#and yet this is the fifth copy I have run across in the last decade

[televinita]

Me: I'm going to be so restrained at this book sale and only buy what I really, really want!

This box: Hello. 🤡

[justfandomwritings]

Heroes Get Remembered (Part One - Bucky Barnes)

Pairing: Bucky X Reader (This story is also being published on ff.net with minor edits to be a Bucky X OC fic if you prefer that).

Word Count: 2.7k

Summary:  "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die." Bucky read the words, but he couldn't process them. Hero? Legend? Bucky wasn't either of those things. Those words were reserved for generals, warriors, doctors... a little punk from Brooklyn in stripey tights who didn't know when to give up... and a young nurse who threw herself in a warzone to save the ones she loved.

Notes: So a few years ago, I wrote a rough draft of an introduction to a story that I was calling Heroes Get Remembered. I posted that introduction on fanfiction.net.

Only, I decided rather quickly that I didn’t like the writing style I had used on the story, and I rapidly lost interest after that when I couldn’t think of what to do.

Last week, I revisited the idea (last week for obvious reasons), and I decided to give it another go. I’ve updated the original story I posted on fanfiction.net, but since that doesn’t alert people when a chapter’s been replaced or edited, I thought I would post part one here because I want some honest feedback on whether this was an idea worth revisiting and whether it works this time.

November 2014

Steve Rogers had only cried four times in his life. The first time had been when his mother died. For as long as Steve could remember, she had worked in a nursing ward treating tuberculosis patients. Helping those who couldn't help themselves, she used to say. Even after she contracted the disease, she tried to help those who stood a better chance than herself. It was Bucky who'd been the one to give him the news when she died, and he cried. How long, he couldn't remember; but he remembered picking himself up and putting on a brave face. He remembered walking to the funeral and smiling pleasantly as he shook hands with those who wished him well. He remembered pretending to be fine until eventually he was.

The second time was worse. When Bucky died, or when he thought he'd died. Unlike his mother, Steve had watched Bucky go. He'd been so close. A second more and he could have saved him. An inch longer reach and Bucky would have been fine. His mother died of disease, but Bucky died under His command, in His unit, on His mission, before His very eyes. Steve blamed himself for a very long time. Part of him still did. His crying over Bucky hadn't truly stopped until he plunged into the ice. There was no pretending to be fine when you watched your best friend die, when you were constantly thinking of all the things you could have done to save him.

The third time he'd cried was when they pulled him out of the ice. When they'd thawed him out and introduced him to this new world, this new future, and he realized just how much more he had to lose. He thought he'd lost everything the day he'd lost Bucky, but clearly he'd been wrong. Nick Fury had given him a brief rundown of the last seventy years that lasted all of thirty minutes before dropping him off in an apartment across town. The moment the door closed and he found himself alone, Steve collapsed into sobs. Everyone he'd ever known was dead; everything he'd ever known was gone. He was truly, truly alone. He had nothing and no one.

At least, that's what he'd thought. The fourth time Steve cried was when he realized that was wrong. The night after he'd ripped off the Winter Soldier's mask and seen his old friend. The night after the Winter Soldier had asked him, "Who's Bucky?". It was like losing him all over again. It was like losing everything all over again.

No, it was worse. Before that moment, Steve had no one, nothing. He had no hope, and he was forced to move on. Now, there was something. He was clinging to it like it was his lifeline, and though it may never float he would sink or swim with this one idea. Some part of his past, some part of Bucky, was alive, and he was going to find it or die trying.

"Cap," Sam interrupted the soldier's train of thought, joining the soldier in the living room. His tone was hesitant, probing. "You okay?"

Steve chuckled, still a little dazed. "Do I look okay?"

"No," Sam dropped down into a plush armchair across from Steve and leaned forward on his knees. "You look like hell, which is still probably twice as good as you're feeling."

Steve's gaze fell to the floor. Sam was right; he felt awful. He didn't sleep; he didn't eat. Most days, Steve felt like he didn't really breath either. It wasn't just the physical exhaustion. It was the sheer emotional desperation. Steve was feeling utterly useless, yet he wouldn't stop. He couldn't stop. Even if all hope was lost, Steve had to keep searching. They could have laid Bucky's dead body at his feet, and Steve would have stepped over it with a simple "I thought he was dead once" and kept looking. Bucky never gave up on Steve, and Steve would never give up on Bucky. If he gave up on Bucky, he might as well give up on everything.

"Hey," Sam leaned forward and clapped the Captain firmly on the shoulder. "We knew this wasn't going to be easy. We just have to keep trying."

