Equinox (Augarten Book 1)

by Charlie Godwyne

  "Hallo, Florian. We've got your mugs—one sec." I dug under the foldout counter and found the three little mugs from when Ingrid's granddaughter had brought back the espresso. I placed them on the counter.

  His eyes widened. "Oh, great, thanks. What a cute little girl you have. You must be proud of her."

  I blushed. "She's not mine." How awkward.

  "That's my granddaughter!" Ingrid called up from behind the booth.

  Florian laughed good-naturedly. "My mistake."

  "What can I get you?"

  He ordered a Sturm, and I fished out the last three of the two-Euro coins in my pocket. "It's on me."

  Florian looked at the coins in confusion. "Oh no, I couldn't let you—"

  "Please let me. I was trying to figure out a way to buy you a drink while I waited in your line this morning. I want to take this chance."

  Now Florian blushed, his eyes searching my face. "Then I'll accept it and bring you another espresso when I come back to return the glass."

  "Excellent." I didn't know if that translated into anything other than friendly comradery, but I took it.

  Florian spoke up when I handed him his glass. "If you wanted to meet after the festival ends tonight, we could talk more."

  My heart soared. "Absolutely. I'll be around, helping close down. Come find me if I don't see you first."

  "Great. I'll see you then."

  "See you then."

  Ingrid bumped me out of the way and beckoned more customers up to the counter. I smiled as Florian drank his Sturm, occasionally looking over at me to share a smile as well. He returned an hour later with his glass and another shot of espresso for Ingrid and me.

  I leaned over the counter so I could ask the question that had been burning me. "Can you teach me the prayer you were doing that morning? I think some spiritual intervention might help me recover what I've lost."

  He narrowed his eyes. "I was praying to divine beings, you know."

  I nodded. "Do you think they could help? Could you maybe introduce me?"

  Florian seemed to actually consider it. "I'll have to ask them first. Let me see if I can get an answer before tonight."

  That lit me up. "Great. I'll just run inside and take a quick shower once we close, then I’ll be out."

  He smiled, the warmth reaching his eyes. "Sounds good."

  We worked another couple of hours nonstop until Ingrid called back to me. "Gabriel, someone's here for you."

  I tied the trash bag and left it outside the cabin, curious if Florian had returned already for something. Then I saw wild black curls, thick eyebrows, and icy blue eyes watching me. "Solomon!"

  I charged out of the cabin and around to him. He wore loose trousers and a thin flannel shirt that hugged his shoulders and looked magnificent on him. I wanted to hug him, but I was covered in Sturm.

  He crossed his arms in front of his chest, looking a bit uncomfortable, though I could not discern why. "Hey."

  I scanned him. "You look great. You should wear civilian clothes more often."

  He scoffed. "You've only seen me while I'm working. Of course I'll wear my uniform for work."

  I held my hands up in mock surrender. "You look great in your cassock and robe, too. Don't get me wrong."

  That finally got him to laugh. "Thanks? Though they're not designed to look attractive, you know."

  I grinned at him, so grateful to have someone to tease and joke around with. "Are you allowed to drink if you're off the clock?"

  He smiled and scratched the back of his head. "I'll get one cup, provided you pour it for me."

  "Done. Sorry I can't hang out—I'm finally making some cash instead of the free gardening Andrea has me doing for her."

  "No problem. I can only handle crowded festivals for so long anyway. I'll walk around a bit and that'll be enough for me."

  That totally tracked with what I knew of Solomon. He was definitely more the type to prefer reading in the silence and comfort of his own home than thriving from the busy energy of a crowd.

  "Sturm?"

  "Please."

  I winked at him and turned to go. "Coming right up."

  Chapter Ten

  That night, I raced back inside to unload my pockets full of coins and cash from Ingrid and then shower off. By the time I reemerged at twilight, Florian was pacing the circle wherein he usually prayed. I rushed over, exhausted but eager.

  "Did you get permission to introduce me to your gods? Are they Welsh?" Maybe since I somehow knew the language, his gods would be amenable to me.

