What is Arthur?

Short version – no idea. He’s not talking to me.

Longer version. He and his people are border guards, and have been since before the Romans invaded Dacia. They’ve been tangling with magic and non-mundane things for so many generations that they’ve become a touch uncanny themselves. Arthur being Arthur, if you told him that, he’d probably raise a glass of Hungarian red wine and bare his teeth in one of those “it’s not a smile” expressions that make Lelia want to hide behind something.

No, he truly does not understand why she’s scared of him.

Transylvania is a plateau surrounded by the southern and central Carpathian Mountains. It is rolling and somewhat forested, good farm land compared to the mountains, with a lot of natural resources. Winters can be hard, but the mountains do protect the area somewhat. However, back in the day, the mountains also harbored things like bears and wolves, and two-legged predators. The area is a borderland between the steppes to the east, the Danube plains to the west, the Polish plains to the north, and the Balkans. The Iron Gates on the Danube are the edge of the Carpathians. A number of invaders found passes through the mountains and cut through the Transylvanian plateau. This is one reason why fortified churches were common, and why communities were so insular. Interestingly, it also contributed to religious toleration, because it was Catholics, Calvinists, and Orthodox against the Ottomans, and later against almost everyone else.

That’s our-world history. In The Familiars world, where magic has been present for . . . a very long time, just not as strongly as at the time the books begin, the Carpathians served to concentrate some of that. As empires came and went, things and forces found refuge and bases of operation in the remote and rugged places. This required people to deal with “things and forces.” How long have Arthur’s people been doing this? If an anthropologist or archaeologist were to really get into their culture, he’d find elements that might go back as far as before the proto-Indo-European speakers moved into Europe from the steppes. Perhaps even older.

The abyss has been looking back (to abuse Nietzsche) at the clans for a very long time. History hasn’t helped. As a result, they tend to assume that everyone is out to get them, everything is out to get them, and outsiders are to be kept at least three arms’ lengths away. Preferably farther if possible. Back in the Old Country, the other people recognized this and treated the clans with wary respect. Everyone worked together, but the ordinary folks understood that the clans needed a little space, and left them alone. For their part, the clans made their living as herders, woodsmen, hunters and trackers, and things that kept them out where they needed to be, where the Wild Things Were.

How and why some of the clans came to the Americas is a long and complicated story, one that starts in the late 1800s with some foreboding and wariness about Russia and Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy, and nationalism, and that WWI and subsequent just intensified. Meister Gruenewald lost contact with other clan members for almost a century, and in fact André is the unwitting (at least at first) bridge between his mentor and some of the clans.

So, back to Arthur. His particular group settled in the area around what would become Riverton back when Indian raids were still something people worried about. Like the Anabaptists, Palatine Germans, and others, they kept their mouths shut, heads down, and a wary eye on the neighbors. Today, they keep their mouths shut, heads down, and a warier eye on the neighbors. Some things will never change. Perhaps. Arthur and his brother, and a few other cousins fled Latin America and rejoined the rest of the family in the 1940s, for reasons best not discussed.

Arthur is very Odd, by the lights of his people. He’s sort of the second in command, except his older brother lets him deal with things. Skender, his older brother’s real name, prefers not to worry with day-to-day matters and instead focuses on Hunting. Arthur takes care of problems within the clan, keeping the younger men in line, and ensures clan financial stability as best he can. His fondness for the goth subculture has some of the women muttering questions about if he was born backwards or dropped on his head as a baby, or if he was conceived on St. Elijah’s feast (July 20). He pretends he doesn’t hear their comments, they pretend not to know that he knows . . . The goth shop started in part as a way for the clan to have eyes in Riverton, the better to watch the local government and people. Then along came Lelia.

By the end of Eerily Familiar, Arthur has taken responsibility for Lelia, at least in his mind. She starts as his employee and thus a low-ranking dependent. Then she steps, albeit unknowingly, into the same role that the women in the clan do when she takes his orders and uses magic at his command. He recognizes the flavor and scent of her magic as being like clan magic, and so he starts treating her as “one of his.” Thus his dismay when she fails to consult him about possible marriage partners. Picking her own Hunting partner is one thing. Husband? That’s a different matter entirely. If André hadn’t answered  Arthur’s challenge the correct and proper way, Arthur would have thrown him bodily out of the shop and then given Lelia a Stern Talking To about life partners and such.

It’s not the first time a member of the clans has adopted an outsider. Often the adoptees had some kind of gift, usually magic or a skill with knowledge or hand-work that made them valuable members of the community. Bringing Lelia and André into the clan makes survival sense.

However, as Skender and the clan Healer have reminded Arthur, he’s going to get hurt. He’s in early middle age by clan standards, and barring death in battle or a fatal accident, he will live for a very long time. His suflit fiia and nume fiiu will not, not by clan standards. As time passes, Arthur may find it better to withdraw again, pushing Lelia and her family away. Or he might choose to accept the pain and the joy of staying close to them.

Language? It goes back to Dacian with Latin interwoven, and other things besides. All clan members speak at least two languages: their own, and the surrounding speech. Arthur speaks four: his native language, some Romanian, German, Spanish, and English, and he has a smattering of Ukrainian or Polish. Romanian is close to the clan’s language, but they’re not quite interchangeable.

Religion? Arthur’s people can get along with Roman Catholics. They think that the Eastern Orthodox went astray with the theology of Mary as the Theotokos, and are convinced that Protestants tossed the baby out with the bathwater. The clans have no tolerance for any form of Islam, and are wary about a lot of neo-paganism. Thus Lelia’s first guess was not quite right when she thought that Arthur was neo-pagan. It’s actually an offshoot of pre-Nicean Christianity, with G-d the Father as the supreme deity over all. Jesus is the separate son of G-d and is responsible for the day, while Mary as the consort of G-d is partially in charge of the night. St. Michael serves as her man-at-arms, so to speak. Since most of what the clans deal with are things that move in darkness and shadow, they honor and worship the Father and Son, but Mary is the one who watches over their goings out and comings in.

Arthur’s Arthur. And strange.

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