Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

by Cassandra Clare

  “Then why not fast-forward to the inevitable? Accept that you’re stuck with her. The love of your life. Poor you.”

  Helen sighed. “Isabelle told me what you said about the fey, Simon. About how you think it’s wrong to discriminate against them. That faeries can be good, just as much as anyone else.”

  He didn’t understand where she was going with this, but he wasn’t sorry to have the chance to confirm it. “She was right, I do think that.”

  “Isabelle believes that too, you know,” Helen said. “She’s been doing her best to convince me.”

  “What do you mean?” Simon asked, confused. “Why would you need convincing.”

  Helen kneaded her fingers together. “You know, I didn’t want to come here to tell a bunch of kids the story of my mother and father—I didn’t do that voluntarily. But I also didn’t make it up. That’s what happened. That’s who my mother was, and that’s what half of me is.”

  “No, Helen, that’s not—”

  “Do you know the poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’?”

  Simon shook his head. The only poetry he knew was by Dr. Seuss or Bob Dylan.

  “It’s Keats,” she said, and recited a few stanzas for him by memory.

  She took me to her elfin grot,

  And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,

  And there I shut her wild wild eyes

  With kisses four.

  And there she lullèd me asleep,

  And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!

  The latest dream I ever dream’d

  On the cold hill’s side.

  I saw pale kings and princes too,

  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

  They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci

  Hath thee in thrall!”

  “Keats wrote about faeries?” Simon asked. If they’d covered this in English class, he might have paid closer attention.

  “My father used to recite that poem all the time,” Helen said. “It was his way of telling me and Mark the story of where we came from.”

  “He recited you a poem about an evil faerie queen luring men to their deaths as a way of telling you about your mother? Repeatedly?” Simon asked, incredulous. “No offense, but that’s kind of . . . harsh.”

  “My father loved us despite where we came from,” Helen said in the way of someone trying to convince herself. “But it always felt like he kept some part of himself in reserve. Like he was waiting to see her in me. It was different with Mark, because Mark was a boy. But girls take after their mothers, right?”

  “I’m not really sure that’s scientifically accurate logic,” Simon said.

  “That’s what Mark said. He always told me the faeries had no claim on us or our nature. And I tried to believe him, but then, after he was taken . . . after the Inquisitor told me the story of my birth mother . . . I wonder . . .” Helen was looking past Simon, past the walls of her domestic prison cell, lost in her own fears. “What if I’m luring Aline to that cold hill’s side? What if that need to destroy, to use love as a weapon, is just hibernating in me somewhere, and I don’t even know it? A gift from my mother.”

  “Look, I don’t know anything about faeries,” Simon said. “Not really. I don’t know what the deal was with your mother, or what it means for you to be half one thing and half another. But I know your blood doesn’t define you. What defines you is the choices you make. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that. And I also know that loving someone—even when it’s scary, even when there are consequences—is never the wrong thing to do. Loving someone is the opposite of hurting her.”

  Helen smiled at him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “For both our sakes, Simon, I really hope that you’re right.”

  In the Land under the Hill, in the Time Before . . .

  Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady of the Seelie Court who lost her heart to the son of an angel.

  Once upon a time, there were two boys come to the land of Faerie, brothers noble and bold. One brother caught a glimpse of the fair lady and, thunderstruck by her beauty, pledged himself to her. Pledged himself to stay. This was the boy Andrew. His brother, the boy Arthur, would not leave his side.

  And so the boys stayed beneath the hill, and Andrew loved the lady, and Arthur despised her.

  And so the lady kept her boy close to her side, kept this beautiful creature who swore his fealty to her, and when her sister lay claim to the other, the lady let him be taken away, for he was nothing.

  She gave Andrew a silver chain to wear around his neck, a token of her love, and she taught him the ways of the Fair Folk. She danced with him in revels beneath starry skies. She fed him moonshine and showed him how to give way to the wild.

  Some nights they heard Arthur’s screams, and she told him it was an animal in pain, and pain was in an animal’s nature.