  Florian smiled, his peaceful expression contradicting his words. "They are Welsh, yes. But I didn't receive their consent to introduce you to them, actually. I'll ask again later to make sure I heard them clearly. There is a form of the ritual we can do that simply calls on the elements in nature. An agnostic version, per se."

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and considered that, disappointment clenching my gut. "I wonder why they don't want me approaching them."

  The wind rustled through the trees, filling my lungs with an earthy scent despite the strong human presence of the festival. Florian scanned the park and ran a hand through his short hair, the tawny brown strands sliding over his fingers. "You have amnesia, Gabriel. That's a complicated thing when it comes to spirituality. My only guess is that these gods know that they are not the ones meant to help you with this problem. It could also be that they simply did not want a spur-of-the-moment introduction. Best not to be flippant with things like this, so let's give it some time."

  Forcing a smile, I tamped my expectations down. "Yeah. That's got to be it."

  Still, it seemed strange that Welsh felt familiar, yet the Welsh gods didn't want me to reach out to them. It made me wonder just who out there would be willing to help me find my memories, since my angel did not seem concerned about my amnesia.

  Florian fished a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. "I wrote out the ritual in Welsh, and in German on the other side."

  I flipped it to the Welsh, and my heart leapt in my chest. "I can read this."

  Florian shifted his weight, popping a hip out. "You said it sounded familiar, right? What you heard of my prayers."

  "Yes, but…Florian, I don't have any memories, at all. All I have is a guardian angel and a priest friend. This language, this is huge for me." Tears burned my eyes.

  His eyes softened. "Is it your native language? Maybe a trip to Wales could jog things loose."

  I read through the entire ritual, start to finish, then back to the top and read it through again. The words and syllables came freely to me, with greater ease than German. Yet it still did not feel native, somehow. I wondered whether anything ever would. "Almost. This is as close as I have come to finding it. I can wield it basically like a native language. It is that close. Why do you know Welsh?"

  Florian pursed his lips, clearly pondering how to phrase his answer. "I lived in Wales for five years, in my early thirties. It's been a while, but I could speak with you, if you'd like."

  A smile leapt onto my face. He was offering to meet with me again. "Teach me this ritual. Even if we're doing the atheist version, which I most definitely am not, I might as well get started."

  He sidled up next to me. "That's something you know about yourself, right?"

  "It is," I confirmed. "Something big, as well. I am spiritual. I have a guardian angel who is willing to talk with me sometimes, but I wish I could hear from him all the time. I feel lonely without gods in my life, whoever was there for me before. Spirituality is a piece of my puzzle…I have a holy longing that aches so hard I can feel it in my chest."

  Florian's eyes looked into the far distance, past the ring of trees that cased us in. "I know the feeling. When I switched over, from atheism to believing in something, the transition was profound. It has been ever since; I cannot imagine going back."

  My jaw clenched, a gentle pain that somehow healed me in return for my suffering. "Yeah."

  We kicked our shoes
and socks off and spread our toes in the grass.

  "This is a form of mild energetic work, but it only should be done by those practicing within a Western tradition. If you were some kind of Tao practitioner before and wiped your brain using energy manipulation, then doing another method of circulation is going to contraindicate what your body is used to and cause issues." Florian scanned me from head to toe. "What do you think?"

  I nodded. "My guardian angel might step in. Otherwise, I guess I'm allowed to make my own mistakes. Got to start somewhere."

  Florian's expression belied him to be less than sure about that. "Let me know if anything feels off. This is for beginners; it's so mild, it shouldn't hurt."

  He lifted his hands over his head and brought them down along the midline of his body, his eyes closed. "None of this works if you are tense, so let the tension roll down your body and into the earth. Give it away. The soil will compost it."

  I brought my hands up, and as I pulled them down, all of my worries and anxiety over not knowing my identity, and all the muscle tension of gardening and festival support these past few days seeped down. By the time the last of it soaked through the soles of my feet and into the dirt, I was so relaxed I wanted to lie down and take a nap. Preferably with Florian.

