Soroche

She sat beside a large trunk, surrounded by an assortment of bottles, jars, and packets. Here was an earthen tinaja filled with waka waka beetles packed in salt; there a bundle of achuma quewillu spines. An array of small stoppered bottles held all manner of liquids, including a variety of poisons. One by one she carefully packed each item into the trunk, cushioning it with straw and eucalyptus leaves.

There were live creatures as well, although these did not go into the trunk: brilliantly colored arrow-poison frogs in a small glass vivarium, and a large cage fashioned from dried vines, housing several dozen finches.

There were boxes and boxes of books as well, and an ancient carved wooden chest holding the hundreds of knotted kipu on which were recorded generations of spells and potions.

A commotion down by the road made her look up from her task. A small knot of students was running up the hill, pointing towards her house, and in their midst was a most improbable sight: a huge motorcycle, ridden by the biggest man Rawa had ever seen.

He was absolutely enormous, with a great mane of wiry hair and a beard that looked as if it might house a family of birds. He roared up the hill, surrounded by the excited swarm of students, and came to a noisy stop in front of her. The motorcycle belched forth a final cloud of malodorous smoke and then was mercifully silent.

The giant dismounted and, extending a hand the size of a small pig, said something enthusiastic but completely incomprehensible. When it was clear that Rawa had not understood a word, he repeated himself, this time more slowly and considerably louder. Finally, on the third repetition, she caught the name “Dumbledore,” and, turning to one of the students, said, “Find me Sammy Begay.”

Sammy Begay was that rarity at Yachay Wasi, a student from the US—or, as the students insisted on calling it, Gringolandia. The practice of real magic in the States had dwindled almost to extinction. Counterfeit magic—illusions and crystals and astrology—was alive and well, but such true practitioners as remained were limited to parts of Louisiana and the Navajo Four Corners. It was from this latter area that Sammy Begay had come two years ago, hoping to expand upon his training as a tribal shaman. At the time he had known only a smattering of Mexican Spanish, and of course no Quechua at all, so the ensuing months had been difficult for him. Rawa thought of him now with a fresh sense of empathy—soon she would herself be in that position, trying to make her way in a foreign land and a foreign tongue.

And God help her if all the ingleses spoke like this one.

At first, Sammy did not seem to be having much more success than she had had, but after much back-and-forth with the visitor, he turned to her and said, “I think I have this right, Q'ala Chaki. He says his name is Jegrit, and he’s come to take you back with him to Jaguars.”

“In that?” she asked incredulously, pointing to the motorcycle with its rickety-looking sidecar.

The enormous stranger reached into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled bit of parchment, which he handed earnestly to Rawa. On it was written, in the now-familiar slanting hand:

I assure you, it is much safer and more dependable than it looks. As, for that matter, is Hagrid. --A. D.

She looked up at him. “Jegrit,” she said carefully, and he broke into an alarming smile, nodding vigorously.

“Tha’s right, Hagrid!”

She gazed dubiously at the motorcycle. The layqakuna did not normally use magic for transportation—indeed, they used magic very little for everyday tasks that could be accomplished without it—so she had naturally planned to travel to Scotland in one of the airplanes of the runakuna. But she had no wish to offend Dumbledore by declining the transport he had sent for her, so she nodded assent, smiling nervously.

The plan, apparently, was that she was to sit behind Hagrid on the motorcycle, and her belongings were to go into the sidecar, whose capacity seemed magically infinite. Her students set about the task of stowing all of her trunks and boxes, but she stopped them when they came to the frogs and finches, uneasy about the welfare of living creatures inside what seemed to be some sort of magical compression device.

“Sammy,” she said, “ask him what we should do with the animals.”

Sammy ran over to Hagrid, who was sitting on a nearby rock, demolishing a stack of empanadas. After a brief conference, he returned and said, “He says not to worry—care of magical creatures is his specialty and the animalitos will be quite all right in the sidecar.”

Just at this moment there was a tremendous crash, and she looked over at the rock where Hagrid had been sitting a few seconds earlier. It was empty, and on the ground beside it lay the foreigner, looking like a beached leviathan. He was holding his head and groaning horribly, thrashing back and forth. Hurrying to his side, Rawa saw that his face was gray and covered with sweat.

“Ask him if he can feel his hands and feet.”

A garbled exchange, then, “He says his head hurts like hammers.”

“I can see that for myself—what about his hands and feet?” Impatiently, she reached up and pinched one of Hagrid’s sausage-like fingers as hard as she could, but he did not react at all. His lips were now noticeably blue, and his eyelids had begun to flutter.

Rawa cursed under her breath. “It’s the soroche. I’ve never seen it hit anyone this fast, or this hard. We have to get him down the mountain.”

“You can’t cure him?” Sammy asked in surprise. “What about mate de coca? You gave that to me when I first came here. I was pretty sick for a couple of days. Although,” he admitted, “not like this.”

“No, this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” she agreed. And then, in answer to his question, “There’s no cure, magical or otherwise, for soroche. The mate de coca makes you feel a little better, but soroche is like starvation: you can use magic to ease the pain, but you can’t keep a starving man alive with magic. You have to get food into his belly. With soroche this bad, the only cure is richer air, and quickly.”

“So how did I get over it, then?”

“Most people do, in a few weeks. Your body adjusts, your blood gets thicker. It helps if you’re young and strong.”

“Well, what’s wrong with him? I mean, besides that he’s an anciano.”

She raised an eyebrow. “He’s not that old, Sammy. I think it must be some difference in his blood, or his lungs. I mean, there’s clearly at least one giant up his family tree.” She reached up and felt Hagrid’s pulse, then turned back to Sammy.

“Run down and ask Miguel Huamán if we can borrow his truck. And a tow bar.”