  She did not lie, for she could not lie.

  Humans are animals.

  Pain is their nature.

  For seven years they lived in joy. She owned his heart, and he hers, and somewhere, beyond, Arthur screamed and screamed. Andrew didn’t know; the lady didn’t care; and so they were happy.

  Until the day one brother discovered the truth of the other.

  The lady thought her lover would go mad with the grief of it and the guilt. And so, because she loved the boy, she wove him a story of deceitful truths, the story he would want to believe. That he had been ensorcelled to love her; that he had never betrayed his brother; that he was only a slave; that these seven years of love had been a lie.

  The lady set the useless brother free and allowed him to believe he had freed himself.

  The lady subjected herself to the useless brother’s attack and allowed him to believe he had killed her.

  The lady let her lover renounce her and run away.

  And the lady beheld the secret fruits of their union and kissed them and tried to love them. But they were only a piece of her boy. She wanted all of him or none of him.

  As she had given him his story, she gave him his children.

  She had nothing left to live for, then, and so lived no longer.

  This is the story she left behind, the story her lover will never know; this is the story her daughter will never know.

  This is how a faerie loves: with her whole body and soul. This is how a faerie loves: with destruction.

  I love you, she told him, night after night, for seven years. Faeries cannot lie, and he knew that.

  I love you, he told her, night after night, for seven years. Humans can lie, and so she let him believe he lied to her, and she let his brother and his children believe it, and she died hoping they would believe it forever.

  This is how a faerie loves: with a gift.

  Bitter of Tongue

  By Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan

  There were more horses joining the roan, more and more of the Wild Hunt. Simon saw Kieran, a white silent presence. The faerie on the roan turned his horse toward the place where Simon and Isabelle stood, and Simon saw the roan sniff the air like a dog.

  —Bitter of Tongue

  The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and it was a beautiful day at Shadowhunter Academy.

  Well, Simon was pretty sure the sun was shining. There was a faint luminescence to the air in his and George’s underground chamber, casting a pleasant glow upon the green slime that coated their walls.

  And all right, he could not hear the birds from his subterranean room, but George did come back from the showers singing.

  “Good morning, Si! I saw a rat in the bathroom, but he was taking a nice nap and we didn’t bother each other.”

  “Or the rat was dead of a very infectious disease, which has now been introduced to our water system,” Simon suggested. “We may be drinking plague-rat water for weeks.”

  “Nobody likes a Gloomy Gus,” George scolded him. “Nobody likes a Sullen Si. Nobody is here for a Moody Mildred. No one fancies—”

  “I h
ave gathered the general tenor of your discourse, George,” said Simon. “I object strongly to being referred to as a Moody Mildred. Especially as I really feel like I’m a Mildly Good-Humored Mildred right now. I see you’re looking forward to your big day?”

  “Have a shower, Si,” George urged. “Start the day refreshed. Maybe style your hair a little. It wouldn’t kill you.”

  Simon shook his head. “There’s a dead rat in the bathroom, George. I am not going in the bathroom, George.”

  “He’s not dead,” George said. “He’s just sleeping. I’m certain of it.”

  “Senseless optimism is how plagues get started,” Simon said. “Ask the medieval peasants of Europe. Oh, wait, you can’t.”

  “Were they a jolly bunch?” George asked skeptically.

  “I’m sure they were much jollier before all the plague,” said Simon.

  He felt he was making really good points, and that he was backed up by history. He pulled off the shirt he’d slept in, which read LET’S FIGHT! and below in tiny letters OUR ENEMY OFF WITH CUNNING ARGUMENTS. George whipped Simon’s back with his wet towel, which made Simon yelp.

  Simon grinned as he pulled his gear out of their wardrobe. They were getting started right after breakfast, so he might as well change into gear straight off. Plus, every day wearing gear made for men was a victory.

  He and George went up to breakfast in good humor with all the world.

