Mischief Night (Historical Fiction)
By Brenda B. Covert
Finola and Patrick Brody slipped out the back door after their parents put out the oil lamps and went to bed.
"Do you think anyone else in this country knows that it's Mischief Night?" Finola asked her brother as she threw her shawl over her shoulder
"If they don't know now, they will know in the morning!" her brother replied in a low voice.
The dead leaves crackled as the twins crept out to the pumpkin patch. By the light of the orange moon, Finola chose a nice, fat pumpkin. Patrick produced a small knife and set to work making a jack-o-lantern of it. He pulled a short, stubby candle from his pocket and fitted it inside the pumpkin.
"Now, let there be light!" Patrick declared softly as he lit the candle. The jack-o-lantern glowed eerily in the darkness.
The pair strolled down the road to the neighbor's house.
"What shall we do first?" Finola asked. Her long skirts swished around her legs.
Patrick looked at his sister. Her black shawl framed her face in shadows and blended in with her dark clothing. The orange-yellow glow of the jack-o-lantern threw shadows across her eyes. She looked spooky, a bit like the grim reaper.
"We should unhinge the fence gate first, I should think," he said. "It is the farthest from the house, so the Tindalls will not hear us."
A sudden breeze nearly blew out the candle. Patrick turned the toothy grin away from the wind. A dog - or was it a wolf? - howled in the distance.
The pair arrived at the gate and made short work of it. In the morning when Mr. Tindall went to tend his cattle, the gate would fall flat! What a jolly joke that would be!
Tipping over the outhouse was next on their list. They struggled to remain quiet. It was funny to imagine the Tindalls coming out in the morning and finding their toilet on its side!
"Let's leave the pumpkin sitting here," Finola said. "It will look like the work of Jack!"
The last thing to do was to creep up to the house and soap the windows. Finola wanted to make the pretty designs that a fairy or an elf might make. Patrick merely wanted to fog up the windows so the Tindalls couldn't see out of them.
Once they had completed their Mischief Night activities, Finola and Patrick scurried toward home.
"I wonder what our friends back in Ireland are doing," Finola said wistfully.
"Oh, they'll have finished their Mischief Night celebration by now," Patrick replied, sounding a bit forlorn. "The bonfires will have died out, and they'll all be sleeping soundly in their beds. In just a few hours they'll rise with the sun and feign surprise at the midnight work of the fairies and elves!"
"Aye," Finola agreed, "and they will grin and wink at each other." She sighed. "America is a nice place to visit, but I do miss Ireland and --"
"Don't look now," Patrick burst out, as a light flickered in a window of their home. "I think we've been discovered!"