Bhotta's Tears: Book Two of the Black Bead Chronicles Read Online Free

grinning, as she juggled her pilfered treat from hand to hand to ease the pain in her fingertips.
    “Go sit down,” Brigit said in exasperation, making a plate appear as if by magic and then pushing it and her towards the kitchen table. Cheobawn put the plate down on the corner of the table, the only spot in the room not covered in flour, and dropped her bun on it. “These are not for you,” Brigit said, sliding another bun onto Cheobawn’s plate. “Your mother and Sybille have been up for hours and they need these to keep up their strength.”
    Cheobawn smiled. Brigit thought everyone in the Coven was too skinny, especially Mora. She was forever creating tasty tidbits to temp Mora’s appetite, not trusting the task to the Mothers in the communal kitchens.
    “What happened? Someone miscount the melon harvest again?” Cheobawn asked around a mouthful of bun.
    “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Brigit scolded automatically, barely looking up from the bun she was patting into shape. “You know Mora. She likes to set a good example and be up before everyone during harvest season. Thinks it spurs on the troops, having a general that works as hard as they do. Get yourself a glass of cider. Harvesting is thirsty work,” Brigit said, looking up at the clock. “You’ve got fifteen minutes before your shift. Drink it fast. You still have to get over to the changing room. North Gate, remember?”
    Cheobawn rolled her eyes at the third reminder. Honestly. Brigit, who spent most of her waking hours in the nursery with all the village babies under the age of three, took her vocation to heart. She wanted to mother everyone regardless of how old they were. This was a good thing if one needed an advocate when arguing with the Coven but sometimes it grated. Cheobawn was seven, now. She was too old for coddling.
    Cheobawn crossed to the small coolbox in search of cider. It was melon season, a time when it seemed all the melon, squash, and gourd crops in the world decided to ripen in the fields on the same day. All the adults would be in a dither until every edible orb was brought in out of the heat and stored in the beds of straw in the cool earthen bunkers. That meant the name of every able bodied villager that wasn’t on essential duty was put on the harvesting rosters.  
    Cheobawn sighed. The only good thing about harvest duty was you got out of the dome. Otherwise, it was dirty, dusty, and backbreaking labor.
    She shoved the last of the bun into her mouth and washed it down with the cold juice. As she put her dishes in the washer, she remembered her dream again. Cheobawn tried to imagine the very worst thing that could come up over the lip of the Escarpment. In her minds eye, she saw a bhotta as large as a dome scrabble up the vertical cliff. She shuddered in horror, having had her own intimate run-in with a bhotta and not wishing to repeat it.
    “Brigit?”
    “Hmmm?” Brigit said, not looking up, busy with her buns.
    “If a thing got it into its mind to climb the Escarpment, it couldn’t. Right?”
    Brigit made an odd little sound. Cheobawn looked up. The Mother stood frozen, the half-formed bun in her hands forgotten. This made Cheobawn a little nervous. She tried to distract Brigit with innocent chatter.
    “I mean, there would be no way to climb all that way. Why would it want to, right? But if it could, would it be a bad thing? Do monsters live in the Lowlands?” Cheobawn pressed her lips together to get herself to shut up, convinced she had just made the whole thing worse.
    Brigit’s gray eyes had gone all strange. Cheobawn knew that look. She was listening hard to the ambient, her face gone pale.
    “Brigit?” Cheobawn asked softly, starting to get really worried.
    Brigit blinked and looked around, her eyes looking everywhere but at Cheobawn. They settled on the chronometer set in the security console by the door.
    “Look at the time!” Brigit said. “Get now. You are late.”
    Cheobawn found herself