Sam definitely understood, more than most. He knew the lengths he himself would go to if he found out Riley was still alive. They hadn't even reached that point yet. Let alone what Sam imagined if he added in childhood best friends and his only tie to his real home. A guy like Steve, Sam wouldn't blame him for moving the world to bring his friend home.

"I just…" Steve looked up, eyes so bleary from lack of sleep that he couldn't quite see straight. "I just want to understand. He remembered. I saw it in his eyes. He remembered me. So why is he running from me? Why is he going to…" Steve waved his hand at the map. The map sat on the table in the corner, a permanent fixture of the room since SHIELD had fallen. "To these places. It doesn't make any sense."

They'd both been wondering that. Sam eyed the offending paper suspiciously. It was massive, covering the entire length of the dining table in the Avengers' apartment. Even from the other side of the room, Sam could see every detail, not that he needed the reminder. Steve and Sam had spent hours upon hours pouring over the damn thing trying to find some rhyme or reason to it but getting absolutely nowhere. The map was peppered in tiny little x's: a few each in America, Russia, Europe, one each in Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Egypt. They knew exactly where he'd been, but they had no idea why and no idea where he was going.

"I don't know Steve," Sam sighed and slumped back. "Maybe he's… going back to what he remembers, or maybe looking for something." Neither was a new idea; Sam was really only trying to fill the air. They'd discussed both possibilities before. They discussed every possibility before, and none seemed to fit.

The Hydra files Natasha had leaked gave a detailed timeline of the Winter Soldier's activities, even though they weren't always documented by name. The Soldier had been making and changing history since Steve had gone under the ice. Assassinations, saves, fires, rebellions. He seemed to have a hand in everything that had led up to this moment, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. He had shaped the decades Steve had missed and made the world he saw today.

The x's on the map weren't his missions. There were seemingly too many of those to count. Stark had made a list and tried to show it to Steve, tried to make him see the soldier he was hunting rather than the old friend he wanted to find. Steve was having none of it. Every time someone brought up what the Winter Soldier had done, Steve had walked away. His friend wouldn't do those things, and when he first laid eyes on the Winter Soldier he hadn't seen his friend. He did eventually though. As the Helicarrier fell, he finally saw Bucky, and he was determined to see him again. He only wanted to find him, his last piece of home. He had no interest in the Winter Soldier, no interest in Hydra's ultimate weapon. He had no interest in what the Winter Soldier had done, and he wasn't going to subject himself to thinking about it.

The x's were sightings. All around the world people claimed to see the Winter Soldier, and Steve exhausted himself investigating every last one. A week after the collapse of SHIELD there had been nearly fifty, and eventually he'd managed to confirm four.

He hadn't been sure at first, but when he saw the fifth one he knew what was happening. Four empty Hydra bases, abandoned sometime before SHIELD but Steve couldn't be sure when, and each of them had been trashed. The first was a storage facility, hard copies of documents that were too sensitive to be committed to digital memory. Every drawer had been opened, every file torn apart, every desk ransacked. The second was a recruiting office in a similar state followed by two armories, but the fifth was the worst.

The fifth sighting was what led Steve to confirm the previous four. It had taken him deep into the mountains in Russia. A fully active Hydra lab. Its location was buried deep in the lists Nat had published, but no government had gotten around to checking it out until Steve heard whispers the Soldier had been there. Steve and Sam hopped on one of Tony's jets that night, but by the time they got there he was gone. Everything was gone.

For some reason, the place was entirely destroyed. The site was still smoldering when they arrived; anything that hadn't been personally destroyed had been engulfed in flames. There weren't even remnants of a clue as to what was going on in that building. The charred desks stood ajar. File cabinets were all empty. Every liquid, compound, and vile in the facility had been smashed on the floor and evaporated in the heat. What few computers remained had all had their memory stolen. All the lab's complex machinery was broken down to its most basic parts; nuts and bolts and bits of metal that even Tony Stark couldn't piece together as anything worth destroying.

All that was left to remember it were four bodies scattered outside. They were presumed to be the scientists manning the facility, but there was nothing to identify them by. Their prints were all scared or removed. Their teeth knocked in. Their bodies left to the elements, the snow and wind and animals, so long that their faces were unrecognizable. DNA had been the only hope, and nothing had come close to a match. Whoever they were, they were ghosts, and someone wanted to make sure they stayed that way.

It was then that Steve had realized it was Bucky, or at least the Winter Soldier with whatever was left of his friend. While Steve was on a mission to find him, he was on a mission of his own. To do what? For who? Why? Steve didn't know, but Bucky wasn't just hitting random Hydra facilities. He was up to something, and he didn't want anyone, Shield or Hydra or the Avengers, to know what it was.

