Shadowhunters and Downworlders Read Online Free PDF Page B

makes important discoveries while she’s doodling. One night she sketches some runes next to a drawing of an angel-winged Jace, then feels feathers when she brushes her fingers across the paper. Seeing that she can use runes to make a drawing come to life, Clary wonders if she can use runes and art to put an object
into
a page of her sketchbook. She tests her theory by drawing a coffee mug, then placing the mug on top of her drawing and sketching some runes on the page. Once she sees that it works, she realizes that must be how her mother hid the MortalCup from Valentine: by putting it into a painting. And that means Clary knows how to get it out.
    Art is a part of Clary, just like her Shadowhunter lineage—but unlike her Shadowhunter side, art is something she understands. She uses it to makes sense of the world, to clear her mind and solve problems. And just as she can relax her mind and imagine turpentine clearing away a glamour, she can open her mind to inspiration when she or her friends are in trouble. She’s used to images appearing in her head—and she’s used to taking those visions and letting them flow from her pencil to the page.
    So when she starts envisioning new runes, she picks up a stele and does what comes naturally.
    â€œWhere do you get your ideas?” is a question every artist is asked, and there is never just one answer. Ideas come in dreams or visions; they can come from conscious thought or seem to take shape on their own. The concept of the muse exists because there is no one way of explaining how and why artists are inspired to create—and why, other times, their creativity seems to desert them. When in
City of Glass
Simon asks Clary where her runes come from, she says:
    â€œI don’t know…All the runes the Shadowhunters know come from the Gray Book. That’s why they can only be put on Nephilim; that’s what they’re for. But there are other, older runes…So when I think of these runes, like the Fearless rune, I don’t know if it’s something I’m inventing, or something I’m
remembering
…”
    Sometimes new runes come to Clary fully formed, in a sudden burst of inspiration. The first hint we get of herrune-creating ability happens like this. When she and Jace are trapped on the roof of the Dumont (aka Dumort) Hotel, seconds away from being caught by the werewolves and vampires that are chasing them, they need to find a way off the roof, and Clary envisions a rune shaped like wings. Jace commandeers one of the vampires’ flying motorcycles before Clary has a chance to test that rune, but we—the readers—are pretty sure it was a Flight rune, and it’s a tantalizing promise of things to come.
    Some new runes take shape only as Clary draws them, as if instinct and need are guiding her hand—like when Jace is imprisoned in the Silent City, and Clary’s so frantic to get him out that the simple Open rune she thinks she’s writing knocks the door right off its hinges and unlocks every pair of manacles in the vicinity.
    Other runes require Clary to focus on the essence of the rune she wants to create, as when she’s desperate to follow Jace, Simon, and the Lightwoods to Idris, but the portal has closed and Magnus refuses to open another one. Clary grabs her stele, closes her eyes, and imagines “lines that spoke to her of doorways, of being carried on whirling air, of travel and faraway places” (
City of Glass
) until the Portal rune comes together in her mind, and she is able to draw it and open a portal to Idris herself.
    Still other runes come to Clary in visions from the angel Ithuriel, such as the Alliance rune she uses to join Shadowhunters and Downworlders together in combat. I like to think the angel acts as her muse in those instances. Clary and Ithuriel are connected by blood, and that connection is part of what makes her runes so powerful, but it is Clary’s artistic