean."
The thing was — Harriet could see that other animals did not carry quite so many worries.
The field mice raced through the grass without worrying about where the grass went. The robins sang without worrying whether they were singing correctly. Even the very old tortoise at the bottom of the hill moved slowly and peacefully, as if everything was going to be quite alright.
Harriet had once asked the tortoise how he managed it.
"Managed what?" he said.
"Not being afraid," she said.
The tortoise thought about this for a very long time. Then he said: "Oh, I'm afraid. I just move slowly enough that the fear usually falls off."
Harriet found this helpful, in a way she couldn't quite explain.
And then it happened.
Harriet was halfway through a particularly heavy worry about whether she had left the hawthorn gate open — when, from somewhere deep inside her tummy —
One tiny, hopeless, hilarious, hiccup.
Hedwig looked at her. Harriet looked at Hedwig. And then Harriet laughed so hard that all one hundred worries bounced straight out of their little pocket and scattered into the wide blue sky like dandelion seeds.
She laughed until her quills rattled. She laughed until Hedwig started laughing too and neither of them quite knew why.
When the laughing finally settled, Harriet looked up.
The sky was enormous. It was blue and high and going on forever in all directions, and there wasn't a single cloud in it.
"I'm going to roll down the hill now," said Harriet.
"Are you sure?" said Hedwig, surprised.
"No," said Harriet, honestly. "But I'm going to do it anyway."
She rolled. It was bumpy and fast and slightly terrifying and also, just a little bit, the best thing she had done all week.
The worries would be back by homework time. They always came back.
But for now — oh, how huge the world looked.
That night, Harriet tucked her worries back into their little pocket, because they were hers and she didn't quite know what to do without them. But she left just a tiny bit of room — in case a hiccup needed somewhere to land.
Some children carry an invisible pocket full of "what ifs" that nobody else can see. The worries feel very real and very heavy, even when everything looks fine from the outside. This story doesn't try to take the worries away — because that's not how anxiety works. It just shows a small, brave hedgehog learning that even in the middle of a hundred worries, one unexpected moment of joy can, just briefly, scatter them all. And that rolling down a hill when you're not quite sure is one of the bravest things you can do.
Every word in this book that starts with H — and what they mean!