Voss’s pack is a traveling museum of almosts.

Besides the spiral tooth: a smaller “horn” that is clearly a goat’s, polished until it feels ashamed. A woodcut of a thick-skinned beast with a nose-horn—rhinoceros, the caption says in a language that has been copied wrong twice. A page of antelope in profile, two horns lined up so a tired eye would swear there was one.

You spread them on the mill bench like a collage that has been waiting centuries for a kid to stop arguing and start looking.

“People didn’t have to lie,” Mira says, echoing Nan without noticing. “They stitched.”

Cole hovers. He wants silver. He also has eyes.

You could carry this pack to Elder Briar, the old elf of the hollow, who remembers when the road was a deer path and who will not be fooled by a sea-tooth in a forest.

Or you and Mira could spend the day making the collage honest—draw, label, stop the horn-hunt by making wonder accurate—and let the mill’s fear wait until the paper is dry.