Melody stood in her white robe by the window as the light of the full moon covered her back yard with a slithering, silvery glow. Something just didn’t feel right about today, although today’s full moon was on a Friday, Aphrodite’s day. The wind softly rustled through the green leaves of the Chestnut tree in her back yard.
“Where are you?” she whispered to no one in particular.
No answer came, not that Melody expected an answer, she smiled at her own reflection in the window. The room behind her, quiet and dark, illuminated softly by three candles on the coffee table, too quiet for her liking. Today she would change that, Melody was about to do a love spell which would change the course of her life.
She dropped the robe on the threshold when she stepped through the door, her body as white as the body of the full moon. Melody carefully clipped a rose from the bush on the edge of the deck, her face glowing with anticipation.
“Goddess Aphrodite, born from the foam of the sea,
Grant my wish, and bring a true love to me.”
Melody’s voice softly broke through the night’s air as stood on the lawn, her hair wildly floating on the wind as it grew stronger into a full blown storm. The rain started pouring down on her head and she could smell the water on the parched leaves of the trees, the grass beneath her turning into a puddle of mud. Lightning cleaved the perfect night’s sky into two halves, and a dark unearthly thunder rumbled in the distance.
Melody placed the rose in the middle of the yard before she ran to the door to find shelter from the storm. Her heart now raced as she quickly stepped inside the house. She hadn’t been a practising Wiccan for a long time, but she had felt drawn to the Goddess of Love ever since she could remember.
She picked up the robe and threw it on the sofa, then she grabbed an old t shirt and her blue jeans from the closet and put them on. Melody stared in the mirror, not sure of what she wanted to see, but her own grey eyes stared back at her, the thin wire framed glasses on the edge of her nose. Her amber coloured hair framing her face in wet strands.
Melody quickly walked up the stairs to her bathroom where she took a towel and wrapped it around her hair, like a turban. She grinned at her reflection in the bathroom mirror before she turned off the fluorescent light and closed the bathroom door behind her.
When she got back to the living room she turned on the TV set, and watched some romantic flick. The tears gathered up in her eyes when the boy finally got the girl, as movie romances usually go. Then for a brief moment she closed her eyes and prayed to the Goddess that she would soon find her love.
The next morning she was awakened by a strange noise outside her door. It almost sounded like something was trying to claw its way inside. Melody groggily put her glasses on and stumbled to the window. Mornings were never the best time of day for her. She opened the window and stared down at her yard. There was nothing down there… With a relieved sigh she fell back on the bed, closing her eyes once more. Although she normally couldn’t get up before 10 a.m., one of the advantages of being self-employed she called it, she couldn’t get back to sleep. She lay awake on her bed waiting for the scratching sound to start again.
After five minutes Melody reluctantly got up again, and walked downstairs. The remains of the pink candles still stood on her coffee table, as silent witnesses to the spell she performed only last night. Ignoring them, she walked into the kitchen to get the coffee started, and pretty soon the room was filled with the warm, brown smell of coffee.
She sat down at the table, a mug of steaming coffee in front of her, when the clawing sound reappeared. Melody hesitantly got up, and opened the door, a small grey kitten meowed at her as if she wanted to greet her.
“Hello there, are you lost?” Melody smiled at the kitten.
The kitten walked in as if she owned the place, jumped up on a chair and started to purr loudly. Melody stared at the tiny kitten in awe, she was too tiny to be all by herself, but she didn’t have a collar on her, so there was no way of finding out where she came from.
Late that night the kitten was still there, now on Melody’s lap, showering her with little kitten kisses. No one had showed up to claim her and Melody was already falling in love with the small dependant creature. Before she fell asleep she heard a voice caress her ear, ‘you asked for a true love, didn’t you?’
'Mighty Aphrodite' by Athena Sydney
Reproduced with permission and orginally published on
Athena's website.