Asena

In legend

In the Turkic origin tales, a gray she-wolf finds the last child of a people on the brink of vanishing, raises him, and saves the ancestors. In another telling, a gray wolf shows the way to clans who have lost the road of their migration. In these tales the wolf is not a threat; she is a guide, a protector, a mother.

In the story

Aybars first sees her on a snowy pass, sitting on a rock. His hand goes to his knife, but the wolf does not growl; she tilts her head and looks at him. In her gaze there is no threat, but an invitation. She leads him to a hollow in the middle of the flat ground, digs at the snow three times with her paws, then draws back and sits. The Star Stone lies there.

From that night on she never leaves Aybars's side. When Erlik's shadow attacks at the Silent Lake, she is the first to spring; her teeth cannot pierce the smoke, but her presence can. Aybars, seeing that the fire kindled with the hearth ember grows a hand's breadth higher even for a wolf, begins to call her "my companion." She goes down into Şahmeran's cave without hesitation and sits quietly among the serpents. And when Erlik comes in his own shape, for the first time she draws back; this tells everyone in the room how great the danger is.

On the darkest night of the Black Winter, Aybars gives her a single task: "Go down to the village. Go to every door. Howl. Force no one." Asena's howling is the beginning of curtains drawn aside, lanterns lit, and forty chairs filling up.

In the palace

Once the palace is built, Asena settles before the great gate, rests her head between her paws, and waits for those who will come down the road. Even today the people of the palace say that a traveler entering the gate for the first time is greeted first by the gaze of a wolf. Do not be afraid; that gaze still means the same thing.

"Aren't you coming?"