It began in October. When the leaves on the maple flamed red and the geese flew in honking wedges overhead they opened the ice to all comers, and she indulged. She saw him skating there one day, graceful, like a hawk balancing on a thermal, swooping from blue line to blue line. It was like a dance, she thought, a dance for one, ipse et animus, himself and his soul, in silent communion with the thing he loved. He never smiled but a light suffused his face and the glow made her feel warm inside.

After that day he appeared everywhere. Always a turn ahead or behind walking on the trails, randomly in the parking lot, paying for his food with the same stony face he wore for the world. He would sit in the back, always the back left at a desk separate from the rest, in classes she had never known they had in common. He disappeared as quietly as he came; one glance away and he would vanish. Tam Lin, she named him, so ethereal was his existence. She went to the ice every day in hope, but he never came again.

She sought his face across the chattering expanse of the classroom; he always in his corner seemingly oblivious to the masses around him, aloof, apart, alone. The statue in the corner that was him turned one day and looked full into her eyes; from one hundred feet away it felt like a sledgehammer behind her forehead. After eternity that dark, searching gaze lifted and passed on, blood over the door for the Angel of Death, who knew the faith of those inside.

They never spoke.