Patti Penny did everything fast. She ate her porridge fast, she brushed her teeth fast (top ones only), and she once skipped so fast she arrived before she'd left. In her bright red boots, Patti Penny was the rushiest girl in town.
One morning, down by Bubbly Brook, she met a grasshopper sitting on a stone. He had googly eyes, springy legs, and a giggle that sounded like tiny bells falling downstairs.
"You're Patti Penny," he giggled. "The fast one. I'm Gary. And I'll bet you my second-best leaf you can't find the Hidden Glade, where the Golden Apple grows."
"A golden apple?" said Patti. "Easy. I'll find it before lunch."
"Hee hee," said Gary. "That's what worries me."
Off she zoomed. She hadn't gone far when she met a turtle called Tim, plodding along with a map printed right on his shell. "Heading to the Glade?" he said slowly. "I know the way. Walk with me and I'll—"
"No time for slowpokes!" called Patti, already gone. Which was a shame, because Tim's map showed a shortcut.
Next she found Fiona the Fox, sitting before a wall of rose bushes that blocked the whole path. "The bushes will open if you solve their riddle," said Fiona. "Listen: What gets bigger the more you take away?"
Patti hopped from boot to boot. "A cake? No — a sandwich? Oh, riddles are for thinkers, not finders!" And she crashed off through the prickles instead, getting seventeen scratches and a leaf in her ear.
(The answer, by the way, was a hole. Fiona told the bushes, and the bushes thought it was very good.)
By late afternoon, Patti reached the Whispering Woods, where the leaves lean down and whisper hints to travellers who listen. "Left at the mossy stone," they whispered. "Mind the rabbit hole."
But Patti was rushing too loudly to hear. She went right at the mossy stone, did not mind the rabbit hole, and tumbled head over red boots — bumpity-bumpity-bump — down a bank and into a clearing, where she landed flat on her back.
And there, directly above her nose, hanging from the one bare branch of a silver tree, was the Golden Apple.
"Found it!" she puffed.
"Hee hee. Did you?" Gary the grasshopper boinged onto her knee. "Tim would've got you here by lunch. The riddle-path was even quicker. And the woods told you where the rabbit hole was. You didn't find the Glade, Patti Penny. You crashed into it."
Patti lay in the grass, catching her breath. For the first time all day, she was still. She could hear the woods whispering, and the brook bubbling far away, and a bird singing the same little song over and over, and it was — actually — rather nice.
"Oh," she said quietly. "I've been rushing past all of this."
"There it is," said Gary. "That's the thing the apple's for." And he plucked it down and put it in her hands.
The Golden Apple tasted like warm honey and slow Sunday mornings. Patti walked home the long way — walked, mind you — saying a proper hello to Fiona and thanking Tim for the offer, and she got home just in time for dinner instead of lunch, which turned out to be fine.
She still wore her red boots everywhere, and she was still the fastest girl in town when it counted. But some evenings she'd sit on the porch doing absolutely nothing at all, listening to the world go by, nice and slow.
And Gary? He's still down by Bubbly Brook, giggling on his stone, waiting for the next somebody in a hurry.