Six more sightings followed mirroring the first four, and Steve and Sam were forced to resign themselves to collecting whatever was salvageable to bring back to New York for analysis. Stark had helped, but even then they'd found nothing. Whatever his mission was, Bucky had done a good job of hiding it. Sam and Steve had no idea what to do or where to go.

"Well, well, well, my fine feathered friend," Steve and Sam jolted up as Tony Stark came sauntering into the Avengers' apartments. He was flanked by Natasha and Bruce, who both looked just as unamused as Steve felt. "Close but no cigar."

"You have something?" Sam said it in a tone he only hoped would convey how much he really was not in the mood for the billionaire's usual attitude. He'd just spent the last 36 hours helping Steve loot through an abandoned science lab in the Czech Republic, and all they'd turned up were paper copies of drug inventories and a broken computer. Sam wanted a nap… a twelve-hour nap… and some food.

"Not something," Tony pointed out, whipping out the folder behind his back and waving it like he'd won some kind of prize, "Someone."

"Pardon?" Steve half-heartedly prompted.

The three newcomers wandered over to join them, and Tony dropped the folder in Sam's lap as he passed. "He's not looking for something. He's looking for someone."

"How do you know this?" That finally got the Captain sitting up a little straighter in his seat.

"Never," Tony poked at him, "tell me I can't fix something."

Sam flipped open the folder in his lap and started scanning the title page. "You got this off that old piece of junk we brought in today?"

"Yep," Tony responded smugly. "Just took a little digging. It wasn't actually in that bad of shape. Your best buddy took great care to wipe it of all the important things, but it just made it pretty obvious what I needed to be looking for when I opened it up."

"So he's after someone then," Steve mused and concentrated thinking. "An old Hydra agent? One of their scientists?"

Sam blanched as he turned the page in the file. "Oh, he's not after just anyone…" He set the file down and slid it across to Steve. "And she's definitely not a Hydra agent."

Steve bent down to pick up the file, but before his fingers could even scoop it up his eyes caught the picture in the corner.

Why did the room suddenly get so hot? Was it just him? His hand hung limp an inch above the paper, and it was shaking uncontrollably fast. There was a burning feeling in his chest, and he could practically feel his body rushing with sudden adrenaline.

In the distance, barely registering at the back of Steve's consciousness, he heard Tony asking Sam. "You know her?"

No, he wanted to say, but he couldn't form the word. Sam didn't know her. Steve had thought he never would. She was a world away, a lifetime away.

With trembling fingers, Steve reached into the pocket of his jacket for the picture he carried with him at all times. It was black and white and 70 years old, but Steve remembered every colorful detail like it was yesterday. It was the happiest day of Steve's life.

In the left of the frame was Bucky, the old Bucky. Before the Winter Soldier, before the metal arm, before Hydra, before the war. He was the Bucky girls would throw themselves on their knees in front of begging for a dance. He was the Bucky guys looked on with envy as he raised his fist and bounced around the boxing ring in triumph. Everyone loved Bucky; everyone wanted to be Bucky. Even in the photo, he was cracking everyone up with another joke. The smile on his face back then could light up any room he walked into. He looked happy, healthy. He was the Bucky Steve remembered.

To the right was Steve, pre-serum Steve. He looked like a different person; he'd felt like a different person. He was short and very thin. He looked sickly and pale, but he was laughing, Bucky's doing. Girls didn't fawn over him back then the way they had with Bucky, or Steve after. Guys didn't give him a second glance except to try to beat him into submission. That Steve only had one friend, and yet it was as content as Steve ever remembered being. He had everything he'd ever wanted and needed. He was happy.

There, in the middle, between Bucky and Steve was a girl. She was about the same height as Steve. Her hair fell loose around her face in long curls that he remembered to be blonde. Her arms were thrown haphazardly around both boys, and the photo was taken with her mouth smiling wide at Bucky's joke. Her eyes squinted with humor, but Steve could still see the bright twinkle behind her lashes. She was beautiful, more beautiful than the girls who fell at Bucky's feet or threw a cold shoulder Steve's direction. She was a true diamond in the rough. People flocked to her like moths to a flame. It was as much her heart and her spirit as her looks. She was the purest, kindest soul Steve had met in any generation. When she walked into a room, people turned. Her presence demanded attention, respect. People often questioned if even Bucky, with all his looks and charm and talents, was worthy of a girl like her.

"Who is she then?" Tony asked Sam.

