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There is a story told of a woman on Ensmer island. Only it is not the story of a woman.
Her parents had a girl child, born at the waning moon in the beginning of spring. In childhood she was called Kitten, for she was always playful and so sweet that no one could stay angry at her, no matter what mischief she caused to happen.
Kitten’s parents were fisherfolk, kind but silent, and they often wondered at their child. So flighty was she, and as quick to tears as to laughter. In no way was she a bad daughter to them, though. She helped at every task gladly and learned weaving and cooking and all the skills that a woman should. They might have worried some over her friendship with the local witch, but when asked she assured her mother that she had no interest whatsoever in becoming one. ”Only she is so different from anyone else,” Kitten said and smiled her elfin smile.
Kitten was not perhaps wholly truthful in her answer. She did not wish to become a witch, that much was true. But she did wish and strive to learn all the spells and words of power that the witch knew.
When Kitten was given her true name, the sorcerer seemed unsure and troubled somehow, but she was happy and her parents were happy and that was all that mattered, in the end. He was not a great magician in any case, barely trained by his master in his old age and so the folk of her village did not think much of it either. A bad day, a bad meal, a bad night’s sleep after too much wine. Who could say, when it came to those who dealt with magic.
The trouble began a little later. Young men came to court Kitten, whose smiling eyes and easy laughter made them think she cared for them much more warmly than she did. Her parents warned her against raising false hopes, but reminded her as well that there would soon be a time that she should wish to marry and have a family of her own. At these words their daughter grew silent and her eyes more serious than they were ever wont to be. In the coming months, as summer turned to autumn and the trees lost their leaves, Kitten lost something as well. She did not stop smiling altogether, and the boys did not stop calling, but her mother could see she was not happy.
The day after the Feast of Sun-return, Kitten turned to her mother and asked for leave to travel. ”But what for, my child?” she asked. ”There is no need for you to seek work elsewhere, we have enough and more for you. And a young girl all alone on the road, it might not be safe.”
Kitten only shook her head and said that there was something she needed to find, an answer about herself and the world that she needed. Her mother did not know what answer to give to that. Young people sometimes had these fancies, she knew, but from what she remembered, those ones spoke with passion about adventure and had fire in their eyes. Not this calm sadness, this certainty about nothing certain at all. So she only replied that she would need to speak with Kitten’s father before anything could be decided.
At first Kitten’s father said no. What else should he have said, to such a vague and unreasonable request? But in the coming months he saw his child grow ever more quiet, ever more withdrawn and lonely. From a girl who was never still if she could help it, Kitten transformed into an old woman, loath to leave the house and her place by the fire. Thus her parents came to see that they would lose their child either way. At length they spoke together in the dark, after all had gone to bed in their small house under the mountain, and long were the silences between their words. In the morning they finally gave her leave to go, with sorrow in their hearts.
When spring was firmly on its way, Kitten set off, up a path she had never walked before. She wandered from village to village and for the first time in her life saw men and women as only that, not friends and neighbours and kin. She watched them speak and work and live, comfortable in roles that seemed to her to fit them like an old boot, well shaped to one’s feet by use and by time. After a while a knowledge began to grow in her. A knowledge and the beginnings of a plan.
In the last village before Arish town she bought a length of good wool cloth and some thread. Knife and needle she carried already, as most women do. The next day she sewed a pair of trousers, cut off her braid and decided on a name.
Thus it came to be that it was a boy named Oak that walked into town in the cool dark of an early summer evening. He had a mop of curly hair and a rakish grin. It was easy for him to find friends and very soon he also found a wizard in search of an apprentice.
The mage was called Tean and he had himself been trained on Roke many years before. So he looked at the boy standing before him and saw with the true sight.
"This is men's magic, not meant for women,” Tean said, not unkindly, “go find another teacher.”
But Oak told him his true name and it was not the name of a woman. So the wizard took him on.
Oak stayed in Arish for four years and learned well both the ways of wizardry and the ways of being a man. He fell in love with a carpenter’s daughter and had his heart broken by her. He spent some too loud, too long nights out with the other boys of the town and was scolded by his master. He healed the man his sweetheart of old was married to and felt only joy in his heart for her happiness in him. Yet, his spirit still yearned for something more.
This being many, many years ago, before all proper wizardry was thought to come from the Isle of the Wise, Tean offered Oak his own staff at the end of his schooling. And Oak felt a profound joy in that instant, as was to be expected at the attainment of a goal so long and hard toiled for. But after a mere moment, his heart fell. He shook his head and said that it would be false of him to accept the name of a wizard.
"I have learned women's magic, that is of the earth and of the flesh" he said "and I have learned the high and clear magic of men. It is my own magic I need to find now, and it seems only I can teach it to myself.”
So he left Arish town and shed the name of Oak, as a butterfly sheds its cocoon; as he had shed another name, another life before. They took a ship, the story does not tell where, and used only their true name after that. Efilion they were named by that village sorcerer so long ago and it was the only name that truly held all of them, concealing not a part of who they were, no matter how strange or uncomfortable those might have seemed to others they met on their travels.
This is the tale of Efilion, who found their own road, both to magic and to happiness as well. And it is ever to be told in springtime on all the islands, so that others might listen and find their seeking made easier for the hearing of it.