Shadowhunters and Downworlders (16 page)

Gwenda Bond
writes young adult fantasy. Her debut novel,
Blackwood
, was released in 2012, and will be followed by
The Woken Gods
in 2013. She is also a contributing writer for
Publishers Weekly
, and her nonfiction work has appeared in the
Washington Post
,
Lightspeed
, and
Strange Horizons
, among others. She has an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe, and their menagerie. Find her online at
www.gwendabond.com
.

RACHEL CAINE

One of the most distinctive things about Shadowhunters are their Marks. Rachel Caine takes us on a tour of the power invested in tattoos over the course of history, and it's a fascinating trek. (Also, I will forever have an image of child-Rachel in a biker bar, which is awesome.)

(NOT) FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY

When I was a kid, the thing I most wanted, the
coolest thing ever
, was a tattoo.

This is mostly because my dad had one, probably courtesy of a drunken evening on leave in the army, but hey. My dad had a tattoo, so I wanted a tattoo, and damn those societal expectations, anyway. So what if I was a girl? In the 1970s? I also craved a floor-length leather fringe vest. My mom was
not
a fan of daring fashion choices, so I lived in disappointment on that score, but the tattoo?
Right out.

“Only sailors and—and
girls with red shoes
get tattoos!” she sputtered, when I mentioned it. (I was not absolutely sure where the red shoes fit into all this. After that, I began looking out for red shoes hoping to spot some kind of
trend. Turns out she was under the mistaken impression that hookers wore red shoes. I don't know. Don't ask me.)

In any case, when you're twelve and a girl and you live in the '70s, it's unlikely that you're going to be able to follow your budding, possibly inaccurate, sense of cool and score that sweet tat (and leather vest) you think you really, really need to be yourself. So I found other ways to express my coolness. One of them was elaborate self-administered drawings in marker on my forearms, sometimes illustrating horses or spaceships. DON'T JUDGE ME, MAN. I was creative, okay? And I always washed them off before I went home, because I was really not all that rebellious.
Outwardly.

I say all this so you can understand how deeply completed I felt when I discovered Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series, because it sparked a renewed fascination for tattoos and what they meant—or
could
mean, beyond needing to be matched with a pair of sweet red stiletto pumps. (Technically, her tattoos are really
scarification
—the art of incising a design in the skin instead of just inking it on—but that's a practice similar to tattooing. We're not going to split hairs here.)

And the fact that the Shadowhunters' Marks not only were cool but also
stored power
just blew my mind.

The idea that tattoos have very real magical force goes back not just to Ray Bradbury's incredible, groundbreaking work
The Illustrated Man
(if you haven't read it, please do, it's riveting and fantastic) but to real life too. The history of tattooing—from marks to adorn, to those to heal, protect, advertise, or punish—goes back to the earliest days of humankind.

So let's start with the therapeutic use of tattoos.

The first solid example of
any
kind of tattooing—at least to date—goes back about 5,200 years, to a frozen Copper Age corpse found decorated with some simple marks likely made with cuts and powdered charcoal. The tattoos, primitive as they were, were located just where this man would have felt pain from the advanced bone degeneration that was evident when his corpse was examined. So these were
healing runes
, placed to take away the pain of arthritis—and it wasn't just done once. Our iceman had over fifty-seven separate tattoos, which meant that some doctor/ tattoo artist—or several of them—had applied these healing marks over time as the patient needed help.

You can just imagine the conversation during flu season.
Doctor! I need a skull and snake tattoo over here, stat—he's sneezing!
Okay, so Copper Age medical care might not have been quite as efficacious as a trip to the local doc in a box today, but it definitely would have been more decorative. Plus: You get to carry your medical records around with you
on your skin
!

Take that, modern medical science!
IN
ON YOUR FACE!

