When Mr. George Ratherham called his daughters to his office the next morning, Raina was sure he was going to explain the blow up between him and Marko. It turned out to be a surety borne in wishful thinking, which Raina realized in hindsight that she should have known. Her father never spoke to them in anything but the most formal of terms. If anything happened that was outside of the perfect picture he tried to create out of their lives, he ignored it, hiding behind the heavy doors of his study and the strong authority of Nana Lalia. Marko was just gone, and Mr. Ratherham was moving on to other things.
"We will have guests for dinner tonight," Mr. Ratherham announced to them from behind his perfectly tidy desk. "We will be visited by my brother and his wife. Your Uncle Septimus and Aunt Julia."
"Uncle Septimus?" Raina's eyes had grown wide. She hadn't seen her Uncle Septimus since she was six years old and she barely remembered what he looked like, but she did remembered that Uncle Septimus was the best Bazza'Caster she'd ever seen. "Is he staying here? Is he bringing servants? Is he going to Cast for Bazza'Jo?"
"Well, well, well, yes, yes." Her father had stammered, trying to nip Raina's unauthorized enthusiasm in the bud. "His affairs are not mine. I'm sure you can ask him all these things tomorrow, Raina. You have been told, so I am finished with you. I will see you at dinner."
Septimus and Julia arrived that evening not long after Raina and Ibli got back from school. The girls spotted them from their bedroom window walking casually up the road towards their house, hand in hand. To their surprise, they came without a single bag or trunk. Raina felt immediately glum, since this clearly meant her aunt and uncle weren't going to stay. Somewhat more astute in her observations, Ibli wondered out loud:
"But they must be staying someplace. It takes hours to get here even from the Trade Dock."
Raina could only think of one other possibility: Septimus had somehow Cast his bags on ahead so that he didn't have to carry them, and was enjoying a leisurely walk through the town at dusk, taking in all the sights of the new homes, new shops and Baz fields.
Raina was beside herself with curiosity and ambushed her uncle in the front hall.
"Uncle Septimus!" she called, racing down the staircase three steps at a time and leaping the last five in one go. She beat Doba, their Padman butler, by half a room.
"Raina!" cried her uncle, scooping her up as she dashed towards him and hugging her tight. Raina was completely bewildered for a moment. No one had hugged her in years, save her Nan. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, she quickly recovered and squeezed him back, enjoying his big, warm embrace. She remembered him now that he was here in front of her, and wondered how she could ever have forgotten him. He was enormous, at least twice the size of her father, and completely covered in hair from head to toe except where his naked nose and cheeks stuck out of his otherwise overwhelmingly bushy beard. His hair and eyes were dark, dark brown except for reddish hairs in his beard here and there, and he shared with Raina the ruddy brownish-red skin of someone who spends all of their time in the sun. He seemed to be especially brown in the smile lines around his eyes and mouth, emphasizing his easy smile. He was entirely the most comfortable thing Raina had ever hugged.
As he put her down, Raina saw a woman who must be her Aunt Julia emerge from behind him. She was hardly taller than Raina was, but with thick, wide hips and wide, strong-looking shoulders and forearms. Her hair was long and bright red, piled messily on top of her head and held there with all kind of pins and clips. She eyes were dark brown too, nearly black, and she had the same red-brown skin Septimus had. And the same smile lines.
"Aunt... Julia?" Raina exclaimed, cautiously, and was instantly smothered in a hug nearly as enormous as her uncle's. Raina wished desperately that she had more family like this.
"And you must be Ibliana." Julia said warmly as she let Raina go. Ibli, taking the stairs only one at a time, had just arrived.
"We call her Ibli." Raina informed them, "For short." Ibli got a double dose of familial hugs just like Raina did. "How did you do it?" Raina couldn't wait. "Did you Cast your bags here? Where did they go? Where did you get the Baz for that? I have never seen it at the Bazzaria or in the warehouse!"
Septimus laughed, a rolling, softer sound than one might have imagined. "Cast? We left our bags at the house, darlin'. No reason to bring them all the way up here!"
"House?" Raina frowned. "This is the house..." her voice trailed off as it dawned on her. "You mean your house?"
A familiar look passed over her uncle's face, as if something had just dawned on him too.
"Welcome us to the neighbourhood, kids!" he held his hands out wide and smiled nearly as widely making the announcement. A look briefly passed between him and Julia, but was quickly replaced with more smiles. Raina had almost had enough of that for one week: people assuming she was too stupid to see or notice anything, but she was too happy with the news to worry about it long.
