Legend

On the steppe it is told that the face on Erkinai Aru’s Sun Talisman smiles only in someone else’s hand. It was a round disc framed by a meander border, and the sun’s wavy rays streamed out across it like windblown hair.

That winter no one in the village went outdoors anymore. Snow was piled to the windows, the days were as short as a breath, and people sat each in their own corner, waiting for something to change.

On the longest night of the year Erkinai knocked on every door and would not go away until someone came out. She gathered them all under one roof.

“What’s the point?” muttered the potter. “Spring won’t come any sooner.”

Erkinai pressed the talisman into the hand of the woman sitting nearest.

“Pass it on.”

The metal was icy in the first hand and warm in the tenth. Whoever held it said one word about summer: wild strawberries, swallows, wind in the grass. The children shouted theirs the loudest. By the time the talisman came back to Erkinai, the whole room was laughing.

“The sun doesn’t shine for itself,” she said. “Its warmth grows as it passes from hand to hand.”

The custom lives on: on the longest night of the year the people of the steppe pass a round stone or a coin around the circle, in memory of Erkinai Aru’s Sun Talisman.