  “You know, this porridge isn’t at all bad,” Simon said, digging in. George nodded enthusiastically, his mouth full.

  Beatriz looked sad for them, and possibly sad that boys were so stupid in general. “This isn’t porridge,” she told them. “These are scrambled eggs.”

  “Oh no,” George whispered faintly, his mouth still full, his voice terribly sad. “Oh no.”

  Simon dropped his spoon and stared into the depths of his bowl with horror.

  “If they are scrambled eggs . . . ?” he asked. “And I’m not arguing with you, Beatriz, I’m just asking what I feel is a very reasonable question . . . if they are scrambled eggs, why are they gray?”

  Beatriz shrugged and continued eating, carefully avoiding the lumps. “Who can say?”

  That could be made into a sad song, Simon supposed. If they are eggs, why are they gray? Who can say, who can say? He found himself still thinking of song lyrics sometimes, even though he was out of the band.

  Admittedly, “Why Are the Eggs So Gray?” might not be a big hit, even on the hipster circuit.

  Julie plopped her bowl down on the table beside Beatriz.

  “The eggs are gray,” she announced. “I don’t know how they do this. Surely at this point, it would actually make sense for them not to mess up the food sometimes. Every time, every day, for over a year? Is the Academy cursed?”

  “I have been thinking it might be,” George said earnestly. “I hear an eldritch rattling sometimes, like ghosts shaking their terrible chains. Honestly, I was hoping the Academy was cursed, since otherwise it’s probably creatures in the pipes.” George shuddered. “Creatures.”

  Julie sat down. George and Simon exchanged a private pleased look. They had been keeping track of how often Julie chose to sit with the three of them, rather than with Jon Cartwright. Currently they were winning, sixty percent to forty.

  Julie choosing to sit with them seemed like a good sign, since this was George’s big day.

  Now that they were Shadowhunter trainees in their second year, and in the words of Scarsbury “no longer totally hopeless and liable to cut off your own stupid heads,” they were given their own slightly more important missions. Every mission had an appointed team leader, and the team leader got double points if the mission was a success. Julie, Beatriz, Simon, and Jon had already been team leaders, and they had killed it: everyone’s mission accomplished, demons slain, people saved, Downworlders breaking the Law penalized severely but fairly. In some ways it was a pity that Jon’s mission had gone so well, as he had bragged about it for weeks, but they couldn’t help it. They were just too good, Simon thought, even as he slapped the wooden table so as not to jinx himself. There was no way for them to fail.

  “Feeling nervous, team leader?” asked Julie. Simon had to admit she could sometimes be an unsettling companion.

  “No,” said George, and under Julie’s gimlet eye: “Maybe. Yes. You know, an appropriate amount of nervous, but in a cool, collected, and good-under-pressure way.”

  “Don’t go all to pieces,” said Julie. “I want a perfect score.”

  An awkward silence followed. Simon comforted himself by looking over at Jon’s table. When Julie abandoned him, Jon had to eat all alone. Unless Marisol decided she wanted to sit with him and torment him. Which, Simon noted, she was doing today. Little devil. Marisol was hilarious.

  Jon made urgent gestures for help, but Julie had her back turned to him and did not see.

  “I’m not saying this to scare you, George,” she said. “That’s a side benefit, obviously. This is an important mission. You know faeries are the worst kind of Downworlder. Faeries crossing over into the mundane realm and tricking the poor things into eating faerie fruit is no joke. Mundanes can wither away and die after eating that fruit, you know. It’s murder, and it’s murder we can hardly ever get them for, because by the time the mundanes die, the faeries are long gone. You’re taking this seriously, right?”

  “Yes, Julie,” said George. “I actually do know murder is bad, Julie.”

  Julie’s whole face pursed up in that alarming way it did sometimes. “Remember it was you who almost screwed up my mission.”

  “I hesitated slightly to tackle that vampire child,” George admitted.

  “Precisely,” said Julie. “No more hesitation. As our team leader, you have to act on your own initiative. I’m not saying you’re bad, George. I am saying you need to learn.”