"You've moved to Fort Arnisson?!" Raina whooped with delight, forgetting herself. "Where is your house? On the hill? Can we go see it?" Septimus and Julia seemed really amused by her enthusiasm and gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze.
"Maybe we should go see your father and have a drink and a seat before we start telling tales, eh Raina?" Septimus smiled and Raina was immediately placated. As if on cue, Doba cleared his throat apologetically and issued Septimus and Julia a formal greeting, full of "Mr. Ratherham beseeches you" and "if you'll kindly leave your bags" even though they didn't have any. When he finished up, Raina took Septimus's hand and Ibli took Julia's, and they followed the butler into the drawing room where George Ratherham waited to greet his long-absent brother.
*
Raina and Ibli had moved to Fort Arnisson four years ago, when Raina was nine and Ibli six. Before that they'd lived in a far-southern outpost of the Empire called Coast of Frances where their father had done much the same work he did here for Bazza'Jo. Coast of Frances had been in a region called Malik which was hot and dry year 'round, except for one month a year when it poured rain night and day for thirty days straight. The last time Raina had seen her Uncle Septimus was there, in Coast of Frances. She'd only seen him once, when they first arrived, and soon after her father had told her Septimus had moved on to some other strange land she'd never heard of.
In Coast of Frances, most people who didn't grow Baz or sell things to people who grew Baz spent all their time building pipelines from the Sea to the towns to fill man-made lakes called reservoirs. They drew the water from the resevoirs to nourish the earth and keep the land green and fertile. Coast of Frances was like a lush green island atop a cliff with a sea of water on one side and a sea of desert on the other. The Bazza'Jo shipments came in to a port town called Port Lucius some miles north of Coast of Frances, and Mr. Ratherham had constantly traveled back and forth with shipments and errands.
The reservoir in Coast of Frances was an odd thing. The water from the sea was too salty to use on the Baz fields, so the water had to be distilled. This meant the water coming through the pipes had to be boiled, evaporated, re-condensed and cooled through a bunch of filtration plants nearby, and the smell they made was incredibly awful. It wasn't just the smell either. After living there for six months Ibli started getting coughs all the time and missed most of her first year of school.
They had a different Nan then, a woman named Miss Singleton who Raina used to fight with constantly. Miss Singleton didn't seem to have a clue what to do about Ibli, and with Mr. Ratherham out of town on business all the time no one ever made a real decision about how to make Ibli better. The doctors couldn't agree on what to prescribe. Miss Singleton cooked up bowls of this Baz and that Baz but it didn't really ever work. Ibli still had this cough all the time, and she didn't grow much in all the time they were there. They didn't last much longer. Bazza'Jo Headquarters transferred Mr. Ratherham to Fort Arnisson after their second year in Coast of Frances. Miss Singleton had stayed behind.
The climate of Fort Arnisson, and in fact all of Godresland, suited both Ibli and Raina quite well. The forests and swamps were great for exploring, and Ibli had developed an interest in growing her own Baz in the warm, wet climate. Best of all, there were no water distilleries in Fort Arnisson. The swamp water was perfect for growing Baz just the way it was, and everything except the hill on which the town was built and the few square miles around it was sopping wet all the time.
They had been here for four years, and now their uncle had come again to visit them.
*
"...so then my Julia goes right up to this great beast of a man and says to him 'At least I've got the right mind to do this!' and clubs him on the back of the knees - bam! - with the serving spoon! He goes down like a bag of wet sand and stays there because the great idiot's got himself tied up in the very ropes he thought he'd use on us!"
Septimus, Julia, and Raina gasped for breath between rounds of huge, uncontrollable laughter. Even Ibli smiled happily, the closest she ever got to laughing out loud. Raina could barely manage to swallow with all the storytelling and laughter pouring out her uncle. It was by far the best family dinner they'd had in living memory. From the moment their food arrived - a baked Bazza'Jo casserole with an oily spiced Green Baz on the side - Septimus had talked non-stop, with forgotten details put in by Julia, about absolutely everything. It seemed to Raina that her aunt and uncle had lived everywhere in the Empire and a few places outside of it, which Raina hadn't even thought was possible until now. And somehow, they had managed to get into adventures in every place.
"But what do you do?" she finally asked him. "I mean, for a living? How do you buy your Baz? Outside the Empire, especially!" Mr. Ratherham shot her a look and she knew her question wasn't polite, but she had to know. Septimus didn't seem the type to mind such questions.