  "Shall we do that one more time?" he asked.

  I shook my head. "If we do that again, I'm going to fall asleep."

  He chuckled. "Very well. You're so tall, I wondered whether you would get the tension all out the first time. You're as willowy as a tree."

  "I'll take that as a compliment."

  He smiled. "Please do. Next, you'll be pulling up the life energy from the earth through the soles of your feet, all the way up through the crown of your head and out your fingertips. Like this."

  With his hands starting at his navel, he breathed in and pulled up, all the way until he arched his back and tilted his face to the sky. I blinked, trying to see the energy moving, but that apparently was not part of the things I could see, dream vision or not. Very well.

  I mimicked him exactly, but once the life energy of the earth rushed through my feet, the process took over. With a whoop of joy, I pushed the beautiful golden energy all the way through me and out the top of my head, blasting it from my fingertips like fireworks.

  Florian grinned, propping a hand on his hip. "You could feel it?"

  After a long moment staring at the treetops, reaching for the sky just like those branches, I came down from my high with some reluctance. "Definitely. That felt great. Consider me a junkie."

  "Duly noted. Even just that exercise might help you recover some memories. Depending on what your angel thinks, you could work on that with him."

  "Awesome."

  "Now." He turned to face east. "We're going to invoke the elements in each direction, then banish unbalanced manifestations of those elements. Even if you never forge a relationship with a god to help you with this ritual, it is still useful to do this for the sake of balance."

  "To improve the self," I supplied.

  His eyes twinkled. "Exactly. Here we go."

  Building the ritual together, we spoke of magic and wonder until late into the night. Afterwards, I fell asleep with a smile on my lips, filled to bursting with love and awe.

  The next morning, I brushed my teeth, that pleased grin still splitting my face.

  "Gabriel?"

  I about jumped out of my skin. Ducking into the hall, I found Maria holding the far door open with her foot, a huge box in her arms. "Do you mind helping me set up? I'd only reserved for Friday, but one of the shop owners got sick last night, so I can sell my wares in her booth today."

  I rinsed out my brush quickly, then rushed over and took the box from her. "Absolutely."

  She grabbed the wheelbarrow from the lounge. It was filled with a hodgepodge of boxes and wicker baskets. She pushed it down the network of halls ahead of me and must have noticed me trying to decipher the contents. "Mostly herbs—just for seasoning things, mind you. I can't officially say I work as a medical herbalist or I'll have the industrial medical establishment coming after me. It's just that some of my cooking seasonings can also fix a common cold or bring a fever down, per se."

  "Sounds tasty." No wonder she was the head gardener here and oversaw the herb gardens herself.

  Augarten was crisp and chilly this early. Even the mourning doves were still tucked away somewhere warm instead of singing the break of day. Not yet, it felt like the garden was saying, let's sleep a bit longer.

  Angling my neck around the large box, I checked for Florian, but didn't see him anywhere.

  Maria unlocked one of the small cabins and I loaded the box inside. We did two more rounds with the wheelbarrow, then Maria set about getting her wares on display while I helped to gently box up the original seller's hand-made garden gnomes and get them stowed safely out of the way.

  "Those are some lovely amulet stones."

  I whipped around to find Florian at the front of the booth, hands cupped around a steaming cup of coffee.

  Maria charged to the front of the booth. "Florian Schwarz! Guten Morgen. It's nice of you to compliment my charms, but I know you've got a stellar one of your own."

  I straightened as much as I could in the tiny cabin and stared as Maria opened up a glass tray of various beautiful stones and explained how she had acquired each one. I barely followed her explanation, instead smiling as my heart took flight. Florian Schwarz. Now I knew his full name.

  Maria finished her explanation. "And how is your charm doing?"

  Florian blushed. "Fine." He looked like he didn't want to talk about it.

  I felt my angel looking at Florian and recognized the same feeling from yesterday. So the thing in his breast pocket had been a charm. Maybe he had it on him again today, though I couldn't tell with his double-breasted coat. Interesting.

