Free Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I by Mark Tuson

primarily his own company, but that had always been voluntary.
    He was eating a piece of venison he had caught earlier that day and cooked a few minutes ago, and thinking about all the different people he knew. Who, he wondered, might have thought about him during his exile on this island? Who, if anyone, from his old life, might have taken a moment to remember him? He felt immense guilt and shame about having left his parents like he had. They must have thought he was dead by now. The thought gave him a sudden, burning desire to vomit in shame. He loved his parents, and the three of them had had a very good relationship. He felt like he had turned his back on them. Even if he made contact now, would they forgive him? He knew they wouldn’t understand, but he did hope that they might at least forgive him enough to not hate him.
    Winter was hard. There was more darkness, and less time to find food. He was cold, and he felt awful in some way most of the time. The only real positive in all of it was that he had learned to work his magic more efficiently now. He was becoming more competent; less of what he did with magic was experimental, there was far more certainty in it. Now he was beginning to understand more about himself, and about the Guild, and about magic itself. He was even beginning to forgive them for having suddenly placed him on trial and subsequently into exile in the way they had. Maybe that had been necessary, after all, to make him into a proper magician.
    Eventually, Summer crept closer again, and unless Peter was much mistaken, that meant he would have been in exile for around eleven months, give or take a few days. It was strange to think about that; this was the only life he knew now, and he had grown in his way to rather like it. The time had been hard, admittedly, but the worst of it was over once Winter was over, and he had a feeling that, if he needed to stay, he might have been able to do certain things more efficiently.
    He was, however, very much looking forward to being among people again. Not because he missed the interaction so much as the simple presence of other souls around him. For all he had the things around him – he even had music – he didn’t have anything, now, that testified to the existence of anyone other than him. It would almost have been easy for him to convince himself that this was how his life had always been; that the other people he had known were just vague dreams of another life in another world.
    One particular evening, he was walking up and down the beach on the island, idly tooting on his bamboo flute, after he had eaten. He had his deer-skin satchel full of tools, which he still carried everywhere with him, slung over his shoulder, and as he walked it bounced reassuringly on his hip: his one constant companion.
    It suddenly started to rain, a heavy hot rain that made him think of…
    There was a flash in the distance, which momentarily turned the sky blood red, and a few seconds later a head-splitting crack hit Peter with an almost physical force. He clutched his satchel and started to run towards the Hovel, thinking the protective spells he had woven around it to protect it from being damaged by weather and animals might protect him, or at least keep him dry.
    He ran into the Hovel and shut the door behind him, igniting the fire with a gesture from his wand, and sat on the bed, still holding his satchel in one hand and his wand in the other. He listened to the rain beating on the roof for a few minutes. It was frighteningly loud; he didn’t think he had known it this bad before. It got louder and louder, steadily, until it became a deafening roar that drowned everything else out.
    The Hovel was reverberating inside with the sound, and the floor, which Peter had covered over the previous Winter with bound-together pieces of wood, was bouncing like the cone of an enormous sub-woofer.
    There was nothing for it. He was going to have to go outside and weave more