McFishie, I had too much fun with this one to meet your word count. As per the prompt, you should find herein one blue dog, one black cat, and one lace handkerchief. I'm afraid it's not very ghoulish, but I had lots of fun writing it for your Spooky Story Challenge.
The problem with The Avonlea Improvement Society, A.V.I.S. to the young people, was that many of its projects needed money to thrive. Or so Marilla inferred from Anne's dinnertime chatter. They had done their best to scavenge supplies, but the Pyes wouldn't part with what was theirs on principle, and the people would, couldn't afford the generosity.
That was how the A.V.I.S. fundraiser came about. Josie Pye wanted to sell apples, and Gilbert wanted to know where Miss Pye planned to get the apples to sell. Jane thought they could try cleaning the local houses for a fee, but Josie wouldn't lower herself. Marilla listened dizzyingly to this recapitulation with half an ear. She couldn't decide if she should be amused or horrified that the young people had internal politics to rival the Ladies Aid Society.
'So that's when I said we should have a Harvest Festival,' said Anne.
Marilla, realizing contribution was now required from her side, scrabbled for an opinion.
'Harvest Festival? Isn't that a bit…A bit…'
Candidly, Pagan was the word that sprung luridly to mind, but that sounded too like Rachel.
'Unconventional?' she tried, weakly.
'Exactly!' said Anne. 'Oh Marilla, just think how much life it will breathe into the church hall.'
Marilla, unsure that 'life' and 'church hall' had ever before been used in such close proximity, forebore to comment.
'It's unchristian, that's what,' said Rachel over tea.
How she had got to hear of the A.V.I.S. goings-on Marilla didn't know. But Rachel's almost psychic ability to discover something was afoot before the something had got its legs under it was legendary.
Albeit with less italics, Marilla said, 'I don't know, it might breathe some life into the church hall.'
Rachel snorted but did not actually ask where Marilla had got this idea from. Marilla called it a victory and plied Rachel with shortbread. She was hoping to cut off a Lynde diatribe before it was at full speed. No luck.
Enter Anne in the giddiest whirlwind ever to whirl its way through Avonlea.
'Marilla,' she said breathless. 'Oh, Marilla! I'm so happy I found you. Diana and I absolutely must have a crystal ball for our table and we've looked absolutely everywhere – but there's nothing. I'm beyond vexed! And then I thought – could we possibly, just this once, borrow that crystal bowl of yours?'
Rachel opened her mouth to say something, but Anne wasn't through.
'We'd be ever so careful. I know how long it's been in your family. But with a lace handkerchief around it, it would make the most romantical crystal ball.'
'Now, Anne,' said Rachel, 'I really don't think – '
'Go on then,' said Marilla. 'If you must. But be careful with it.'
'Oh Marilla!' she said, and clasped her hands with enough fervour to make Marilla seriously reconsider the enterprise. But then Anne said, 'We'll be ever so careful!'
Rachel said, 'You're going soft, that's what.'
'Hardly,' said Marilla. 'I'd remind you, Rachel, that no one, and I mean no one, has liked that monstrosity masquerading as a crystal salad bowl ever since Michael Cuthbert bought it for his too-young bride, ad that was over four generations ago if it was a day. I hate it, mother hated it, Grandmother Constance hated it, and to hear her tell it, Great-Grandmother Anna Maria hated it before anyone else did.'
Undeterred, Rachel snorted as elegantly as possible around a mouthful of tea and shortbread, which was not very. 'Mark my words, Marilla,' she said with a judicious wave of her shortbread, 'you'll regret that generosity.'
Marilla still thought the notion of Harvest Festival was unconventional. Pagan, even. But there was no denying that Anne and her fellow A.V.I.S. contemporaries had done a remarkable job dressing the hall.
They had plaited leaves together and wound them around posts. They had suspended bunting from the ceiling. There were bowls of punch and pitchers of cordial carefully placed on tables. There were stalls selling baking and stalls boasting lace, and at the Pye table, it must be said, the most rat-tailed, knotty and generally mis-shappen knitted quilts Marilla had ever had the misfortune to witness. And she had witnessed many a knitting misadventure at the hands of the young Lyndes.
Young Moody was scraping his way unforgivably through what Marilla thought was trying to be Davy Nick-Nack on the fiddle but couldn't be sure. The screeching left it so wide of the mark that it could equally have been De'il Among the Tailors or Not Last Night But the Night Before. That didn't stop it evoking pleasant, if distant memories of bonfires and hayricks. Marilla paused to smile at the passing ghost and handed her entrance money to one of the many Andrews press-ganged to sensible Jane's cause.
There were colourful gourds on the stage and outsized pumpkins flanking the entrance. Round the back, a sign proclaimed there was a jack-o-lantern carving competition, which sounded, not to channel Rachel too over-much, ghoulish, unholy and unlawful.
So, Marilla eschewed the pumpkin carving and plunged into the thronging mass of the church hall, where Moody's ribald music ricochetted off the walls with abandon.