"Don't you remember, Raina?" Septimus winked at her. "I'm a Bazza'Caster. Professionally. Bazza'Seven, most people call me."
"You Cast for Bazza'Jo? Have you ever met him?" Raina's eyes lit up. Casters were pretty high up in the Bazza'Jo hierarchy. They tested and developed new Baz varieties, and were the best Casters in the Empire.
"Oh, goodness no. I Cast myself, not for Bazza'Jo." Septimus chuckled.
"I doubt that." Mr. Ratherham interrupted uncharacteristically, but Septimus didn't even look at him and the conversation carried on as if nothing had been said.
"Really?" Ibli seemed interested. "I didn't know you could be paid for Casting unless you Cast for Bazza'Jo!" the notion obviously appealed to her.
"You can't, Ibliana." Mr. Ratherham said, not looking up from his dinner. "There isn't a person nowadays who can't Cast for themselves. There's no real living to be made Casting for other people. Mercenary Casting is crude and inappropriate. It's worse than servant's work. I can't imagine who would need someone to Cast for them."
"Oh, you'd be surprised, George." Septimus said cheerfully. "There's some Bazza'Casting in this world that some people might find challenging, would't you say?"
"I would indeed be very surprised. With the advances Bazza'Jo has been making with the new Baz, any man, woman and child will be able to Cast from a grain with beautiful and wondrous results." Raina recognized the phrase word-for-word from Bazza'Jo posters. "There shouldn't be any need for professional Bazza'Casters now, and there certainly isn't any future in it."
"Ah, Bazza'Jo." Septimus looked at his food, which Raina now noticed neither he nor Julia had really had time to touch. "Yes, he'll revolutionize Bazza'Casting, all right."
A moment of tension held in the air that Raina could nearly see. She felt obliged to break it neatly:
"Ibli is the best Caster in our entire school. She beats even the upper classmen."
"Is that so, Ibli?" Julia smiled, happy to help dispel the tension.
"I grow my own Baz." Ibli said matter-of-factly, as if she had no idea that she might be proud of the fact. "You can see my plants upstairs, if you want, after dinner." She blushed a little as she offered, the flush of red shining against her white-white skin.
"Why do they call you Bazza'Seven, Uncle Septimus?? Raina asked after her aunt and uncle had agreed to inspect Ibli's plants.
"It's less of a mouthful than 'Septimus'," Julia answered for him, "And it means basically the same thing."
"'Seven' is an odd name." Raina couldn't help saying.
"Seventh son of a seventh son." Septimus beamed. "Might be odd but it's darn appropriate."
"Seventh?" Raina fixed her inquisitive gaze on her father. "I have five MORE uncles?" She had the sudden and happy picture of a great and huge family dinner with six Septimuses and six Julias lined up and down their new lacquered dining room table, laughing and booming with stories and smiles, and her father obscured at the head of it.
"No." Mr. Ratherham seemed too eager to finish eating to elaborate.
"Our brothers all died when we were younger, Raina." Septimus said calmly, though the room seemed to grow cooler. "George was the second son, I was the seventh. We're all that's left."
"Which is all the more reason to stick together." Julia smiled and warmed the room back up again. "And why we've moved to Fort Arnisson. Family should stick together and not ignore each other over miles and years."
"I'd never ignore any of you." Raina said fiercely. She suddenly realized how very much she meant it. "I won't lose you or Uncle Septimus or Nana Lalia or Ibli. Or father. I'll make us stay together."
"You're a strong girl, Raina." Septimus cuffed her in the shoulder playfully and she nearly fell out of her seat. "Reminds me of a little hunter girl we knew back in Malik. I should tell you the story..."
*
It turned out that Septimus and Julia had moved into a cottage outside of Fort Arnisson, off near the East Wood of the Padravana forest, not too far from town. After dinner Septimus and Julia allowed Raina and Ibli to show them around the house. Uncle Septimus seemed genuinely interested in Ibli's plants. He and Ibli dug around in pots and poked at roots while Raina modeled her new sari for Julia. The grownups then retired to Mr. Ratherham's study as Nana Lalia insisted the girls head back upstairs to their room to "wind down" before bed. Raina started to protest, but even Julia and Septimus insisted. Raina grudgingly "retired" as well.
As she lay in bed that night Raina dreamed of visiting her aunt and uncle in the woods, imagining that they had built their cottage fifty feet off the ground in a canopy of tangled branches and intensely colored flowers. Just like the nest she had found in the North Wood.