The Busybody Buddha

By Margie Rutledge

In the sequel to The Great Laundry Adventure, the three Lawrence children, Abigail, Jacob and Ernest (from oldest to youngest) are again embarked on a mysterious adventure, but this time, the adventure is initiated, it appears, by a small blue stone buddha which Ernest has discovered in a mysterious shop. The little buddha has a way of showing Ernest the unhappiness of others, and his brother and sister have expressly forbidden him to bring the buddha along on their summer holiday. With their parents, they arrive by motorboat on the wonderfully primitive island where they always spend their holidays, ready for a carefree summer. At first they are delighted to rediscover their favorite haunts and activities, but soon five-year-old Ernest is oppressed by a sense of foreboding. He is afraid to tell Abigail and Jacob that he has brought the buddha to the island, but they soon discover its presence and take measures to try to prevent the buddhas powerful and unhappy messages from spoiling their holiday. Then the children discover a battered replica of the tourist boat, the Segwun, which has plied these shores for decades, and which then leads them to a small mist shrouded island, called Serene Island. They also discover a mysterious cave with ancient drawings and a tunnel through which pours the sound of sobbing. They follow the tunnel and it leads them back to the same small island. This time they find someone who is indeed unhappy and needs their help. And so their adventure with Charlotte, a young girl from another time, begins. A junior novel with a classic feel, illustrated with black and white illustrations, which will delight children eight and up. Rutledge has mined the mysterious elements of an untamed island to produce a story which is both whimsical and enchanting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Nov 1, 2002
• ISBN: 9781459716667

Margie Rutledge

Margie Rutledge was born in Midland, Texas. MargieÂ’s first novel for young people was The Great Laundry Adventure, which was followed by the sequel, The Busybody Buddha. She currently teaches English as a second language part-time and has a thriving writing career, focusing on fiction, freelance journalism, and agitprop theatre. Her recent journalism has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The National Post, Mothering Magazine, and Books in Canada. Margie lives in Toronto.

Book preview

Voet.

Chapter One

A Wet Arrival

Abigail, Jacob and Ernest scrunched themselves among the suitcases and groceries and bins of linens and bags of books and a box of ale and Dad's guitar. Lady, their dog, scrunched somewhat more comfortably because she wasn't wearing a life jacket.

Stop humming! Abigail snapped at Jacob.

Huh? replied Jacob, lost for the moment somewhere much less crowded.

Dad, he keeps humming. Abigail turned to her father on the dock.

Catch the rope, Jacob, ordered their father.

Ernest started to hum himself, but he was drowned out by the sound of the motor starting.

Their father carefully arranged himself on board and their mother, perched up on the back of her seat, backed away from the dock and manoeuvered to avoid all nearby obstacles.

The Lawrence family had cast off, finally, in the little motorboat burdened with provisions, for a week on Hideaway Island, Muskoka.

It was Saturday, mid-afternoon, and the sky was darkening.

The family reached the channel leading to their lake, and the boat slowed down: maximum nine knots an hour. Cottages lined both edges of the channel, and to their left passed a steady parade of water traffic into town. I couldn't speculate about their thoughts along this passage, but I can reveal the contents of the children's backpacks.

Abigail, six weeks shy of her eleventh birthday, had packed a few bottles of her favourite nail polish: blue, green, black, multi-coloured sparkles, silver sparkles and red. She had her lipstick and her blush and a current fashion magazine she'd already almost memorized. She had her stuffed dog, Gundy, and her diary, a crocheted shawl her mother'd made her and her golden carousel ring.

Jacob, who was eight, had a compass, a couple of twig arrows he'd made in Muskoka last year to play Robin Hood, a pocket knife to make more arrows and improve the bow he'd left behind, a James Herriot book he'd almost finished and Jingle, his teddy bear. He'd also brought along some of his favourite rocks, a bathing suit he'd remembered at the last minute and a map of Ontario taken from National Geographic.

Ernest, now five and a half, had packed two daggers (one plastic and one wooden—handmade), his stuffed dog Timmy, a bicycle lock to keep Timmy from running away, a toy boat, a copy of Winnie-the-Pooh and one of The Phoenix and the Carpet for his mother to read him in the evenings and some money (just pennies) he'd found under his bed that morning. Unknown to his sister and brother (not to mention his parents), Ernest had packed the busybody buddha, the blue stone buddha with a mischievous face and magical (busybody) properties that he'd received for his fifth birthday.

The family were now exiting the channel and entering the open water of Lake Rosseau. The motorboat sped up, and the family's thoughts were easy to decipher: happy anticipation. The children looked across the water to islands they could not name. Muskoka islands of stone, dense with trees, some with dominating boathouses and many without.

