The Purple Slide

The playground wasn't actually magical. Papa Whit had explained that once, patiently, when Maisie asked why the tall tower didn't float, why the rope bridge didn't lead somewhere secret, and why the purple slide couldn't carry her all the way up into the clouds instead of down to the ground.

Maisie had listened carefully to every word.

Then she'd decided Papa was probably wrong.

There were ladders to climb, ropes to swing from, bars to hang from upside down if nobody was watching, and a set of little wooden bridges that wobbled satisfyingly underpaw. A sandbox stretched along one side, and a row of swings hung from a wooden frame near the tree line. But right in the middle of everything, taller than the rest, stood the purple slide — starting near the top of the highest tower, curving once around the side, and then swooping down toward the grass in a long, silvery rush that Maisie had loved since before she could properly climb the ladder to reach it.

"Can we go now?" she asked, before Papa had even finished setting down the bag Mama had packed.

"We just got here."

"I know."

"So where exactly are you going?"

Maisie simply pointed at the tower, as if there could possibly be another answer worth considering.

Papa smiled. "Of course."

Mama carried Archie toward the swings while Maisie tore off across the grass, and Archie began bouncing in her arms the second he saw where they were headed.

"Swing! Swing!"

"I know. I can see it."

"Big swing."

"You say that every single time."

He didn't care in the slightest. He'd already picked his swing — the one on the end, closest to the trees, for reasons known only to him.

Maisie reached the tower and started up. One ladder, then another, across the wobbly bridge, past a boy heading the other way, under a low wooden bar that always made Papa duck but that she could walk straight beneath without bending at all. By the time she got to the top, she was a little out of breath and entirely pleased with herself.

The slide waited, purple and gleaming faintly in the afternoon light.

Maisie sat down at the mouth of it and scooted forward until her paws hung off the edge. From up here the whole playground looked smaller and slightly rearranged — Papa looked like a toy version of himself down by the bag, and Mama and Archie were already at the swings, Archie's legs kicking out in front of him with every push.

She put both paws on the sides of the slide and just sat there a moment, the way she always did.

This was her favorite part, if she was honest — not the sliding itself but the half-second right before it, when everything was still and about to not be.

"Maisie!" Papa called up.

She looked down at him.

He raised a paw. "You coming, or are you planning to live up there?"

She grinned and pushed off before she'd even finished grinning.

For one instant she was sitting still. The next, she wasn't. The slide dropped away beneath her and the wind rushed past her ears loud enough to swallow her own squeal as the first curve swept her around the tower, her paws lifting clean off the metal without her meaning them to. The playground blurred by — there were the trees, there was Papa, there was the whole world tipping sideways — and then it was all gone around the next bend, replaced by nothing but speed and her own stomach doing something complicated and wonderful.

She laughed the whole way down.

The last stretch dipped and flung her out onto the soft ground in a rush. She landed on her feet, stumbled twice, and only barely didn't fall over.

Papa was waiting with his arms crossed.

"Well?"

Maisie was already spinning back toward the ladder.

"Again."

He laughed. "I should have known better than to ask."

Across the playground, Archie had made a discovery of his own that he considered equally important.

"Higher!"

Mama gave the swing another push.

He sailed forward, both paws stretched out ahead of him like he meant to catch the sky.

"Higher."

"Archie, you're already pretty high."

"HIGHER."

She pushed again, because arguing never worked and pushing did, and he shot forward laughing so loudly that Maisie heard him all the way up at the top of the tower. She looked over just in time to see him swing back beneath the branches, legs kicking wildly on the upswing, Mama standing ready behind him for whenever he slowed.

Maisie waved with her whole arm.

"ARCHIE!"

"MAISIE!" he shouted back, mid-air, and then swung backward out of sight before either of them could say anything else.

Papa climbed partway up the tower and stopped just below her, one paw braced on the rail. "You know there are other things at this playground." When Maisie only said "I know" without looking away from the slide, he tried the ropes, then the climbing wall, and got the same answer both times — did those before, last time — delivered in the tone of someone humoring a question that didn't deserve much more. He pointed toward a set of bars as a last attempt. "Those, then?"

Maisie looked at the bars. She looked at the purple slide. She looked back at Papa with an expression that made her opinion on the matter extremely clear.

"No."

"Just checking," he said, and stepped back down.

She went again, and this time she leaned into the first curve on purpose, felt the wind catch the fur around her face until she genuinely couldn't tell if she was touching the slide at all anymore. She wasn't falling. She wasn't even really sliding.