Steve dropped the picture from his hand down next to the one in the file and slid it back to Stark. "He's looking for my sister."

That night was the fifth time Steve Rogers cried.

[sectasemprum]

{A CURE FOR ACHINESS}

{PART I} {PART II} {PART III}

The last time I read self-insert fanfiction, my family was still using dial-up. Now, with the Internet at my fingertips, I am the one writing it.

Here is 1.6k/even more words I wrote one sleepless night. It has everything nobody ever asked for. It has an embarrassing crush on your Head of House, watered down versions of Hogwarts Mystery characters and a main character called Whyen because I’m not as funny as I think I am.

There is no hiding behind your copy of ‘Voyages With Vampires’. At the least, not from him.

“Miss Whyen?”

There it was, the timbre that has been drudging through the dungeons since your first descent five years ago. There he was, casting a shadow over the couch you curled up on three hours ago.

“Good afternoon, Professor.”

You lowered the book all the way down into your lap. The Potions Master had your full attention. As he always did.

“Are you dying?”

“Dying?” You closed the tome and tried to conceal the cover. You must have looked dully out of place in a common room filled with studious seventh years. Snakes may need sunlight to survive, but not as much as they need to pass their N.E.W.T.s. “Not that I’m aware of, sir.”

“Then what are you doing indoors on a Hogsmeade Weekend?”

You manage to meet his eyes - as dark and demanding as always - without your cheeks getting incinerated.

“It’s a blood moon tonight.”

“No, there isn’t–”

The upperclassman had been close to getting hexed by the entire study table. They were supposed to pretend to be buried in their text books for at least the duration of their Head of House’s visit, after all.

He simply had to stare back for them to fall back into silence. But his student wasn’t wrong: there was no blood moon.

You have grown out of your blushing, babbling and swerving of the subject in your very first year.

An eleven-year-old witch once reddened her white sheets, inhaled all the ibuprofen her muggle parents packed for her first year and wound up in the Hospital Wing and missing her Potions Class. Now, a fifteen-year-old brews herself cures for her crippling menstrual cramps in Professor Snape’s laboratory.

You have grown up, but you do not get spared a scolding.

“Is that not what my enhanced Calming Drought is for?” The black figure bent in half and bore down to whisper about your shared secret. After all, you were supposed to be catching up with the other first years and the lesson you missed the night he called you back into the classroom. You were supposed to be brewing a cure for boils. “Is that not why you knocked on my office door in the middle of the night?”

“It’s not about the pain, sir,” you shrink further into his shadow. “It’s about my mood. My mood swings, actually. It’s about me being bad company during this time of the month.”

His brow bounces as if he isn’t buying what you’re selling. You’re not willing to pay for any of it either.

“So,” your professor propped himself across from you. He looked almost comfortable on those leather cushions. It’s as if the cushions remembered the shape of him from back when he was a Slytherin. “Lunar-influenced moods.”

“Yes..?”

“I believe that daft dandy has written a book on your condition. 'Wandering With Werewolves’ I believe it’s called.”

“Oh?”

He had his eyes bounce off of your book, then your face and back again. He did this as many times as it took for you to catch them into your own.

“Oh,” you sighed a smile. “It’s Penny’s. I’m the only student I know who hasn’t read Lockheart,” you shrug the smile off your face. “It’s all the girls talk about in the Grand Hall.”

“Vampires? Well, you must be relieved,” his own sigh slips through curling lips. “They have yet to discover your lycanthropy.”

With his mouth quirked at the corners and his frown falling off his forehead, Severus Snape looked his age.

You were soon to forget that it hadn’t been a decade since he had a Head of House of his own to breathe down his neck between breaks. He looked young enough to be lounging on black leather and sassing a fellow Slytherin.

And young enough to have his fellow Slytherin sass back.

“They haven’t discovered your true nature yet, so I’m not worried.”

Severus, your housemate, left as soon as Snape, your professor, sneered.

“My true nature?”

“Forgive me, sir,” you sink further into your seat. “I didn’t mean to–”

There was a meter and a half between the two of you, but he felt like just a couple millimeters away. And, all of a sudden, you were a first year again.

“Is my true nature a subject of speculation during lunchtime?”

“N-no, Professor. It’s just…just girls being girls. It’s silly, really–”

He leaned forward over the cross made up of his legs.

“Am I silly to you, Miss Whyen?”

“No,” you shook your head and almost unscrewed it as you did. “Never. The rumor is. It’s more of a joke, actually–”

“Well? Spit it out, girl!”

