Omishto's Decision

The decision Omishto made at the end of the book is to live with the elders. I think that the development of her character throughout the book gives clues to this final decision. In the beginning, we find her caught in the middle of the traditional world and the reality of living in current times. However, when we first meet Omishto she says, "I don't believe in magic" (13) and as the story develops, we see her start to abandon her set-in-stone decision that magic does not exist. "Two worlds exist. Maybe it's always been this way, but I enter them both like I am two people" (97). Furthering the process of her development, when she went to the tribal land to tell her story, she realizes "I am more, at this moment, than myself. I am them. I am the old. I am the land" (173). After coming to this conclusion, she knows "the future depends in some way on me" and that future is with the Taiga people (217).