She was flying, and she said so, loudly, with her arms flung out —

"WOOOOO!"

— and at the bottom Papa stepped aside just in time to avoid getting hit.

"You almost got me that time."

"I knew you'd move."

"And if I hadn't?"

She thought about it seriously.

"Then we'd both fall down."

"And then?"

"I'd go again."

Papa just shook his head, like there was no arguing with logic that solid.

Mama and Archie wandered over a few minutes later, Archie walking with the careful, wobbling gait of someone who has been on a swing for far too long and has lost all confidence in the ground.

"The ground's moving," he announced, sitting down hard in the grass to be safe.

"The ground is not moving," Mama said, sitting beside him.

He eyed it suspiciously anyway. "Feels like it."

Maisie ran over, already bouncing on her toes. "Archie, come down the slide with me."

He looked up at the purple slide. From where he sat, it looked considerably taller than it had a minute ago.

"No."

"You'll like it."

"I like swings."

"You can like two things."

He considered this seriously, weighing it the way he weighed most things — which was not very long.

"No."

Maisie put her paws on her hips. "You're not scared, are you?"

He frowned at her, and Mama gave Maisie a look that Maisie knew exactly how to read, so she changed course.

"It feels like flying."

That got his attention. He turned back toward the tower.

"Really flying?"

"Almost."

"Like a bird?"

"Faster than a bird."

"I'm not sure that's accurate," Papa murmured, but nobody was listening to him.

Archie stood up, brushing grass off himself with sudden purpose.

"I want to fly."

Mama smiled. "Then I suppose we're going to the slide."

All four of them crossed the playground together, Maisie leading the way up the ladder with Archie behind her and Papa close enough to catch him if his paw slipped, while Mama waited below where she could watch them come down. Archie took his time on the climb, stopping twice to peer through the gaps in the tower and once because he found a knot in the wood he was fairly sure looked like a frog, and needed a moment to appreciate it.

Eventually they made it to the top.

Maisie sat beside the mouth of the slide. Archie leaned over and looked down it, and his ears went back a little at how far it went.

"It goes really far."

"It looks farther from up here than it feels going down."

He edged closer anyway. "Do you fly the whole time?"

"Pretty much the whole time."

Papa settled behind them, unhurried. "You don't have to go if you don't want to."

Archie glanced back at the stairs. Then at the slide. Then at Maisie, who was practically vibrating with impatience beside him.

"You go first."

She didn't need telling twice — she pushed off and vanished around the first curve almost before he'd finished the sentence. He listened. A second later, faint and delighted, came a distant —

"WOOOOOOO!"

— and Archie smiled despite himself.

"Well?" said Papa.

Archie sat down at the top and put both paws against the sides of the slide, very seriously, as though the slide were something he might have to steer. "Papa? Can you count?" Papa asked to what, and Archie thought hard about it before deciding: "Three."

So Papa counted, matching his seriousness exactly — one, and Archie's paws tightened on the slide; two, and he leaned forward just slightly; three — and he pushed off. For half a second Papa could still see the tip of his tail, and then it was gone, swallowed by the curve, and there was a stretch of silence just long enough to be worrying before a long, ragged —

"AAAAAAAAH!"

— came echoing back up.

Papa leaned over the rail. At the bottom, Archie shot out of the slide and landed square in Mama's waiting arms, eyes enormous, fur slightly wild.

Maisie ran over. "Well?"

He just stared at her.

Nobody said anything for a second.

Then Archie pointed, without a word, toward the swings.

Maisie burst out laughing.

He wriggled free of Mama's arms and started toward the swings with real determination — but after three steps he slowed, stopped, and looked back over his shoulder at the purple slide like it had said something to him.

"Maybe one more."

Maisie's ears shot straight up.

"Race you!" She took off running.

"Wait for me!" Archie scrambled after her, already laughing.

Papa watched the two of them vanish back into the tower. Mama came to stand beside him, following their voices with her eyes as they climbed.

"He's going to be on that slide all afternoon now, isn't he."

Papa looked toward the empty swings, then up at the purple slide, just as two small voices came shrieking out from somewhere inside it, overlapping, indistinguishable, thrilled.

He smiled.

"Probably."

The playground wasn't magical.

But Maisie still wasn't convinced — and, watching Archie fly down that slide for the fourth time in a row, arms out like wings, she suspected Papa wasn't entirely convinced either.