“Vampire,” you’re too late to stop yourself from shouting it. “They joke about you being a vampire.”

Between the cracking of the coals in the fireplace and the mermaids’ melody outside of the walls, there was only silence. But before you could break a window and drown in sweet water and shame, a snort snapped Snape out of whatever spell you put him under.

“Back to your text books!”

“Forgive me.”

“It’s not your fault your housemates find the living dead more interesting then their own futures.”

“Still,” you straighten your spine and tighten your throat. “I shouldn’t have shouted. And I should have never addressed you as a…as a fellow student, sir.”

“You shouldn’t have, no,” he crossed his legs only to cross them again. “Now I’m going to have to dispose of everybody in this room. I can’t have any of you running to the Headmaster and exposing me as a creature of the night.”

The fire, the lake and the silence were tied in a braid. This time, it was your turn to break the spell, so you did it with a giggle so girlish, the mermaids must have been covering their ears.

“For your sake, I do hope your friends remember to buy you a garlic garland.”

Severus had returned with the shadow of a smile on Snape’s face. Without the harsh lines of his heavy brow, his eyes were allowed to shine in a way that his frown would never allow. They borrowed heat from the hearth as they watched you wipe tears of laughter from yours.

“My days are numbered, then. I actually asked them to bring me back some chocolate. It’s a muggle cure for my condition.”

“The last time you self medicated, I had to excuse you for the entire day.”

You had expected the Potions Master to be offended on behalf of all wizarding kind, or at least Madam Pomfrey, who looked after the first year, and himself.

He had stayed up to brew a fifth year the cure that has been getting her through all of her menstrual cycles and he had to do it all in his nightshirt.

But he wasn’t offended. Not last night and not now. The candlelight in his office had even lend him some of its golden glow.

“I already downed the drought, sir,” you looked into the fire burning in his eyes. “I could never thank you enough.”

Whatever he was about to say was caught in his throat as if the sound of your housemates scared the words from coming out.

“I had to dodge one of Tulip’s dungbombs for the last tablet, so you better join us next weekend!”

“Rowan,” you sat up on your knees and leaned over the sofa back.

You gestured towards your Head of House with a jerk of your head.

“Oh,” your friend stopped mid-step as if Petrified. The returning Slytherins had to swerve her frozen figure. “H-hello, Professor.”

“Welcome back, Miss Khanna,” he returned to his rigid stance and speak.

“My hero,” you jumped off the cushions and over the back of the couch. And as you slung an arm around her shoulders, you went into her ear to whisper: “You can breathe now.”

“Yes,” she shook her head as if to clear it.

“Thank you.”

“I’ve been doing some reading,” Rowan raised her black-rimmed glasses further up her nose. “And there is some truth to this chocolate treatment you’re trying out.”

“Was it one of Gilderoy Lockheart’s works?”

She was put under some sort of binding spell because she was motionless before she made her next move. Her hand was still stuck in its search through her satchel when we slumped into the sofa and Snape spoke up.

“No..?”

“Thank you for almost taking a dungbomb for me,” you took the chocolate tablet from her frozen fingers.

If I had allowed myself, I would have entertained the thought of our Head of House trying to engage in casual conversation with us. But I hadn’t. Of course I hadn’t.

“Next weekend,” she stole your attention from him. “You and me. The Three Broomsticks.”

“Butterbeer,” you unwrapped your gift. “Chocolate?”

“Oh, yes,” Rowan broke off a piece too big to chew. “Please.”

“Mmmn,” you had to moan through your munching. “This is exactly what I needed.”

The sofa across from the one you shared and your best friend were sharing had just squeaked. He was leaving.

“Would you like some, sir?”

You stretched over the sofa back, holding up your offering in one hand. The other you were currently cleaning with your tongue. He looked more interested in the mess you made of your mouth than by the treat.

“Thank you, but I’ll pass.”

It took several swipes of his thumb in the corner where his lips meet for you to mirror the motion and clean the chocolate off of your face.

“Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Miss Whyen,” he licked at his lips as if they had the sweetness off your own. But he had just refused it.

“Goodbye, Professor,” Rowan rescued you from the fiery pits of eternal embarrassment.

She couldn’t, however, treat your burns.

[shatteringzimmermann]

O.F.

i’m entering the writer’s digest contest under the YA category. i just spent an hour deleting 70 words so my damn entry is under 2k.

If you like wlw (which does not have much in the forefront of this piece but does in the trilogy this story comes from), magic, and girls who refuse to be limited by their shortcomings, check this out. it’ll probably take you less time to read than one of my omgcp updates do!

All writing is mine and mine only. you copy, you die.

