Soup Spoon |Discontinued|

| Ch. 2: The Fairy Circle |

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            "Class, please give a warm welcome to our new student," Mrs. Corey stood at the front of Sampson's new classroom, looking out over the two rows of tables divided by the walkway in the center. Turning to Sam, she gestures for him to step forward before taking a seat behind her desk at the front, saying "Go ahead and introduce yourself dear." 
            "Oh um, yes ma'am," Clearing his throat, Sampson takes a small step forward and takes off his hat, clutching it in both hands with his books under his arm. "Hello all. My name is Sampson Whittager, and I look forward to seeing you all in class every day. I hope we can be good friends." He tries to top it off with a charming smile, but with the nerves he feels crawling up his back he knows it probably seems like more of a grimace. 
            A small wave of chatter and whispers spread through the room after his introduction, as is the way of things when a new student arrives. Mrs. Corey tells him to hang his hat and coat and to take a seat on the boy's side of the room, which sends a small wave of comfort through him as he walks down the aisle to the small entrance coat closet. After taking off and hanging his coat, Sam pauses for a moment before reaching into his pants pocket and tucking away the ring the boy had given him for safe keeping. He didn't want it to fall out of his pocket sometime during the school day and lose it, of course.
            The boys were seated at the right side of the room, two to a table with the eldest in the back and youngest in the front. The girls were on the left side, seated in the same order. Sampson was told to sit at the second to last table where an unoccupied seat was available on the outside of the row, and as he undid the belt around his books and pulled out his writing slab, he couldn't help but flush at the feeling of quite a few eyes on him.
            "Hey, it's nice to meet you," The boy sitting next to him extends a hand and a warm grin. Sampson hesitantly returns it, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake. "Sampson, right? I'm David; David Bottley. It's nice to have a new kid arrive in town. It gets boring without a fresh face to talk to every once in a while."
            The teacher stands and hushes everyone, beginning her lesson for the day. Sam was lucky to learn he wasn't too far behind in his lessons, even with the month or so of lacking his father's teachings, and he found it wasn't too difficult to catch up with the rest of the class. The day passed by in a blur, and Sampson found that no matter how much he tried to focus on what chapter they were on of whatever book they had given him, his thoughts and eyes would wander to the window behind David's bent head, focused on the frost covered forest and whatever lies within.
            When the school bell outside was finally rung by the groundskeeper signifying the end of Sam's first day, he couldn't grab his coat and hat fast enough. Not because he'd had a bad day at school; he was hoping to meet that boy in the woods again, and to ask him how his dance went. He was about to just rush out of the door when his name was called behind him, and he turned to see David walking towards him with another boy in tow, easy grins on their faces.
            "Hey Sam, can we- oh, is it okay if I call you Sam?" David asks, and Sampson finds a smile comes easy with the boy in front of him.
            "Only if it's okay for me to call you Dave." He attempts a joke, and David lets out what could only be called a pity chuckle that crinkles the corner of his brown eyes, much darker than the brown eyes filling Sam's head. It's nice to get a laugh every once in a while instead of a groan or roll of the eyes from his siblings.
            "An equal trade, then. Is it okay if William and I walk  home with you? We're all neighbors of sorts." David pulls on his hat over his jet black hair and begins putting on his coat while William extends a hand with a nod.
            "Hi, I'm William Durgess. You can call me Will, of course," William was incredibly tall and very skinny, with gangling limbs and a long neck. Brushing his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes, he gestures towards the road and says, "Shall we? I have chores I need to do."
             "I think we all do. Lets head out then." Sampson nods back before setting off with the other two boys in the direction of his new, but not new, home.
            The entire walk Sampson only listens to half of the conversation flowing about him, putting his two cents here and there but ultimately just leaving the talking to the two boys, who already seemed like good friends. Every now and then Sam would catch some kind of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he'd turn his head fast to see if it was the bewitching boy he'd met that morning only to be disappointed when it was just a squirrel, or the wind jostling the brush around them. At one point he wasn't even looking where he was going anymore, and was brought back to the present by a loud 'don't' and one of the boys grabbing him by the arm and yanking him back.
            "You have to be careful where you're going, man! You almost stepped in the fairy circle," David let go of his arm and pointed to the ground where Sampson had almost set his foot down, where a medium sized circle of mushrooms had sprouted. "My mother says if you step foot in one you'll go into a stupor or something, and you'll get taken by the faeries."
            "No you dafty, that's not the story at all," William interrupts shakes his head, staring at the almost perfect circle with wide eyes. "My older brother says if you step in one, you'll start dancing for days, then months, then years! Until one day you stop and it's been several decades..."
            Sam didn't know how there could even be a mushroom circle towards the end of March. Obviously there were all kinds of edible ones that grow under rich foliage and on the sides of rotting logs that were able to withstand the frost of winter, but these were large blooming things with bright red caps in the middle of the road, quite like the brown haired boy's hat. He'd walked through here just this morning and had seen nothing like this!
            "You can't dance for that long! You'd die of exhaustion."
            "You can too, it happened that one time in France! A bunch of people were dancing for days and none of them could stop, I swear."
             It was only after the three boys gave the circle a wide berth and had rounded the bend in the road did Sampson realize that the mushrooms were in the exact spot that the boy had fallen earlier that day. The thought made him stop in his tracks and look back over his shoulder where the road curved, expecting to see something there. There was nothing. Of course.
            'Of course there's nothing... I need to stop imagining things. Mushrooms just grow fast, I guess.'
           "Are you okay, Sampson? Those stories didn't scare you did they?" David claps a hand on his shoulder, bringing him back to reality once more. It seemed he was good at doing that. "If those were scary, then maybe we shouldn't invite you to the campfire next week..." He gives Will a very obvious wink, which made the tall brunette snort and roll his eyes. 
           "Campfire you say? Why would that be scary?" Sam takes the bait, clutching his books a little tighter and giving his acquaintances a grin.
           "Well, a whole group of us older kids all get together - both girls and boys might I add - and we roast things over the fire, some of us play music, and at the end when it's getting dark we all tell scary stories. It's like a small party." With every word David seemed to be getting more excited, and Sam had to admit that the boy's attitude was infectious.
            A party! Sampson had never been to anything except for a birthday party, let alone one where he could meet new people, and maybe make some more friends. He'd have to ask Aiden and his grandfather of course... sometimes being the youngest had its drawbacks. He was sure they'd allow him to go, though! He was almost eighteen, he'd be fine.
           "That sounds absolutely invigorating, and just what I needed," A wide smile spreads across his face, and as they get closer to the edge of his property, the knot he'd had in his chest since that morning seemed to be getting loosened more and more. "Thank you both for walking me home. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"
            "Of course. It was nice to meet you, Sam." David smiles and turns to continue walking down the road. William follows after him, throwing up a hand in a half-hearted wave before they two strike up their own conversation.
            "See you tomorrow, Dave! See you tomorrow, Will!" Sampson laughs, before turning and heading back across the yard with a lighter step than ever before. 
            Later that night, after they'd all had dinner and the chores were done, Sampson lay away in his bed trying to fall asleep. Aiden's snoring he was used to; it was the ring in his hand that was keeping him from rest. Sighing, Sam rolls over and stares at the ring in the dim light of the moon shining through his window, the reflective surface a beacon in the darkness. After a moment more of staring, Sampson shoves the ring under his pillow and rolls over, falling into a restless sleep.
          That night, and every night that week, his dream haunted him with the ghosts of an unfamiliar yet... familiar chuckle and warm, brown eyes the color of his mother's pastry puffs.

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