The cloth comes off like a drumroll that forgot the rest of the song.

The thing in Cole’s mill is heavy, spiral, cold, too perfect. Bone-white. You have seen shed antler on the ridge: rough at the base, branched, a little shabby, honest. This is not that. This is a tooth that grew in a dark sea and got a new job as a legend.

Nan leans in, pleased and grim. “Sea-unicorn. Narwhal. Ice-water whale with a tusk like a spear of ivory. Sailors sold these to kings who wanted magic that would fit in a chest. The forest never grew this.”

Cole’s face does a complicated thing: hope, then suspicion, then the tax term again.

Peddler Voss is not even in the room. The sample is doing his talking. Pressure, not a cartoon. A price looking for a story to lock onto.

You roll the tusk (you will not call it a horn in your head anymore) and feel the spiral under your thumb. Wonder does not die when you name a thing truly. Wonder moves. It can move to an ocean you have never seen, and leave Elderwood alive.

Mira whispers, “If this is fake, the mill still needs silver.”

“Then we need a different silver,” you say.