Immediately Marilla spotted Anne's table. It was impossible to miss. The young woman in question had wrapped a brightly-coloured scarf around her head and sported an eyewatteringly multicoloured skirt. Looking at it, Marilla got the distinct impression Anne and Diana had hobbled the thing together out of at least three of Mini May's old dresses and one patchwork quilt. It was remarkable for all the wrong reasons.
Also on Anne's table in pride of place was the crystal bowl so lately maligned. Anne had polished it to a nicety, and it sparkled in the autumn sunlight, the crystal winking and blinking its new lease on life. There was a sash around the bottom do disguise it's status as bowl and a lace handkerchief draped over the top. Presently Anne removed it with a flourish as she gesticulated over it for the benefit of Nellie Blewitt.
'Unchristian,' said Rachel, verily manifesting at Marilla's elbow. This did not deter Rachel from drinking a cup of unchristian tea courtesy of the Harvest Festival Refreshments Committee. Marilla stifled a smile.
'And do you see,' this as Rachel appropriated Marilla's elbow, 'what that girl of yours has done to the Barry cat? Well, do you?'
Marilla considered several responses to this, first and foremost that the Barry's black cat, sat in the manner of an Egyptian God, head forward and feet together at Anne's left elbow was unmissable.
'Yes, Rachel,' she said. 'I see. Shall we sit?'
Rachel harrumphed but did not object when Marilla steered them towards a table angled so as to give them a view of Anne in her fortune-teller getup.
'What did the Barrys call that cat?' asked Marilla. She waved down Jane Andrews and was duly promised a cup of tea in the inexpensive and clunky china typical of the church.
'Marzipan,' said Rachel. 'That's what happens when you let Mini May name cats, that's what. Ridiculous name. But there it is. Your Anne wanted something more elegant.'
Nobly, Marilla refrained from pointing out that the uninitiated might infer from this that Rachel was on Anne's side vis a vis one Marzipan the Black Cat. Instead she scanned the room for signs of Gilbert Blythe. She hadn't spotted him, and it seemed odd that he wasn't hovering like an anxious housewife at Anne's elbow.
As if the thought had conjured him, the young gentleman sauntered into the room, a wickedly-grinning jack-o-lantern in his arms and a blue dog at his heels. Why this should be, Marilla couldn't say. Blythe dogs had always been work dogs before pets. But then, this one looked decidedly puppyish, and perhaps the boy was training it up.
Beside Marilla, Rachel sniffed. 'Have you ever seen such a ridiculous colour for a farm dog?' she asked.
'Blythe dogs are always that colour,' said Marilla. 'As you well know. Have been for years. MacTavish was blue, and Jock after him was blue, as was Angus and MacPherson and that unfortunate Barlow-creature that couldn't learn it's job.'
'Remember them well, do you?'
Marilla sniffed in her turn and took the opportunity to point out that Matthew Cuthbert had never met a dog that didn't take to him like a duck to water, and the blue Blythe dogs were no different.
'Well,' said Rachel, 'this one wants training, that's what.'
Exasperatingly, Rachel was not wrong. Presently, the dog stuck it's tail in the air and its nose to the ground and barked in the direction of the magnificent felininity of the cat named Marzipan.
It gave an almighty bark, belying it's small size and verily bounced on the balls of its little blue feet. Barked again. Marzipan's eyes narrowed. The dog, who had clearly never met a soul that didn't bend to its will, waggled its tail and barked more vociferously still.
The dog was manifestly not fluent in Feline. Gilbert was but was too busy wrangling with Anne over a fortune-telling to mind his canine companion. And all the while the cat's eyes got narrower and narrower, and the dog's bark bigger and bigger. It showed it's belly, and the cat pounced.
It was magnificent. The outraged cat skittered on a stack of cards, slipped on the hem of the lace handkerchief, tripped over its inky black feet and sent the generations-old Cuthbert crystal crashing to the ground. Offended by the noise, the cat yowled fury and leaped higher than ever, but not before landing all eight pounds of feline body on fourteen undersized pounds of still-growing dog.
Anne sent up a wail to rival the undead, not that Marilla had heard the undead, not that she opined thusly to Rachel. The perplexed dog squealed like a banshee and the cat sprang up like the offended fury it was. Gilbert tripped over his tongue to apologize and Anne stuck her nose so far into the air it was in danger of remaining that way.
'I told you,' said Rachel. 'I said to you, Marilla, that you'd regret lending out that bowl. And what's happened? Your great-grandmother's wedding gift – in pieces!'
'Fiddlesticks,' said Marilla crisply. 'I told you that everyone has hated that monstrosity since time began. Anne's done us a favour,' and then because she couldn't resist, she added, 'that's what.'
Afterwards they would laugh over the whole episode while drinking cups of respectably brewed tea in china that was china. But in the meantime there was a heart-stricken Anne to minister to, a dog to round up and a Blythe boy in need of a sympathetic ear. Marilla set her tea down with a chatter and marched boldly into the fray.
If nothing else, someone should really see to those crystal shards. And then – well, and then she was putting a moratorium on Harvest Festivals into the hereafter. They were entirely too unconventional. Not to say pagan.