Very definitely, of course, all this healing stuff correlates to the use of the runes by our favorite Shadowhunters…although theirs generally
work.
(Note: If anybody can work me up a tattoo for curing migraines, I will
pay you good money.
Clary? I'm talking to you, girlfriend, since your special gift is creating new ones. I'm sure this is on your list to develop, right after the “deliver me my own personal Jace” rune that so many other readers have already been requesting.)

Egyptians also practiced the art of the needle, but, curiously, their tattoos were reserved for women…and again, practice eventually turned out to revolve around health
and safety. For years, archaeologists (mostly male, it should be noted) thought that Egyptian female mummies with tattoos were likely “dancing girls” or “concubines”—carrying over my mom's prejudice about those red shoes, eh?

Instead, upon more careful scrutiny, it turns out that those dot-and-line tattoos and the later images of the goddess Bes on women's thighs were likely there to ease pregnancy and ensure the safety of mother and child—a kind of permanent protective amulet in a society where amulets were extremely important (they were not only worn in life but also wrapped into the linen covering mummies for protection in the afterlife). If a tattoo could guarantee such security, it would be magical indeed, and well within the realm of the Mortal Instruments universe, where a rune for strength might be needed for a run-in with a demon, and one for healing could mean the difference between making it home and bleeding out in the street.

You can
bet
female Shadowhunters would use runes for the same purposes as the ancient Egyptians did those dotand-line tattoos. After all, they go through childbirth too.

Similar tattoo position on the childbearing regions of a woman's body appears in early cultures in Peru and Chile, although Peruvians and Chileans went well beyond the practical applications, since their designs also extended up to the torso, the arms, and neck, and in some cases even onto the face. (Obviously, the ladies of Peru and Chile did not have to go into a corporate office every day. True fact: A tattoo artist friend of mine calls facial tattoos “job killers.”)

Lots of other folks embraced the tattooed aesthetic for nonmedical reasons too. Sometimes it was just for the status. My mom thought tattoos were a sign of
low
class—an association that came about only after the tattooing machine
was invented around 1900 (an adaptation of an Edison machine!) and made tattooing fast and affordable for the poorer folks. But for the ancient Scythians and Thracians, having a well-illustrated body meant you were
somebody—
because, let's face it, a lot of body art meant a lot of devotion and time from a talented artist. Keeping your art on your flesh also meant you didn't have to take your guests all the way home to show off your latest art acquisition. Magnificently detailed tattoos were a very public display of your wealth and taste…and the practice wasn't restricted to men; women have been found with the same kinds of tats (normally of mythical creatures and animals).

You can just imagine the silence at a lavish Scythian party when some untattooed nobody shows up; no need to ask for his invitation, is there? The rest of the guests have their invitations to the important events preinked into their skin.
Awkward!

Pre-Roman Britons were also fond of the same types of animal tattoos as the Scythians, which might have been what led to the Romans calling them “Picti”—the painted people. They weren't legendary for their parties; even the Romans steered clear unless they absolutely had to fight them, because the Picti were kinda…fierce. And probably they looked
fantastic,
if you were into heavily flashed-out bods.

In modern Western civilization, we often look to Greece and Rome for our cultural cues, though, and those guys? Not notable fans of body art. In their highly rigid societies, tattoos served instead as convenient identification. Hence, you only got a tattoo if you were initiated into a religious sect or, more likely, were a slave, in which case you could be easily returned to your owner should you stray. Having no tattoos meant you were important—the absolute reversal of
the Scythians, which must have made diplomatic meetings weird for newcomers, and probably led to a few major wars just because the ambassadors didn't know whom to shake hands with.

But eventually
some
of those Romans—specifically the soldiers—came away from their encounters with other cultures intrigued by the whole notion of body art. You can't keep a cool flash down, and by about
AD
250, Roman soldiers had discovered the ancient charms of plunking down coin in a foreign port and getting MATER tattooed on their arms—which was cool at least until Emperor Constantine got religion and forbade the whole practice. Probably not the slave tattooing, though, just the voluntary stuff. The only laws Constantine made about slavery had to do with Jews not owning Christian slaves. Other than that, it was likely business as usual.

