Market day is a noise with stalls in it.

Peddler Voss’s stall—or Cole’s table carried into daylight—holds the spiral. You set it where hands can see it. If you have not unwrapped it until now, Old Nan Reed does it with a flourish like a crow opening a parcel. You do not call Voss a thief. Curiosity, not shame. “Narwhal,” you say, and Nan says it with you, and someone who had a cousin at a port says sea-unicorn like a joke that just grew up. The spiral is still beautiful. Beauty does not require a dead deer.

Voss’s smile thins, then—credit where it is dull—does not turn cruel. “I buy what the road tells me is a horn. I can buy wool. Wool does not vanish into legend overnight.”

Cole hears wool. Mira hears the mill will eat. You hear a forest that just got cheaper to leave alone.

People touch the tusk as if it might still purify a cup. You let them. Then you tell the cup-story true: shade on water, feet off mud.

A boy asks if unicorns were ever real. You say, “Real as stitching. Real as a white hart. Real as a whale with a tooth. Pick your favorite and still be careful.”