February First Reads Novels & Stories

“This one is fairly simple, doesn’t require much for a sacrifice. A hair or anything really will do.” “Wait, what are you expecting me to do?” He plucked a single hair from my head with an exasperated sigh. “Hold this, read these words.” Eyeing him warily, I took the strand of hair from between his fingers. The words on the page seemed easy enough to pronounce, though I didn’t understand the meaning of them. I hadn’t bothered learning Latin in school. “Conversus ad pinnam” I muttered. The strand of hair in my hand transformed into a feather.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any way or by any means either electronic or mechanical without express permission from the author except for brief quotation in a book review. Any infragment of copyright will be punishable by law. At First Glance © 2021 by Nothando Dlamini Disclaimer This is a total work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to real life individuals, living or dead or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

“From the hospital.” “Yeah,” Adrian said. Honest. Always honest. Day 42 rule. “Do you want to know what it says.” _Silence. 11:05 AM._ Alex thought. Long time. Looked at February. In my arms. Asleep. Looked at Ivy. At Isla. At blocks. _F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y._ Looked at shark backpack. On hook. “No,” Alex said. Then, “Yes. But you read it. Not me. And if it’s bad, you burn it. And if it’s bad, we don’t tell February. Ever. Because 7 doesn’t need bad. Deal?”

I say. She thinks. "You," she says. "Me. Lena. Talia. Mara. Bowen." She pauses. "The people who have been inside this year from the beginning." She pauses. "The first readers." "Yes," I say. "Thursday evening." Thursday arrives. Everyone is there by four.

I smiled as I reminisced the first time I met my true family "I was strolling through the woods when I had caught the strong scent of blood. Strangely enough, even though some part of the scent repelled me, most of it called to me like a moth drawn to a flame. I followed the scent and found a 12 year old wolf lying in pool of her own blood. I am used to blood due to my nature but it was the first time I was terrified to see it. I didn't know what to do and she was losing consciousness fast. I had the strangest urge to protect her, to save her. There was one way but our bloods could never truly be as compatible." Alex started

“Just now. This was the start.” The first review of the memoir appeared in the third week of January. It was online, in a literary magazine that Clara had mentioned as one of the places she’d hoped for — not the most prominent, but serious and respected, with a readership that would understand what the book was trying to do. Clara forwarded it with no message, which was itself a message. Anya read it at her desk on a Tuesday morning.

The first year is the year of the management — the managed distance, the viable but provisional quality, the sense that the arrangement could end without catastrophe because it had not yet become the thing that could not end without catastrophe. Ernest read the section on the Friday of that first week. He sat in the study with Don's pages and his own journal open to the first December entry. He read carefully — not reading for the argument's quality, which he trusted, but reading for the convergence, for whether the journal passages had been placed where the convergence was most legible.

I softly smiled at them and closed the door. With Frederick assisting Uncle, I was left alone to wander around the house, and what better way to kill the time than to read books. So, my main target was finding the library. After a few dead-ends, I finally found what I was looking for. There's no surprise, the library was huge as well. I trailed my hands on the hard-bound books. Novels, grimoires, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson.

I almost calmed down; until I looked at Marge's face. Nothing. Albert slowly opened his eyes. He blinked several times then looked at his phone. "6:54. 1st of"-his eyes opened wide-"July!?" Albert exclaimed. "I thought June has 31 days!" he hurriedly stood up, grabbed a flask filled with vodka from his bag and raised it as a form of a toast. "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!" he downed the bottle and got ready to face the new month before him as the ominous dream he just had lingers around his conscious during the entirety of his breakfast.

February arrived the way February always did in New York — the cold settling in for one last serious stretch before spring made its first tentative appearance, the city moving through it with the specific weariness of a place that had been cold for too long and knew it. I didn't see Marcus for the first two weeks of the month. Not deliberately on either side, as far as I could tell — just the ordinary drift of schedules, his work busy, mine occupied with the Financial District spring transition that Renee had been right to push me toward starting in January.