El Silbón, the Whistler
A tall figure with a sack of bones on its back, wandering the plains of Venezuela and Colombia. The rule is known to everyone in the llanos and works the wrong way round: if the whistle sounds close, he is far away; if it is barely audible, he is already beside you. The legend works as a warning and as an explanation — for people lost in the savannah, and for the sounds that carry for miles across open grassland at night and deceive the ear.
The Blue Stone
A twelve-ton boulder on the shore of Lake Pleshcheyevo, a shrine to the Merya people and then to the Slavs. The church fought it for centuries: it was buried, sunk in the lake, and hauled on a sledge to be used in a bell tower's foundation — the sledge went through the ice, and decades later the stone was back on the shore. There is a physical explanation too: ice movement and washed-out ground push the boulder up. The name comes from the colour, which turns blue when wet.
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