How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
[...] in her mind's eye she saw a great brass balance, like the cunning wooden scales Ma used to measure ingredients when she was baking. There was a bowl at either end of a bar. The bar tilted at the center, one way or another, depending on which bowl held more weight. But the bowls Tilja saw in her mind weren't polished wood, like Ma's. Each of them was half of the world. A small figure stood beside each bowl, waiting for the bar to tilt his way. One of them Tilja couldn't see clearly. He was darkness in the shape of a man. The unknown magician, the enemy. His bowl was full of the same darkness. The other one was the Ropemaker, unmistakable, that gawky figure. topped by the monstrous headdress. There was nothing to tell her what was in the Ropemaker's bowl, but whatever it was it had to be better than darkness.
At the center of the bar was a small golden ant. [...] As she watched, the ant started to crawl along the beam toward the Ropemaker's end, and she realized that when it reached the bowl its tiny weight would be just enough to tilt the balance that way [....]
The ant, she realized, was herself, Tilja. (13.56-58)
Tilja envisions the power struggle between her unknown enemy and the Ropemaker as a scale balancing evil versus good. She realizes she is the deciding factor in the fate of the world that will result from these magicians' battle. Tilja hardly hesitates at the great responsibility that she must take up—she's grown to realize her place in the world and takes on her duties without question.
Quote #8
But everything else was changed, all Tilja's hopes and fears and expectations, all her life to come. Yes, she was going home with the others, if she could. She was going back to Woodbourne. But she wasn't staying there. There was no magic in the Valley. Her gift was no use there. (14.16)
Tilja started out the journey thinking that she would help the Valley and stay there, returning to her previous self once she came home. But her trials and tribulations—along with her discovery of her magical talent—turn Tilja into a whole new person. She fully realizes how she's changed, and as a result the projections for her future are entirely different from the ones she once had.
Quote #9
She felt completely confident about this. She had held Faheel's ring in her hand and blanked out its magic. She didn't believe that all the Watchers together could match that power. Along with that confidence came a feeling—more than a feeling, almost a certainty—that what she had seen and done in the last few days had given her strengths that she had not had on the journey south. As much as Meena and Alnor, though in very different ways, she had changed. (14.75)
Tilja compares her maturation to Meena and Alnor's age reversal. Their drastic shift from being old to young is comparable to the degree of her own change. Just as the old Meena and Alnor wouldn't be recognizable, neither would the new Tilja be recognizable to her loved ones. She's far more self-assured and completely confident in her powers.