  Florian brightened. "Morgen, Gabriel."

  I beamed. "Morgen. I have much more to learn before I can join a conversation about protective stones."

  Maria laughed and clapped me on the arm. "You don't need such things, Gabriel. You are the luckiest person I know."

  I scoffed. "Hardly."

  Then the unspoken comparison dawned, and I glanced at Florian to see what he thought of being called unlucky by extension. He was smiling down at the stones, his normally warm hazel eyes subdued. I wanted him to fight the accusation, but he didn't.

  I turned back to Maria. "Knowing my present circumstances as you do, I'm surprised to hear you call me lucky." Much less the luckiest person she knew. If I was lucky to have amnesia, then I must have been unlucky beforehand.

  Maria squeezed my arm and didn't miss a beat, her blue eyes twinkling up at me. "You are, Gabriel, even with your present circumstances. You are not as lost as you think. Confusion aside, you are at home in yourself. I've never met someone so grounded. It took me decades of meditation to get to the state where you showed up on day one. So trust yourself, and trust in your path."

  For a moment, her confidence overwhelmed my insecurity, and I almost believed her. "Thank you."

  "Can I borrow your helper, Maria? I owe him an espresso this morning."

  I balked. "You owe me nothing."

  "I won't hear your protests, Gabriel. I approximated that double fistful of coins you crammed in my tip jar yesterday. You've bought at least a dozen espresso shots from me."

  I spluttered, my cheeks burning. "I was tipping."

  Maria laughed and pushed me out the door. I stumbled onto the path beside Florian, mortified.

  Florian cocked his head. "My trailer is this way."

  We walked in silence a moment, and I calmed from my earlier nerves. Some of the mist was clearing from the garden, and the mourning doves now sang beautifully.

  "Do you think the garden itself enjoys the festival?" I mused aloud, thinking about the laughing trees yesterday. A bit of a strange question, but Florian had just entertained Maria's talk on lucky stones.

  He took a long moment to
answer. "That depends. Do you think the garden is alive?"

  I scoffed. "Of course it is."

  Florian smiled at me. I grinned back. He turned a corner and I followed. He knocked his coffee back, then dumped the last drop onto the grass. "Here we are."

  I wrapped my arms around me and tried not to fidget in the cold while he set his empty mug down and unlocked his trailer. We both stood silently while he pulled the shot.

  "I still don't see how Maria thinks I'm lucky," I muttered. "I have no memories, and therefore nothing to my name." No one who knew me, but I held the rest of my complaints back, not wanting to turn this into a pity party.

  Florian tilted his head and finally met my eyes. "What a sad story, Gabriel. Wait, how do you know for certain that's your name?"

  "I don't. It's the angel my friend prayed to when he found me."

  Florian hesitated, then shoved the little mug at me.

  I took the cup. The espresso warmed me all the way through.

  Florian pulled himself another shot, then clinked glasses with mine. "To new beginnings."

  "To new beginnings."

  Florian was silent a long moment while we drank. "I can relate to getting a fresh start, though I'd prefer not to share why."

  Butterflies danced in my stomach, because for the first time, someone claimed to know what I was going through. "That's fine. Tell me how your trailer works."

  Florian tapped a panel with his knee and it popped open to show a large removable battery. "I charge it overnight at home." Then he kicked a foot out, pointing at something connected to a pad on the back wheel. "Riding charges it, just a little bit. Enough to make it worth the wiring, but not enough to save the battery if it's about to die."

  I knelt to take a closer look. A call echoed up from the shop owners, followed by the rattling doors of stalls opening up.

  Florian took my empty cup. "Sounds like the security guard is opening the gate."

  I stood. "I'd like to see you again. Can we do lunch or dinner sometime? I don't have a cell phone, but there's a landline in the groundskeeper's office here at Augarten." Andrea already fielded calls from Solomon regarding my paperwork. She surely wouldn't mind Florian calling.