"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 29"
The Andes Mountains loomed like giants, their peaks dusted with snow, as Su Yao's van climbed the winding road to the high-altitude village of Chinchero. Terraced fields of quinoa and potatoes clung to the hillsides, and above them, condors soared on thermal updrafts. At the village square, where a stone fountain gurgled with glacial water, a group of Quechua weavers sat on wool rugs, their hands moving swiftly over backstrap looms. Their leader, a woman with braids wrapped in red yarn named Mama Lucia, stood as Su Yao approached, her traditional pollera skirt—layered and vibrant—swishing around her ankles. "You've come for the pallay," she said, her Quechua laced with Spanish, as she gestured to a textile covered in intricate animal and star patterns.
The Quechua, descendants of the Inca, were renowned for their pallay weaving—a technique that used alpaca and llama wool to create textiles infused with cosmovision (a worldview that connected the earth, sky, and underworld). Each pattern told a story of the cosmos: condors represented the upper world, snakes the underworld, and llamas the human realm. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this sacred craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a fabric that honored the Quechua's spiritual connection to the mountains while showcasing the resilience of their sustainable materials. But from the first greeting, it was clear that their understanding of "sacred" and "innovative" was as different as the Andes and the ocean.
Mama Lucia's grandson, Tito, a teenage weaver with a knack for traditional patterns, spread a poncho across a stone wall. Its blue and green threads formed a chakana (Inca cross)—a symbol of the three worlds intersecting. "This is not just a design," he said, tracing the cross with his finger. "It is a prayer. When we wear it, we are connected to the gods."
Su Yao's team had brought 3D modeling software, intending to digitize the chakana and other patterns for mass production. When Elena projected a digital rendering onto a cloth, the weavers gasped. Mama Lucia's husband, Don Ignacio, a yatiri (spiritual leader) who communicated with the mountain spirits, clucked his tongue. "The chakana is alive," he said, his voice stern. "Your machine kills it. The apus (mountain gods) will not speak through a screen."
Cultural friction flared over materials. The Quechua sourced their wool from their own herds of alpacas and llamas, which grazed on the high-altitude grasses that gave the fiber its unique warmth. They dyed the wool with natural pigments from Andean plants: cochineal bugs for red, mollis leaves for green, and llanten for yellow. These materials were chosen for their spiritual properties—alpaca wool was said to carry the breath of the apus, while cochineal red represented the blood of the earth. The seaweed-metal blend, harvested from distant oceans, was viewed as a disruption. "The sea has its own gods," Don Ignacio said, "but they do not belong in our mountains."
A more urgent problem emerged when the metal threads reacted with the cold, dry Andean air, becoming brittle and snapping during weaving. "Your thread is weak," Tito said, holding up a frayed swatch. "It cannot survive the puna (high plains). The apus reject it."
Then, disaster struck: a sudden blizzard blanketed the village, dumping three feet of snow and blocking the mountain passes. The alpacas, unable to reach their grazing grounds, began to weaken, their wool growing thin. With their primary material threatened, the weavers faced a crisis. Don Ignacio performed a ritual, burning coca leaves and chanting to the apus, but the snow continued to fall. "This is punishment," he said, his voice heavy. "You brought something cold from the sea to our mountains, and now the apus freeze us."
That night, Su Yao sat with Mama Lucia in her adobe hut, where a clay stove simmered with chupe (potato stew). The hut was warm, filled with the smell of wood smoke and wool, and outside, the wind howled like a wounded animal. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping a cup of mate de coca. "We came here thinking we could help, but we've only made things worse."
Mama Lucia smiled, adding a handful of quinoa to the stew. "The apus are not angry at you," she said. "They are angry because we stopped leaving offerings at the apacheta (stone cairns). My mother used to pile stones and say a prayer every time she passed. We got lazy." She paused, then added, "But your thread—maybe it's not a curse. Maybe it's a test. The apus want us to learn new ways to weave their stories."
Su Yao nodded. "What if we start over? We'll use your alpaca wool, your dyes. We'll weave by hand, on your backstrap looms. We'll let your cosmovision guide the patterns. And we'll treat our metal thread with something from the mountains—so it belongs here, too."
Tito, who had been listening from the doorway, perked up. "You'd really learn to weave pallay the traditional way? It takes years to master the chakana."
"Then we'll start today," Su Yao said. "We have much to learn."
Over the next three weeks, the team embraced Quechua life. They helped dig paths through the snow to the alpacas' shelters, their boots crunching in the ice. They learned to shear alpacas with traditional blades, their hands trembling at first but steadying with practice. They sat cross-legged on wool rugs, learning to weave on backstrap looms, their bodies swaying in rhythm with the mountains as Mama Lucia and Tito corrected their stitches. "The chakana's lines must be straight but not rigid," Mama Lucia said, adjusting Su Yao's work. "Like the mountains—strong, but alive."
To solve the brittleness of the metal threads, Lin experimented with coating them in llama fat, which the Quechua used to waterproof leather. The fat protected the metal from the dry air, making it flexible enough to weave. "It's like giving the thread a warm coat," she said, showing Don Ignacio a swatch where the metal now bent without breaking.
Fiona, inspired by the Quechua's use of coca leaves in rituals, suggested weaving small pieces of dried leaves into the fabric alongside the metal threads. "They're a gift from the mountains," she said, and Don Ignacio nodded, saying it would please the apus.
As the blizzard lifted and the sun returned, the village celebrated by rebuilding an apacheta, piling stones high and leaving coca leaves, coins, and a small piece of their collaborative fabric as an offering. They unveiled their first completed piece: a poncho with a chakana pattern in traditional red, green, and yellow, accented with seaweed-metal threads that shimmered like sunlight on snow and coca leaves that added a subtle earthy texture.
Don Ignacio draped the poncho over Su Yao's shoulders during a ceremony, where the village sang to the apus. "This poncho speaks two languages," he said, "the language of our mountains and the language of your sea. The apus approve."
As the team drove down the mountain, Tito ran after them, pressing a small pouch into Su Yao's hand. Inside was a strand of alpaca wool dyed with cochineal, twisted around a piece of seaweed-metal. "To remember us by," he said. "And to remember that even the highest mountains and deepest oceans are connected."
Su Yao clutched the pouch as the Andes peaks faded into the distance. She thought of the hours weaving by the stove, of the way the metal thread had finally learned to bend with the mountain winds, of the apacheta standing tall against the sky. The Quechua had taught her that tradition was not a cage, but a bridge—one that could reach across oceans and connect worlds, as long as it was built with respect.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Kikuyu team: photos of Njeri wearing their kikoi and seaweed-metal blend, standing in the red soil of Kenya. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new stitch—Quechua mountains and sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a condor spread its wings, soaring on the wind. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless cultures to learn from, countless threads to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they walked with humility, honoring the stories of each place they visited, the tapestry would only grow more magnificent.