How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Tilja thought about Woodbourne, trying to imagine, detail by detail, what her family might be doing at each moment. She wondered if they were missing her. Did it feel very strange without her? (6.1)
Tilja's away from home and misses it desperately. She occupies her time and stops herself from worrying about being stuck in Ellion's home by worrying about something else—things that might have changed while she was gone. Enough's changed already—Woodbourne will be Anja's—but will her being gone now isolate her even more?
Quote #2
She was, in a sense, no less miserable about knowing that she one day must leave Woodbourne, but at least she knew why, and she could accept it as a fact, something that she had been born with [...]. (3.221)
After talking with Meena about the unicorns, Tilja now knows more about the heavy load the heirs of Dirna's magic must carry. It's not as easy as she once thought, and though she knows she'll have to leave home, not possessing the family magic no longer feels like a flaw in herself.
Quote #3
Where were the mountains, that even from the southern fringe of the Valley at Woodbourne seemed to tower above it? Gone, gone beyond sight, and the Valley itself and the forest. You wouldn't have known they were there.
But they are, she told herself. And I'm not saying good-bye to them. I'm going home. (6.25-26)
While traveling to Talagh, Tilja misses the sights of the Valley, which are nowhere to be seen around her. But she has newfound determination: she won't succumb to homesickness, but will return to Woodbourne after her journey. That's her purpose—helping the home she grew up in—and she's not worrying about losing Woodbourne, now or later. Instead she focuses on her immediate task and keeps home in mind as a long-term goal.
Quote #4
Deliberately she shaped the picture in her mind, herself in the kitchen at home, just having climbed out of bed and now leaning against the stove as she repeated the fire charm and listened to the crackle of twigs and the swelling roar of flames into the flue. Blindly she clung to that image as she forced her feeble Tilja legs to shuffle the alien body forward and out on the other side of the arch, where she halted, sweating and gasping as the numbness flowed back the way it had come [...]. (8.15)
Tilja uses her concept of self-identity to combat the foreign magic that's invading her body, to not lose herself. And what image best ties her to her concept of self? That would be an image of her at home at Woodbourne.
Quote #5
The sound pierced Tilja through and through. She had never imagined that she actually loved Calico. There couldn't, she felt, have been many less lovable horse in the world. But Calico was her last link with Woodbourne, and she was gone. (9.49)
When Tilja parts temporarily with her horse, Calico, the animal doesn't want to leave. Tilja's struck to the core—everything in her life has changed. Right now it's just her and Tahl in Goloroth—there are no more physical reminders of her previous life in Woodbourne. She must face a new world without any reminders of her safe home.
Quote #6
Tilja might not have Woodbourne physically around her, but she carries it in her mind and heart. When she's terrified that she'll screw up the world, Tilja calms down by reminding herself that she can't mess up—she promised her dad she'd come home. Time and again Tilja anchors herself with thoughts of home.
Tilja might not have Woodbourne physically around her, but she carries it in her mind and heart. When she's terrified that she'll screw up the world, Tilja calms down by reminding herself that she can't mess up—she promised her dad she'd come home. Time and again Tilja anchors herself with thoughts of home.
Quote #7
Thinking about it as their seashell boat whispered across the empty ocean, thinking about how she did whatever it was she did, she discovered in herself a need to find a place where it belonged. Not Woodbourne, to whose remembered image she had clung as she had fought her way into Talagh, and again when she had faced Silena. She couldn't cling to Woodbourne any longer. She had changed. Now she needed a new place, somewhere that would always be hers, which she could explore and learn to know, as she knew her way round Woodbourne, every cranny in the house and outbuildings, every yard of the fields and meadows. (14.13)
Tilja has finally recognized the extent of her maturation. Woodbourne, the image of her childhood, is no longer enough for her—she must find a home of her own, a place that's just hers, solely for Tilja the magician. She isn't clinging to her childhood anymore, instead recognizing the need for separation and a place of her own.
Quote #8
But now, as she stood and looked out over the darkening Valley, she found she could put that aside as her whole being brimmed with happiness to be home. No, she could not stay here forever. Yes, everything could still go agonizingly wrong. But this was the place she belonged, at least for now, as a fox belongs in its lair. Home. (20.2)
Home. Tilja is finally home—and just being there allows her to put aside her fears for her father temporarily. She can appreciate the comfort of being in her childhood atmosphere for just a bit of time.
Quote #9
Home felt like a shoe that didn't quite fit, a shoe the right size and shape, but with odd little bumps and hardnesses that the foot isn't used to a shoe that needs wearing in. (20.19)
Once Tilja settles back into her chores at Woodbourne, it feels slightly odd to be doing so. She's been so many places and experienced so much that being back in one place, let alone her childhood home, is odd. She has to adjust to being home in the same way she had to adjust to being in the Empire and among strangers—though the latter was perhaps more shocking.
Quote #10
[…] Moreover, since then she had changed, grown, become aware of what she was and what she could do, and with that had come a greater awareness of things she might not have noticed before. [...] It was simply there, pressing in against her, a different kind of magic from any that she could deal with, diffuse and huge. (19.39)
While walking through the Valley's forest on her way home, Tilja notices that it feels very different from the previous times she'd been there. Is it the forest itself—the cedars in which the Urlasdaughters have spoken to the unicorns for generations—that has changed? No, it's Tilja herself. Even if she can't chat with these trees, she is finally aware of their magic, thanks to the realization of her own power.