In banning tattoos, Constantine was following accepted theological interpretation of a biblical restriction: “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you” (Leviticus 19:28). Interestingly, this kind of supports the idea of magic being an inherent part of the tattoo process…that there could be a certain power in it that was forbidden to humans (but not, it could be argued, to Shadowhunters, who have the blood of angels in them and operate by a whole different set of laws). But, just as a thought, what if the whole reason behind making tattoos anathema was not just a desire to keep a cultural separation but for real and sound reasons? What if tattoos really
could
be magical? In some of the darker corners of the internet you'll find people who still support that theory—that inking a design on your body, especially one
that might have some kind of malicious intent, provides a gateway for something more sinister. Like
demons.

I'm not saying it's so. I'm just saying you might want to reconsider that death's-head design in favor of something more…Care Bear friendly.

Even today, there's still a raging debate about what the Bible
really
says about tattoos. Some theologians say that tattoos are completely forbidden while others interpret the verse to mean that
mourning
practices that involve self-mutilation and/or tattooing are out, but fashion tats are a-okay. Me, I'll let the responsible parties duke that out while I get something from the craft service table. Mmm, donuts!

Not all tattoos were about fashion, status, or therapy; some were about
information.
Vital and secret information. Imagine if you could supply a warning about an impending Pearl Harbor attack whether you were alive or dead, simply by having it tattooed in code on your forearm? Not only did you not have to survive, you just had to make sure a recognizable body part made it out intact. Spies sometimes identified themselves to each other via their tattoos, which also served as ranks—they helped sort out which spy was in charge. Very useful things, these tats. Today in our own culture, some soldiers are following the ancient practice of having their essential info tattooed onto their bodies, just as Japanese samurai used to do so their bodies could be returned to their families. Not only that, some soldiers have taken to having their ranks tattooed on as well. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Shadowhunters had some kind of ranking system mixed in with all those runes too. Not that Jace would ever pay the least bit of attention to them, of course.

Everything old is new again, and so's the idea of tattoos being a great spy/espionage tool. You can now get a tattoo that's visible only under UV light, and the newest fad is getting a tattoo in an ink shade that matches your skin, so the tat is visible only at certain angles. But as usual, Chinese innovation has gone beyond the call of duty and developed an “electronic tattoo,” at least in theory. It's basically a temporary tattoo that can be applied to skin, but it contains circuits, sensors, wireless antennas, and power cells…and it's ultra-thin and stretchable. Put one on and you can hack into a protected system while looking like you're wearing nothing but your birthday suit. (Oh, and also? You can use it as a hospital monitoring device, a less-bulky ankle bracelet for house-arrest criminals, and even as a wearable gaming device. SCIENCE!)

Carrying on with the information theme: Ancient (and some relatively modern) sailors used to ink their resumes onto their arms by getting tattoos that represented their journeys: a full-rigged ship to show they'd gone around Cape Horn, a dragon to show they'd visited China, a turtle to show they'd crossed the equator. So if you were hiring sailors, you obviously wanted sailors with the ink to prove their worth. At least you knew they'd survived a few journeys.

If you want to go to the most extreme versions of informational tattooing, though, you have to look at the magnificent Maori tattoo culture of New Zealand. Not only was their face tattooing designed to enhance their looks to the opposite sex, but their extremely elaborate designs—known as
moko—
told the story of the wearer's life. This included their ancestry, which was important, as well as their
accomplishments
…their status as well as their abilities. Like having a resume
on your face.
Dramatic full-face tats were
reserved for men, but women got in on the act with less elaborate decorations on the nose and chin. When Christian missionaries tried to discourage the practice, Maori women claimed that tattoos on mouths and chins
prevented wrinkles.
Magic! And…coming to a beauty salon near you soon. Hey, if Botox has become a popular beauty aid, why not tattoos?