Eben

Eben's heart is black, and musicians pay fortunes for it. Ebony heartwood — dense, dark as midnight water — becomes piano keys, clarinets, the carved gods of three continents, and he gives it the way old trees give everything: slowly, and only from the center. "The black," he tells the carvers, "is the part of me that stopped hurrying." He grows with geological patience; a harvestable trunk is a century's work. The Deep Root, keeper of ledgers, records him as its slowest asset and its surest — what the roots know, the crown never says, and his roots have known darkness longer than most. Young trees fear the dark wood, the poison-adjacent reputation. He lets them. Then the luthier comes, and the carving begins, and the black heart becomes music. "Darkness," he says, "is just light that decided to become sound."