The Fire Scryer

By Michele Wyan

Fire danced from the tip of the red candle she had just lit and Samantha Matthews stared at the flickering orange and yellow flame in an attempt to scry. She didn’t know what she expected to see in the candlelight but Elizabeth, the friend who had introduced her to Wicca six months earlier, said fire was a divinatory tool just like Tarot cards or rune stones.

Samantha wanted to increase her intuitive abilities and Elizabeth advised experimenting with a variety of methods until she found the ones that worked best for her. Reading Tarot cards came naturally to her but runes didn’t. Scrying in a bowl of water, watching the reflective surface for images, had yielded some intriguing but difficult to interpret shapes. So had scrying in a mirror and a crystal ball. Would she see anything mystical in the candlelight blazing before her?

She closed her eyes for a second and uttered a quick prayer, asking the Goddess to bless her efforts. When she opened her eyes again, the candlelight seemed brighter and the colors in the flame kept shifting. Sometimes blue rose from the orange and gold tongues of fire and sometimes red flared from them.

“Show me something,” Samantha urged the flame. “Something about my love life. Lack of a love life,” she amended with a grimace.

She hadn’t been involved with anyone in the two years since her divorce. She hadn’t dated, hadn’t even wanted to look at a man after the pain David had caused her and the catastrophic effect of their divorce on her finances. Lately, though, her loneliness had overwhelmed her. She yearned for a conversation partner other than her cat Isis, someone who could answer back with more than a mew or purr when she said hello.

Had a subconscious desire for romance caused her to choose a red candle for her scrying exercises? Elizabeth recommended using the color red in spells for passion and love and Samantha had cast a couple of love spells for friends at the hospital where she worked as a pediatric nurse. However, she hadn’t yet tried one for herself.

She frowned. At forty-three and with forty pounds of extra weight, she doubted all the magic in the universe would draw her a soul mate. Elizabeth would disagree and claim nothing was impossible if a person truly believed in their goal or desire. Elizabeth looked as skinny as a piece of spaghetti, though, and had naturally blonde curls that didn’t require a monthly application of hair dye to keep them free of silver.

Wishing she had been born under Elizabeth’s lucky star instead of the karma-heavy star that charted her life, Samantha took another look at her candle. This time she saw a face, a male face framed by dark, collar-length hair and a dark beard.

She swallowed. Was it her imagination or did she actually see a man’s image in the flame, a face somehow connected to her own future?

Only the passage of time would reveal the truth. Right now, the only thing she could know with certainty was that the image in the flame felt inexplicably familiar.

“You saw your soul mate,” Elizabeth said when they met for dinner at their favorite Italian restaurant two nights later. “Someone you’ve known in a past life. That’s why he seemed familiar. Put a little mugwort under your pillow at night and ask to be given more information about him in your dreams.”

Samantha shrugged. “How can you be sure he’s real? What if I imagined him or misinterpreted a shadow in the candlelight?

“You asked to see something and you saw something. Stop doubting your intuition.”

“It would be easier to believe the candle gave me a vision of my future soul mate if I socialized more and went places where I was likely to meet single men my age who share my spiritual beliefs. All I do lately is work.”

Thanks to the debts David had left her with, she needed all the overtime she could get at the hospital. Her busy schedule left her little time for anything else and domestic necessities like cleaning her apartment, grocery shopping, and laundry dominated her infrequent days off. Lessons in the craft and dinners or other social excursions with Elizabeth or her nurse friends were rare treats.

“I know where you can go,” Elizabeth said as their waiter brought them their Caesar salads.

“Where?”

“To the class I’m teaching on candle magic.”

“Tell me when it is and I’ll try to arrange my schedule to be there.” She loved Elizabeth’s classes and the idea of candle magic intrigued her.

“Two weeks from Tuesday at my store,” Elizabeth replied.

Elizabeth owned a metaphysical bookstore that also sold crystals, divinatory items like pendulums and Tarot decks, and ritual tools for the craft such as pentacles, athames, and wands. Elizabeth held classes in the large meeting room in the back of the store and Samantha had first met her at a class there on past lives. Since they were both divorced with no children and shared an interested in divination and metaphysical matters, they had quickly become friends.

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