Perhaps in your tribe, reader, you treat N’Keles as simple trinkets, or, perhaps, you have no N’Keles at all and don’t see what a blow it was for me to receive these chaotic, useless visions.

In our tribe, it is believed that the Maker crafts each N’Kele to best suit its bearer. Though it might not always be apparent, in the end, everybody learns that what they’d gotten is what they needed most. If there is a primal myth in our tribe, a narrative that unites us all, it is the myth of “learning to see”, in all the various shapes it takes. Through mother’s milk, through sermons by elders and conversations with young bearers, through bedtime tales, theater plays, and songs, we learn a myriad of stories with characters, who, through cunning or artifice, honest work, or good-hearted patience learn to love the gift they’ve received, “learn to see” through their N’Kele in the way the Maker intended.

My favorite was always the story about a C’Hassa player who, at first, frowned at his N’Kele with beads spaced by a full day, as no C’Hassa game lasts that long. Though he sometimes happened to foresee a position from a future game and think about it in advance, usually, the visions did not align with the time of the match and thus were of no use. Soon, however, the player devised to ask, disguised as an old man, about the winning move in his own game from the day prior. Now he could peek into the future before the game, see his disguised self discover what the key move will be, then use it over the board.

He became unbeatable, and the word about him spread around like the wind, with more and more C’Hassa Masters from neighboring tribes coming to visit and challenge the famed player. The secret was eventually revealed, but by then the man had grown so good at C’Hassa that he did not need the trick anymore. N’Kele had taught him confidence in his own skill.

There are many other stories, like that of O’Cono, a hunter tribe member with year-spaced beads which she despised as useless in a hunt, until she foresaw a three-year long drought, saving the tribe from starvation and becoming the elder. Or the bittersweet tale of Julusa, a skilled musician who yearned to write his own songs, but thought he had no talent for it. When he first looked through his N’Kele, he saw himself performing a new piece at a time a week ahead. He let go of the bead, and, being a skilled musician, wrote down what he heard.

He did the very same thing every week, writing down and performing more and more new songs till a very old age, until, one day, his new bead showed the tavern where he always performed, but instead of the usual crowd, only Julussa’s three closest friends drank quietly at one occupied table, all wearing black. It was then, when Julussa stared into the approaching darkness, that he realized he’d never written a single song himself: they all came from his N’Kele. Devastated, he cried through the night, cried the quiet tears of an old man who had nothing to show for his long life. In those tears, Julusa heard a melody – the very first of his own. At Julusa’s request, the melody was played at his funeral, four weeks and three days later. Till this day, when a musician’s heart yearns for hopeful melancholy, as musicians’ hearts often do, “Julusa’s Song” can be heard.

“Learning to see” tales always preach balance between the N’Kele and its bearer. But what balance could there be for me, when all I got from my N’Kele was little more than what you’d see if you squeeze your eyes and rub your hands against your ears – senseless blotches of color and sound?

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“Sit down, young Master,” M’Onnse said after hearing me blubber about my predicament. It’d been three days since I first tried to use my N’Kele, and still all I could see on different beads were various shades of chaos. Each had its own character, enough for me to distinguish between the beads, but not enough for anything else.

Wiping my eyes, I sat on a wooden stool, listening to the muted clanking of mysterious sundries as M’Onnse rummaged through her carved sandalwood coffret. At last, she took out a magnifying glass and handed it to me.

“Can you use this?” she asked.

“Of course. Anybody can use it,” I said, puzzled by the strange question.

“Good. And can you use that?” M’Onnse pointed towards the only window in her study, beside which lurked an ominous angular shape draped in gray.

“Your telescope?” I asked, confused even more. “You never taught me how!”

“But nobody taught you how to use the looking glass either,” M’Onnse exclaimed. “You see, M’Kanne, the more intricate your instrument – the longer it takes to learn it. Those who are blessed to see far through their N’Keles take longer to accustom. Give it a few more days, a week, maybe, and time itself will disperse your worries.”

When neither a week nor even a month had helped to resolve my misfortune, her words still gave me hope; her words, and knowing that my suffering could not be the Maker’s punishment for cheating, for which I owed Joso. In gratitude, I returned him his knife: it seemed the right thing to do even if he’d foreseen this yield and communicated it to himself through a chain of visions; even more so if he gave his advice out of kindness, foreseeing only my struggle, or out of wisdom, foreseeing nothing at all.

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The summer waned into the past, when, as if inspired by the falling leaves, the first bead of my N’Kele shed its opaque crust. Through it I now saw, smelled, and felt what appeared to be our village, but, though most buildings seemed the same, I recognized none of the faces. It was clear that what I saw came from far beyond my lifetime.

At first it came as a great blow as it meant that I won’t witness a single click on my N’Kele – it was to be static for the rest of my life. Soon I learned it was not without compensation: for most people, N’Keles only showed a brief glimpse – a scene, a few seconds, perhaps a minute, while mine seemed so stretched in time that the vision let me explore itself for hours on end. The vision always first brought me to the N’Kele square, from which I could float, like a ghost, in any direction. I’d learned every dweller’s name and occupation, their habits, and, sometimes, I am ashamed to admit, their secrets.

I’d hoped to glean some new ideas, farming implements, hunting techniques, or advances in writing that could help the tribe today, but none were present. When I informed the Elder of my findings, this stagnation seeded a glint of melancholy in his wise eyes. Through the fall, the seed grew and blossomed, poisoning the Elder’s teachings and sprawling its tendrils through the village. Those tangled in them now crowded our pub, trying to free themselves by drinking, guffawing, and bellowing boisterous songs into the night.

This lasted until, in the depth of winter, the second bead revealed itself. The village in it was a little smaller, but far more advanced. The dwellers used tools of a kind I’d never seen before: a strange ax that roared with a terrifying noise and felled trees in little more than a blink of an eye, a mechanical horse with two wheels that carried its bearer along roads paved with some unknown substance – hard like stone, but flat, smooth, and showing no seams. At night, people burned little Suns in their huts and sometimes on the streets, as if somehow they’d learned to condense the essence of fire into little spheres of glass that now followed their whims. By Spring, the bar stood forlorn, as, invigorated by the newfound pride for our descendents, everyone yearned to work, learn, and live.