  “I’m not sure anybody needs this kind of motivational speech,” Beatriz said. “It would freak anyone out. And it’s too easy to freak George out as it is.”

  George, who had been looking touched at Beatriz’s gallant defense, stopped looking touched.

  “I just think they should do a repeat team leader occasionally,” Julie grumbled, letting them know where all this hostility was coming from. She stabbed her gray eggs wistfully. “I was so good.”

  Simon raised his eyebrows. “You had a horsewhip and threatened to beat me about the head and face if I didn’t do what you said.”

  Julie pointed her spoon at him. “Exactly. And you did what I said. That’s leadership, that is. What’s more, I didn’t beat you about the head and face. Kind but firm, that’s me.”

  Julie discussed her own greatness at some length. Simon got up to get another glass of juice.

  “What kind of juice do you think this is?” Catarina Loss asked, joining him in the line.

  “Fruit,” said Simon. “Just fruit. That’s all they would tell me. I found it suspicious as well.”

  “I like fruit,” Catarina said, but she did not sound sure about that. “I know you’re excused from my class this afternoon. What are you up to this morning?”

  “A mission to stop faeries from slipping over their borders and engaging in illicit trade,” Simon said. “George is team leader.”

  “George is team leader?” Catarina asked. “Hm.”

  “Why is everyone so down on George today?” Simon demanded. “What’s wrong with George? There’s nothing wrong with George. It is not possible to find fault with George. He’s a perfect Scottish angel. He always shares the snacks that his mother sends him, and he’s better-looking than Jace. There, I said it. I’m not taking it back.”

  “I see you’re in a good mood,” said Catarina. “All right then. Go on, have a good time. Take care of my favorite student.”

  “Right,” said Simon. “Wait, who’s that?”

  Catarina gestured him away from her with her indeterminate juice. “Get lost, Daylighter.”

  Everyone else was excited to go on another miss
ion. Simon was looking forward to it as well, and pleased for George’s sake. But Simon was mostly excited because after the mission, he had somewhere else to be.

  The Fair Folk had been seen last on a moor in Devon. Simon was a bit excited to Portal there and hoped there would be time to see red postboxes and drink lager at an English pub.

  Instead, the moor turned out to be a huge stretch of uneven field, rocks, and hills in the distance, no red postboxes or quaint pubs in sight. They were immediately given horses by the contact with the Sight who was waiting for them.

  Lots of fields, lots of horses. Simon was not sure why they had bothered to leave the Academy, because this was an identical experience.

  The first words George said as they were riding on the moor were: “I think it would be a good idea to split up.”

  “Like in . . . a horror movie?” Simon asked.

  Julie, Beatriz, and Jon gave him looks of irritated incomprehension. Marisol’s uncertain expression suggested she agreed with Simon, but she did not speak up and Simon didn’t want to be the one mutinying against his friend’s leadership. They would cover more moor if they split up. Maybe it was a great idea. More moor! How could it go wrong?

  “I’ll be partners with Jon,” Marisol said instantly, a glint in her dark eyes. “I wish to continue our conversation from breakfast. I have many more things to say to him on the subject of video games.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more about video games, Marisol!” snapped Jon, a Shadowhunter in a nightmare of torrential mundane information.

  Marisol smiled. “I know.”

  Marisol had only just turned fifteen. Simon was not sure how she had worked out that telling Jon every detail about the mundane world would be such effective psychological terrorism. Her evil had only grown in the year and change Simon had known her. Simon had to respect that.

  “And Si and I will be together,” George said easily.

  “Um,” said Simon.

  Neither he nor George was a Shadowhunter yet, and though Catarina helped them see through glamours, no mundane . . . er, non-Shadowhunter . . . was as securely protected from faerie glamour as one of the Nephilim. But Simon didn’t want to question George’s authority or suggest he didn’t want to be partners. He was also scared of being partnered with Julie, and beaten about the head and face.