The action of S. Sokurov's historical adventure novel lasts 190 years, starting in December 1812. Generations change. The descendants of the four participants in the Patriotic War, the servicemen of the Borisovichs, as predicted by the mysterious canteen, are scattering throughout Russia, into adjacent countries, losing sight of each other. Many of them face an amazing fate, great trials in life. Some of the family branches take root on foreign soil, among other languages. But the feeling of one root, of belonging to the indestructible Russian tribe, remains in the souls of even distant relatives. And in the days of catastrophes that shake their homeland and ancestral home, the distant descendants of Boris, Ivan’s son, spontaneously reach out to some single center of their common territory, which calls them with the voices of their ancestors in need of help. The author of the novel, giving a special flavor to the “adventure string”, introduces the family legend of the silver saucer into the story. Allegedly, the Borisovich brothers, at their last meeting, cut him into pieces, which they disassembled into amulets-amulets, marking them with their initials. Almost two centuries later, these objects became physical evidence of belonging to a single Big Family for those who presented them. There are also mythical characters in the novel who personify Evil (as opposed to the Good that lives in the souls of the main characters). But their appearance in this work does not turn it into a fairy tale, it only gives it the tinge of a Russian legend, ancient legends, epics.