The Leprechaun Who Tidied Up

Cormac was the tidiest leprechaun at Rainbow's End. He folded his hankies into triangles. He polished his buckles every morning and his gold coins every evening, and he kept the coins in stacks of ten, with the shiniest one on top. This was all perfectly fine until the night before St Patrick's Day, when Cormac was given his very first mischief assignment.

It came in a green envelope from the Leprechaun Compliance Unit. Number 9, Willow Lane, it said. Leave green footprints, turn three cushions upside down and tip over one small chair. All mischief to be small and easy to tidy. Cormac read it four times, and his fingers twitched.

He slipped into Number 9 through the cat flap just after midnight. The kitchen was dark and smelled of toast. By the fridge stood a leprechaun trap made from a shoebox, a lollipop stick and a great deal of sticky tape, with a sign in careful crayon that said Free gold inside. Cormac smiled. Then he looked around the rest of the kitchen, and his smile went a bit stiff.

There were crayons all over the table, with no lids on. There was a sock on the bread bin. There was a single shoe in the sink, for reasons nobody would ever explain. Cormac told himself firmly that he was here for mischief. And then, very quietly, he began to tidy.

He put the lids back on the crayons and sorted them by colour, from red to purple. He paired up the socks and rolled them into neat little balls. He dried the shoe with his hanky. He even fixed the trap, because the lid was crooked, and gave its hinge a dab of butter so it would not squeak. By half past one, the kitchen sparkled.

That was when the inspector arrived. Inspector Una Briarley was small and round, with a hat like an upturned flowerpot and a ledger under her arm. She looked at the sparkling kitchen for a long time. Then she wrote something down, tore it out and handed it to Cormac.

"Compliance Notice," she said. "Mischief required: three items. Mischief found: none. Tidiness found: a great deal more than is usual."

Cormac turned the colour of a radish. "I tried," he said. "But the crayons had no lids on." The inspector looked at him for a while over the top of her ledger. "You have until sunrise to do some mischief," she said. Then she sat down on the bread bin and opened a flask of tea.

Cormac tried. He tipped over a small chair, then winced and stood it up again. He turned a cushion upside down, then fluffed it, and then, without meaning to, he plumped it. The inspector sipped her tea and said nothing, very loudly. Cormac sat down on the floor with his chin in his hands.

Then he looked at the cushions, and at the shoes by the back door, and he had an idea. He stacked every cushion in the house into a tower that nearly touched the ceiling, perfectly straight, like a wedding cake. He lined up every shoe from the hall, toe to heel, in a long curling trail across the kitchen floor that ended at the trap. And inside the trap he left one gold coin, the shiniest one, polished twice.

Inspector Briarley put down her tea and walked the whole length of the shoe trail. Then she looked up at the cushion tower. "None of these things are where they belong," she said slowly. "That is mischief. And yet all of it could be put away in four minutes, which is tidy."

She opened her ledger, drew a brand new box at the bottom of the page and wrote Tidy Mischief beside it. Then she ticked it, stamped it twice, and gave Cormac a fresh notice that said: Mischief found, one new kind.

In the morning, a boy called Theo came down for breakfast and stopped in the kitchen doorway with his mouth wide open. He followed the shoe trail all the way to the trap and found the gold coin. Then he called up the stairs for everybody to come and see the cushions. Even the cat came to look.

By then, Cormac was home in his little house under the hawthorn tree at Rainbow's End. He hung his new notice on the wall, in a frame he had dusted twice. He lined his boots up under the bed, with their toes pointing the same way.

Then he climbed under his green quilt, folded back in a perfect triangle, and tucked his hands under his cheek. Outside, the rainbow was fading softly into the morning. Cormac thought about the cushion tower, standing straight and tall in a kitchen far away, and he smiled a small, tidy smile and fell fast asleep.