(untitled)

I went on my morning run without Huhȕ. Despite the Healer’s attention on the snapped bones in her forearm I knew the ache of the injury remained for days after the bones were knit back together. She’d give me sin for it later, but she needed the sleep after spending most of the night fitfully rolling in bed. Her richly colored skin was warm under my lips when I kissed her forehead as I rose.

The sky was still bright with stars when I pulled on the pants that had taken me so long to get used to after nearly two decades of thick skirts. Some days I felt too naked in trousers and would return to the safety of the heavy fabrics. The longer I was in Norican, the largest city on the continent, the less it happened, but there were days I woke up and felt the haunting glare of my father. His face flashed in my mind when I put on the low, lightweight boots I bought for these runs.

The roughly cobblestoned streets were also beginning to awaken with the early-morning workers. Beath smiled and waved when I passed her bakery. Her wink told me she’d save me some of the meat-stuffed rolls I loved so much.

The run to the caves was just less than two miles. Eager to exercise without ending up with my head in a bush I kept my pace steady and comfortable. The light was better when I reached them, sweaty and panting, but not enough for me to approach comfortably. I stretched my legs as I waited for the sun.

There were four Forsaken standing outside the caves, one of which was barely outside of one entrance and covered in shadow. He was new. Even from my position fifty yards away I could see the way youth gripped him but so had the magic that had overrun his body. He wore scraps of tired cloth around his waist.  The rest of the Forsaken were naked and in varying degrees of emaciation. Every time I was here I was relieved when I don’t recognize any of them as beggars from my street or frequenters of Beath’s, their hunger-bright souls hoping for the burned rolls she couldn’t sell.

I adjusted the leather strap around my forearm, the hide new and stiff, ensuring the gemstone inserted in the narrow width, labradorite, was pressed firmly against my skin. My power thrummed with it. The stone was for battle defense of a soul-bearer (unlike defense of a building; that one was ruby. It’d been a miserable few months to learn all the damned things). Huhȕ’s leather band wrapped high around her arm, the flat disc of obsidian pressing against the tender inner skin there.

The Wielders in Norican picked different places to carry their stones. There were many options since the only requirement was contact with bare flesh. I’d mentioned wanting to wear my protection stone as a necklace tight across my throat and Hu rolled her eyes. “You’ll be dead before the end of the day with something like that.” And then had me wrap a bit of fabric around my throat and proceeded to show me how she’d do it, with quick calloused fingers and years of learning her body as a weapon. She threw me on the ground seven times before I snapped at her. Her dark eyes had been filled with mirth as she took the fabric and let me try. I should have known better than to try and fight her, but she’s so Gods frustrating sometimes. She ended up on the ground once but I think she got tired of standing.

We spent the rest of the day learning the common places to wear stones and how to protect ourselves against assassins and thieves. I did the learning. Hu did the teaching, as she usually did. I was her magical Apprentice last year even though I’m nearly two years older. She’d fought the blending of her and me until it became us. There was no way we could go back to being the girls who hated each other at first introduction.

One of the other Forsakens, a pale woman with skin so sunburned parts of her body looked furred with the peeling skin, screamed. On each of the repeated trips I made here a Forsaken screamed like this. It wasn’t the type one would hear through a bedroom door or even a scream of someone with a knife wedged between their ribs. I know because I heard myself make this same exact scream before. It’s the noise a heart makes when the Gods take it in their cruel, cruel hands and pull it apart as it beats. It’s the noise I made when I found the house I’d grown up in crumpled to the ground with my mother, my father, and my sister still inside.

Whatever it is inside me that kept my magic hidden ripped open that day. I nearly turned into one of these Forsaken in my tiny little town. The loops that riddle them- the reason I come out there, the event I’ve been studying for months now- were flares of uncontrolled, unfocused magic. Instead of the person controlling the magic within, the magic took control of its source. Magic doesn’t understand that a human needs food and water and shelter in order to survive long, but these poor souls die a much slower death than of a person lacking one of these. I’d heard of men succumbing to thirst after just a week, but the Forsaken woman in front of me had been here near two months. What used to be a voluptuous body was now thin enough to teach someone about nearly every bone in the body.

None of them were wearing their stones. The stones we Wielders wore mold our magics into what we need them to be, but they also protect us from loops. In school we are taught about the importance of using our magics every day, to let the mind find work as well as the body. To leave magic too built up in our systems left Wielders on a dangerous edge.

