The alarm pulled Marie out of a deep sleep. She sat up with a groan, smacking at the buzzing clock. She ran a hand through her hair, feeling unsettled. She had dreamed about...something, but it was already gone.
She wistfully considered hitting the snooze button, but she knew herself -- she was a born night owl. If she didn’t keep to a schedule she’d be up until three in the morning and sleeping half the day. She had to be disciplined if she was going to be out here all on her own -- which was kind of the point, wasn’t it?
She dragged herself into the shower, and as the warm water beat down on her she once again blessed the Professor for the way he had managed to get all the modern conveniences out to the wilderness of the Adirondack mountains.
Fully awake now, dressed only in a silk robe, she looked out the still-open windows. The weather was still cool and breezy, but the cloudless sky promised a much warmer afternoon. She opened one of the dresser drawers, feeling her pulse starting to speed as she considered the neatly folded clothes, all with the tags still on them. Christ, how wimpy was she that the mere sight of a tank top and shorts could send her into a near-panic?
She slipped on her underwear. After a moment of thought she dug up a bottle of sunscreen, smoothing it over every inch of potentially-exposed skin. The warm smell of it made her close her eyes. She was suddenly transported back to a Mississippi summer, when the middle-school girls ran in packs, competing against each other for the best tan and who could get the shortest shorts past their ever-vigilant mothers.
Finally, feeling more like she was gearing up for battle than she ever felt climbing into the leather, she pulled on a pair of shorts and a tank top, strapping on a pair of sandals and wondering how long it would be before every inch of exposed skin stopped feeling like a neon sign screaming “Danger!”
She ate her breakfast of toast and jam with oranges out on the porch, swinging gently and listening to the sounds of the wind in the trees and the little rustlings and chirpings of animals in the woods. In the hazy morning sunshine, the sense of aloneness that had seemed so grim last night was suddenly easy and peaceful. I can do this, she thought.
She could do anything she wanted, in fact. Turn a cartwheel, sing at the top of her voice. No one was around to see. The idea was both liberating and strangely unsettling -- with so many options, she had no idea what she really wanted to do.
Finally she decided to take advantage of the soft morning sunlight to paint, setting up her easel and canvas. She already had a work in progress, but she decided a fresh start required something new. She closed her eyes, the golds and greens of the woods and sunshine shifting and reforming in her head until they formed a new image, an abstract whirl of color with a deep blue sense of peace in the shadows underneath. With a happy hum she started painting, trying to bring to life on canvas the image in her head.
As usual she completely lost track of time until the growl of her stomach pulled her attention away from the canvas. With a start she realized the light had shifted to afternoon, and the sunscreen she applied this morning had not been up to the challenge of skin that hadn’t seen sunlight in more than five years. Shaking her head at her idiocy, she went inside to dig up some lunch along with some aloe vera from the first aid kit.
She found ways to occupy herself in the house until the sun started to lower in the sky, but then the cool breeze blowing through the window screens drew her outside again. She couldn’t waste a beautiful late summer afternoon like this with an indoor workout. She changed up the sandals for sturdy boots and walked outside to contemplate the pile of wood and obvious wood-cutting stump at the edge of the clearing.
Chopping wood. Good exercise, from everything she had been told, and you couldn’t get more hearty and rustic than that. Wasn’t there even a Robert Frost poem about it? ‘Only where love and need are one, and the work is play for mortal stakes,’ and all that? The cabin had a considerable library, she’d have to look it up later.
After a bit of fumbling through the key ring she managed to open up the creaky toolshed, brushing aside cobwebs until she located the axe neatly hung on the wall. She lifted it down, and -- holy hell! Were all axes this heavy?
No wonder lumberjacks were so ripped and manly. At least on paper towel packaging, which was the only place she had seen them. Come to think of it, some of those guys she had met in Alaska had probably been lumberjacks, and they were mostly unkempt beards and beer bellies. Stupid false advertising, she thought, tightening her grip on the axe and gingerly resting the handle across her sunburned shoulder. Ouch.
She made her way to the stump and let the axe head slide to the ground. She picked up a piece of wood, and -- fuck! Splinter!
