Cassandra Clare - Shadowhunters and Downworlders. A Mortal Instruments Reader

A MORTAL INSTRUMENTS READER

EDITED BY

C ASSANDRA C LARE

An Imprint of BenBella Books, Inc.

Dallas, Texas

Unhomely Places 2012 by Kate Milford

The Art of War 2012 by Sarah Cross

Sharper Than a Seraph Blade 2012 by Diana Peterfreund

When Laws Are Made to Be Broken 2012 by Robin Wasserman

Simon Lewis: Jewish, Vampire, Hero 2012 by Michelle Hodkin

Why the Best Friend Never Gets the Girl 2012 by Kami Garcia LLC

Brotherly Love 2012 by Kendare Blake

Asking for a Friend 2012 by Gwenda Bond

(Not) For Illustration Purposes Only 2012 by Rachel Caine

The Importance of Being Malec 2012 by Sara Ryan

Villains, Valentine, and Virtue 2012 by Scott Tracey

Immortality and Its Discontents 2012 by Kelly Link and Holly Black

What Does That Deviant Wench Think Shes Doing? Or, Shadowhunters

Gone Wild 2012 by Sarah Rees Brennan

Introduction and essay introductions 2012 by Cassandra Clare

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.

10300 N. Central Expressway, Suite 400 | Dallas, TX 75231

Second e-book edition: June 2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.

eISBN: 978-1-937856-29-8

Copyediting by Debra Manette Editorial Services

Proofreading by Michael Fedison and James Fraleigh

Cover illustration 2012 by Cliff Nielsen

Rune design by Valerie Freire

Cover design by Sarah Dombrowsky

Text design and composition by Yara Abuata, Silver Feather Design

Printed by Bang Printing

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CONTENTS

CASSANDRA CLARE

KATE MILFORD

SARAH CROSS

DIANA PETERFREUND

ROBIN WASSERMAN

MICHELLE HODKIN

KAMI GARCIA

KENDARE BLAKE

GWENDA BOND

RACHEL CAINE

SARA RYAN

SCOTT TRACEY

KELLY LINK AND HOLLY BLACK

What Does That Deviant Wench Think Shes Doing?
Or, Shadowhunters Gone Wild

SARAH REES BRENNAN

OTHER SMART POP YA TITLES

Through the Wardrobe

Demigods and Monsters

A New Dawn

Secrets of the Dragonriders

Flirtin with the Monster

Mind-Rain

A Visitors Guide to Mystic Falls

Nyx in the House of Night

The Girl Who Was on Fire

The Psychology of Twilight

The Panem Companion

Enders World

INTRODUCTION

Theres a question that every writer both is intimately familiar with and dreads having to answer. Where did you get the idea for your books?

Its not because its a bad question. Its a fair question to ask, and its not as if we dont understand why we get asked itof course people are curious about the genesis of an idea! But the truth is its very rare that any book or series of books grows out of one single idea. Usually it grows the way a rolling stone gathers moss or the grit in an oyster adds layers until its a pearl. It begins with the seed of an idea, an image or a concept, and then grows from there as the writer adds characters, ideas they love, bits and pieces of their fascinations and interests, until theyve created a world.

Ive told the story of how I got the idea for City of Bones, the first of the Shadowhunter books, so many times I worry sometimes Ive memorized the story and forgotten the experience. So when I sat down to write this, I tried as much as possible to throw myself back into the moment when the first inkling of anything that would eventually become the Shadowhunter world crossed my mind.

I had just moved from Los Angeles to New York, and I was in love with the city. With its history, with its energy, its day life and its night life. My first roommate was an artist, with a deep love of manga and anime. She introduced me to another artist friend of hers, Valerie, who worked at a tattoo parlor. One day Valerie took me to the tattoo parlor to show me her book of flash artwork: It was a series of different strong, dark patterns in black ink that she told me were based on ancient runes.

Runes are really nothing more than letters in ancient alphabets. The oldest piece of written Scandinavian law, the Codex Runicus, is written entirely in runes. They dont have magical powers, but theres something very magical about them. They look like the letters of an alphabet that exists just on the edge of our imagination: familiar enough to be letters, but unfamiliar enough to be mysterious.

Ive also always felt that tattoos and other body markings were magicalmaybe because I dont have any of my own! Throughout history, tattoos have been used to show status or beauty, to memorialize the dead, to mark outcasts, andmost useful for my purposesto protect their bearers and lend them strength in battle. As I stood there looking at Valeries designs for runic tattoos, I thought, What if there was a race of people for whom tattoos worked in an immediate, magical way? And what if their tattoos were runes?

That was the first time I thought about the beings that would eventually become Shadowhunters. Over the next months, characters came to me: There was a girl and a boy, separated by some terrible fate, and a best friend, and a hard-partying warlock; there were vampires and werewolves, and an evil zealot who wanted to purge the world. And there were angels, demons, and other mythological creatures.

There has always been much argument among academics as to how folklore differs from mythology. Ive always gone with the generalization that folklore tends to be about human beings or magical creatures (faeries, ghosts, elves) who live alongside them, interact with them, and share their lives. Myths, on the other hand, tend to center around beings far removed from humanity, often gods: The story of Lucifers fall from grace is a myth, as is the tale of Zeus receiving thunder from the Cyclopes. I grew up on the urban fantasy of the 1980s, which mixed folkloric creatures like vampires and faeries with the day-to-day urban life of ordinary humans. Ive always been drawn to folklore, but am equally enamored of myths, and as the world of the Shadowhunters came to slow life, I knew that what I wanted to do was create a hybrid mythological/folkloric world where the presence of supernatural creatures was explained by the existence of angels and demons, Heaven and Hell. Therefore, the Shadowhunters (also called Nephilim, based on the biblical story of the Nephilim, giants among men) had been created by an angel. Faeries were the offspring of demons and angels; warlocks the offspring of demons and humans. Our worlds folkloric tales of vampires, were-wolves, faeries, and witches still held true, in this worldit was just that only the Nephilim knew their true ancestry as creatures of angelic or demonic origin.