There was a child here a few months ago, a little girl just reaching her magical age when she fell ill. There was no chance of saving her. The Wielders who carried the labradorite were the only ones that could be near someone in loop and even then it’s not for very long. Even the largest, most flawless stone could shatter under too much stress, and the bearer would be vulnerable to whatever caused the destruction and also to a loop of their own, if the situation was right. It took ten Master Wielders to get the girl here without her magic damaging the city. Two of them spent at least a fortnight in the Master Healer’s quarters before they recovered.

 Besides the young boy and the pale woman, there was an old man with swollen knees and a woman nearing her 30s. Her hair was the same shade as Huhȕ’s, though their skin tones had different colors underneath.

This Forsaken was once called Rosa. She was born in the fifth ring within the city walls and she had a little shop down from her apartment where she sold some of the best flowers in the city.

I reached into the inner pocket of my tunic and pulled out a worn leather strap and an amber fossil. Rosa’s sister gave it to me three weeks ago and now that I’m finally here alone again I want to try something Huhȕ won’t like.

Rosa looped a month and a half ago after her husband died suddenly. Rosa had gone to sleep that night, taking off her stone as normal, but when she woke up her eyes had turned that horrid, haunting pure white. The wielders got there quickly enough to transport her to these caves where she’ll live the rest of her very short life without endangering anyone, but I wondered if there was a part of her soul still left in that husk of a body.

I needed to get close enough to her to get her band on. Every other time I’ve tried getting near a Forsaken I’ve had to dash back when I was more than an arm’s length away. Something in their magics must recognize when a potential threat was near and causes it to lash out in swiping waves of color. Hu had tried to get me to promise to not try this again. I hadn’t, but the concern I could feel even in the grip she had on the hip of my tunic was enough to make me wait as long as I did.

Taking a deep breath, I reached inward. My magic seemed to always hum just under my skin so it only took a flick of my wrist to pull out a thick layer of it. Due to the stone in my band it shaped into a protective coating that settled over me like the sand in this barren land.

Rosa’s empty eyes met mine. Her band, limp in my hand, vibrated at the sudden abundance of wild, loose magic around me. She wasn’t flaring out yet so I slid one foot forward so slowly a passing traveler might think me a Forsaken as well.

 Back at the apartment Hu must be awake. I could have left a note and told her that I was simply going for a run and would be back soon, but we’d spent too much time hating each other for the half-truths we told for me to want to say that.

 On my next step, my magic was stable but pissed. I could feel the irritation building within it at my continued attempts that put me in so much danger. Forsaken? Again? Really? It seemed to say. But after what felt like so long Rosa was close enough for me to touch. I didn’t look away from her eyes. In my distant studying of her I noticed she had a tendency to open them just a bit wider before flaring.

Feeling with my magic, I tried to tell if there was a flare waiting just under her skin. Nothing felt off. Another sliding step.

Sweat trickled down my temple.

It was another 20 minutes until just the leather touched her arm. She flinched, but no flare. I had the feeling she would let loose every ounce of magic left in her burning soul if I vomited on her so I swallowed against the bile threatening to make an appearance.

Her breathing changed the closer her stone got to her skin. I was constantly glancing from her wrist to her eyes and I swore on the many Gods that an emotion besides that endless, terrible pain crossed her face.

I was inches from the fastest and potentially most painful death a Wielder could face. I could see the tangles in her hair and the faded tattoo of vines that wrapped her bicep. The fossil in her band made her entire body flinch and I nearly dropped it. No flare.

 There was a potential of bringing back the Forsaken from this. There had to be. I’d been so close to disappearing. I felt so much agony in my near-disastrous almost-loop but I survived. I didn’t know why, but I did. The last few months were to find out how.

 What if the next time they blinked their eyes they could see again, could smile again, could love again? Rosa’s soul couldn’t have just disappeared, it had to be somewhere. And watching the quick rise and fall of her chest, I believed it was still inside. I believed Rosa was still inside. I just needed to figure out what the perfect key was to unlock the magical hold on her.

And hope that this search didn’t kill me first.

My trembling fingers tied the band around her wrist.

[hottytoddynews]

Living In Mississippi Book Cover (Left). Author Robert Hamblin (Right)

Here is Evans Harrington, the handsome, courtly, distinguished Faulkner scholar, reporting on the worst night in the history of the University of Mississippi:

“Things started whizzing by my head and hitting that car, and I realized people were throwing rocks and concrete at it, and I hit the ground as quick as I could because I was scared I would be hit, and watched that crowd of marshals. . . .   Then General Walker stood up on the Confederate statute and talked crazy[,] because he said things like ‘You have been betrayed!’”