She yelped, dropping the wood on the stump, sucking at her pierced skin, contemplating with narrow eyes the irony of getting a splinter in her hand on the first damn time in five years she had gone without gloves. “Suck it up. You’re a superhero,” she told herself sternly
A little more rustling in the toolshed dug up a pair of oversized leather work gloves, nicely softened over the years, and she was back in business, more determined than ever. She examined the piece of wood like it was a turkey ready for carving.
Was she supposed to split it lengthwise, or in half? Dammit, why hadn’t she looked up an instructional video on YouTube or something beforehand? For a brief moment she wondered if any of the people she had touched were particularly outdoorsy, but squelched that thought immediately. She was supposed to be alone out here, she wasn’t going to resort to the personalities in her head for advice on the very first day.
A stroke of genius had her popping back to the side of the house, where a neatly stacked row of wood covered in plastic stood ready for the fireplace. She grabbed a piece off the rack, examining it closely, and then taking it with her to the chopping block to serve as inspiration.
She cast a glance at the sky. Dusk was falling, and she hadn’t even chopped a single piece of wood yet. She carefully balanced the hunk of wood on its end, and then hefted the axe over her head.
Clunk. It slipped right out of her hands, landing on the ground behind her. “Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed. Glad that no one was around to witness this humiliating display, she lifted it again, tightening her grip firmly and aiming right at the hunk of wood.
This time there was a sweet swish and a satisfying thunk as the wood split cleanly in half. She gave a little bounce of excitement -- success! Carefully re-positioning one of the halves end-up, she reached for the axe handle again...
“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” she grumbled. She tugged and tugged, but the axe blade was sunk tight into the stump.
She stood up on the stump, crouching down, holding the handle with both hands and heaving with all her might. “Come. Out. You. Mother. Fucker,” she ground out, tugging with every word, but the axe remained stubbornly in place.
“Aarrgh!” she yelled in frustration, jumping down off the stump. She considered childishly kicking the stump, but figured adding a toe injury to the count would be one more victory the axe didn’t need.
She clenched her fists in the work gloves, trying to tamp down on her frustration. Her fingers itched with the urge to use Magneto’s powers. She could almost feel how satisfying it would be to send the blade humming through the air. No, she told herself.
She had a wild thought of hooking a rope to the axe handle and tugging on it with the Jeep. “And that’s how they found Rogue dead out in the woods with an axe in the back of her head,” she said sarcastically to herself. Mortal stakes, indeed.
Finally she pulled the work gloves off with a sigh, forcing herself back in the house. It was too dark now to go digging around in the toolshed, but in the morning she’d go looking for something to chisel the damn thing out with. And she’d put a “How to Chop Wood” book on her shopping list. She imagined the look on the caretaker’s face when he read that request, and managed to laugh at herself.
For now, she’d concentrate on making a real dinner. Cooking -- at least that was something she actually knew how to do.
____________
The next morning, Marie brought her breakfast out to the porch swing again. She heaped a forkful of scrambled egg on a bite of toast to give herself strength before casting a sullen eye at her arch-nemesis, the axe.
She froze, the toast halfway to her mouth. She put it back on the plate, and then placed the plate carefully on the swing. She walked out to the edge of the clearing, looking around herself cautiously. She stood over the chopping block, looking down at where the axe now lay, flat on top of the block.
She felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck as she reached out, picking up the axe and hefting it in both hands, her whole body taut with tension. She looked around the clearing again, seeing nothing but the rustling of the trees. She crouched down, looking at the ground around the stump, but it had been dry enough lately that she couldn’t even see her own bootprints, let alone the tracks of anyone else.
She ran her fingers over the deep groove in the stump where the axe blade had been stuck. Was she imagining things? Maybe she had loosened it with her tugging. Didn’t metal shrink when it got colder? Maybe it came loose overnight, and...conveniently fell flat on the stump.
“Like hell,” she breathed. She walked around the edge of the clearing, looking for signs that someone had been there, and found nothing. But when she went back to the porch to finish her breakfast, she took the axe with her.
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