Under one of the larger falls, I spotted a hidden alcove that would protect my message from unwanted hands and eyes. With water roaring behind my back, I stood on slippery rocks for three full hours, until, at last, a letter “K”, written in grooves half an inch deep, could be proudly seen on the stone. Jumping from boulder to boulder, I made it back through the rapids and to the safety of the shore. But when I explored the spot through the bead, no message was left there for me, and worse, I could not even find my own mark. A cold, sticky premonition caught hold of my heart, but I shunned it, telling myself that, perhaps, the mark was too close to the stream and got worn away.

I looked up, searching for a clear rock face that would not be touched by water, nor overgrown with moss or debris, and, finding such a spot, began my climb, holding the masonry instruments in my teeth. Halfway through I began to tremble, realizing how wrong I was in thinking the spot to be no more than three of my heights above the ground, in thinking the rocks dry, sturdy and easy to grab. It was then that I fully grasped why it could be that my future self never told me what I needed to know.

“A single foot slip,” I thought, “and there will be no rite for you.”

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Two thirds of the way, unable to progress either up or down, I clambered onto a little platform, pressing my chest into the sharp rock to stay close to the wall. A few feet to the right grew a tree, sinking its gnarled roots into the sheer face of the cliff. If I reached it, from there I could make a jump to the surrounding forest.

I rocked back and forth, measuring the leap, when the platform I stood on began tilting under my feet. I jumped at the last instant and, rubbing wrists to blood, clung to the rough bark of the tree, while the platform collapsed into the water with a resounding crash, blocking half of the stream.

I made the last leap to the forest, slipped on the mud, and tumbled down the slope, digging my fingers into the ground, grasping onto slippery roots and boulders until, at last, the dense undergrowth had stalled my fall. Scratched, bruised, but alive, I lay there, staring at a house-sized gash marring the face of the cliff where my platform had been. After a while, the bestial fear for my life had loosened its grip, but, while my hands stopped shaking, my heart seemed to have blackened like charcoal. I reached for my N’kele, already certain and terrified of what it would show. On every bead, the very platform that just crashed into the water hung intact on the face of the cliff, waiting for its last straw, for me, to collapse it, waiting through centuries past.