They headed for the southern end of Tobin's Island, and then they could see The Crag. The boat veered east and there was Hideaway: their marvelous, beautiful, perfect island, which wasn't really theirs, except in their hearts. They could see South Dock and The Bridge that linked Hideaway to St. Leonard's Island and the old, green boathouse on St. Leonard's and the buoys that marked the entrance to Cayley's Cut, the shallow passage that led to the other side of the island.

The sky grew darker.

Their mother pulled back on the throttle, and the motorboat slowed right down as they approached the buoys. Nine knots again.

Muskoka. I know their thoughts were all Muskoka.

On their left was Sandy Cove abundant with water lilies tangled with fallen branches and trees now skeletal and sprawled across the sand and water. And the woods immediately behind with silver birch and pine and cedar and the random mix of those felled by lightning or old age.

To their right were cliffs of stone: twelve, twenty and then further on, fifty feet high rising sheer out of the lake. In the crags and crevices, tree roots clenched the stone like bird claws while just above, their trunks and branches seemed on the verge of flight above the water.

Muskoka.

They were coming to the end of Cayley's Cut. The water changed. The waves were choppy, and their mother couldn't find the current to ride in to. The little boat was tossed about. And then the sky just disappeared, the ominous dark clouds were gone, and so was everything else. Greyness descended on them. No more clouds, no sky, no horizon, the neighbouring islands disappeared. Even the water was lost in greyness.

They were wet, instantly, as if a huge bucket had been emptied on their heads. The rain was fierce, and it hurt their faces. They could barely see the water an arm's length away.

Everyone be quiet! their mother ordered.

But no one had said anything, and no one would have. They were all too frightened.

Through the squall they somehow managed to make out David and Goliath, the two small islands in the centre of their cove. They had their bearings and from there they could see North Dock, where they would land.

They got within a couple feet of the dock, not close enough to grab a tie-up ring, when Lady scrambled over Ernest and leapt overboard. She made it onto the dock and ran up the hill into the woods and disappeared.

She thinks we're going to sink, said Abigail.

Their father caught a ring and slipped through the rope, and everyone knew they wouldn't sink. They were wetter than if they'd all fallen in the lake, and they were going to get wetter.

The children crawled out of the boat, and Abigail and Jacob tied up. The waves were fierce, and the boat was pitching as their mother alternately tossed and delicately handed suitcases and supplies to their father on the dock. When his backpack was unloaded, Ernest grabbed it and disappeared up the hill, on the trail of Lady, calling to her over and over and over, but barely heard by the others in the thickness of the rain.

While their parents unloaded, it fell to Jacob and Abigail to haul the goods already on the dock up the hill. And the hill leading to the cottage was formidable, steep and long with a pine needle path, anchored in places by huge stones and scattered with moss and bark and slippery in other places, where last year's leaves had fallen, and easy to trip on where roots surfaced unexpectedly.

The cottage was locked, so they dumped the suitcases and groceries in a sheltered corner and ran back to collect another load. Up and down the hill they went, joined by their father while their mother worked to get the boat cover into place. They were all so busy and so concentrated that for moments they would forget the rain and then discover it again, pounding down upon them as they worked. No one noticed Ernest missing from the group.

Finally everything was up the hill, and their parents found the hidden keys to unlock the many cottage doors. They started moving all their goods inside. The cottage was divided into two parts. In one big room was a fireplace with a couple of large, comfortable chairs and a built-in couch and a big dining room table. Connected to that was the kitchen, and off the kitchen was a screened-in porch with another big dining room table and a wonderful view overlooking the lake (which couldn't really be seen at the moment).

The children had to go outside again to get to their bedroom on the other side of the wall from the fireplace. They all slept in the same room on Hideaway—another part of the adventure of being there. Through a missing panel in their closet, the children could get to their parents' bedroom, which otherwise had to be entered from outside.

Abigail and Jacob and their parents set about settling their possessions in the appropriate places, and still no one noticed Ernest missing.

I have to go to the outhouse, Abigail announced to no one in particular.

The rain had eased and might have actually stopped; it was hard to tell with all the trees. The outhouse was up the hill above the cottage a few hundred feet. As Abigail started up the pine needle path, Lady raced towards her from the woods. The dog was soaking wet and smelled of skunk (the last residue of a misadventure earlier that summer). Abigail pushed her away when she tried to jump up on her. On hind legs, the dog was almost as big as Abigail, and though the two of them sometimes pretended to dance, (ballroom dancing mostly), the wet dog skunky smell disgusted her and Abigail sent Lady away.

Go! Go find Jacob! Go on! she insisted, loud enough to miss the singing coming from the outhouse.

Now, the marvellous thing about this particular outhouse was that it had no door. Instead it had the woods: with oak and silver birch and