It was the night of the riot, September 30, 1962.  Harrington was on campus to watch the students rush the Lyceum, to watch the marshals fire tear gas, to rescue a minister friend who had futilely tried to discourage violence, to see the mob set cars afire and hear gunshots.  He had been teaching at the University of Mississippi for seven years, and he would teach there for thirty-two years more.   He saw the university at its nadir, and he witnessed and soldiered on.

“Living in Mississippi,” a biography by Robert Hamblin, a scholar of Southern literature, succinctly outlines Harrington’s hard work and his achievements.  “Unlike many Mississippi liberals and moderates of his day, white as well as black,” Hamblin writes, “Harrington did not leave the state for a freer environment or better opportunities elsewhere . . . .   Except for his military service, he lived in Mississippi his entire life, and he made a difference. “

If Ole Miss has prospered in recent decades, if life and art in the town of Oxford have flowered more brightly, some of the credit – and an amount much more than inconsiderable – is due to Evans Harrington.  

Hamblin’s first chapter, “The Life,” is a straightforward biography, although most episodes have a touch of Faulkner.  Evan Harrington’s father was a Baptist preacher, called to a succession of churches across southern Mississippi, and eventually a chaplain at Parchman prison farm.  Harrington first distinguished himself as a soloist in the church choir.  At Mississippi College, which he attended on the GI Bill, Harrington began writing.  Throughout the 1950’s, while teaching high school, he wrote short stories, placing some with the Saturday Evening Post and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.  In 1956, he published his first novel, The Prisoners.

The Prisoners, which centers on Parchman, drew attention for its existential stance.  For money, in these early years, Harrington drew on three paperback novels issued by Dell Publishing – pseudonymously, under the name of Gilbert Terrell.   They had oblique, one-word, flirtatious titles:  Willa, Missy, and Lily.   They had suggestive blurbs on their back covers:  “Beautiful, defiant, taunting, Lily played the game of love with every man who caught her fancy.”  They sold for thirty-five cents to sixty cents each, and they sold like wildfire  (Willa sold 137,000 copies in a few weeks).

Harrington kept secret his career as Gilbert Terrell. (He showed one friend his book contract only after he had blacked out the title of the novel).  Fellow faculty members knew that he was writing paperbacks, heard his royalties equaled his salary, could learn nothing more, and concluded that Harrington must be writing pornography.

On this, Hamblin sets the record straight.  Harrington’s paperbacks were entertainments, boiling over with fistfights, shootings, nymphomania, and car wrecks – and, in Willa, a college football team battling its way to the Sugar Bowl.  They have the shock value of pulp fiction, but the writing is better.  They are set in Southern college towns, not far from the godforsaken country of other sensational literature:  the novels of Erskine Caldwell, and William Faulkner, and the young Cormac McCarthy.

covers of two of the sensational paperbacks he wrote under the name of Gilbert Terrell, “Willa” and “Missy”

In 1974, with Ann Abadie, Harrington inaugurated the first “Faulkner and Yoknapawpha” conference.  In 1980, as head of the English department, he hired Willie Morris as the University of Mississippi’s first writer-in-residence; no hiring decision has ever unfolded more lasting benefit to the college, the town, or the state.  He brought Ellen Douglas to the campus, and, more controversially, Barry Hannah.  Harrington himself was a fine teacher, firm but courteous in running classes and critiquing student work (as generations of students, the present writer included, can attest).

Harrington’s letters, which Hamblin quotes, are perceptive and funny.  He could do a devilish parody of Faulkner, and on Stark Young he could be both considerate and savage:

“GAWD, I’m finishing So Red The Rose, and at last most of Young’s favorite characters are being killed by the Yankees, so I’m enjoying it at least a little . . . .  No work I’ve ever read has made me understand Northerners’ hatred of Southern aristocrats as well as his two or three loving portraits of those aristocrats.”

Harrington’s gift to Southern literature was service, not novels, yet he wrote more than he published.  His comments on Mississippi history and literature are remarkable and quotable.  “Living in Mississippi” makes clear how tirelessly Harrington served, surveys how much he wrote, and raises hope that he will be quoted much in years to come.  

Allen Boyer is Book Editor for HottyToddy.com.  He was privileged to attend the first Faulkner and Yoknapatwpha Conference and to have Evans Harrington for a creative-writing teacher.  During the last week of July, he will be signing his fifth book, “Rocky Boyer’s War,” at Square Books, TurnRow Book Company, and Lemuria Book Store.

The post Book Review: Evans Harrington’s Biography “Living in Mississippi,” By Robert Hamblin appeared first on HottyToddy.com.