I am stuck here in the bog of the two, yes, I am stuck, my foot is caught between the prongs of withered branches in barking oak, the other foot is free to roam but under the leash of my hips, yes, my hips, yes, there’s also my hand, or, I don’t know, my legs. Already I move my hands, they clutch at another needle on the tree next to me, its thick at its foundation but quivers at its nose’s peak; I am trying to reach the nose, ‘noses like fallen towers!’ the higher, the better the moment, yes, the moment, a term of physicist jargon, another language which stumps me. I am not a bi-linguist, yes, nor a bi-linguist, I am stuck here in the bog of the two, my legs rooted as I reach for the nose to pull my body free, I am getting wet now, the grey is overhead and wind breaking my leafy skin, storm Eowyn is stalking me, yes, storm Eowyn, of course Eowyn, who else, yes, Eowyn is right, but I am standing here, my feet in the ground and Eowyn is moving, and I am wet. I am in an odourless bog and I am wet, and Eowyn is not, Eowyn is moving across this great mess, ‘upon which men work and which works upon them’. Do I reach higher? I try but I can’t reach its nose, I can only reach the needle at its waist, I pull, yes, but no matter, I am stuck and Eowyn is not, I am to go with Eowyn, I must do if I want to leave this bog, but I can’t, the nose points too high and my hand is clasped above my up-tilted head. I lie down in the bog, as the lungs of Phlebas did in water, I lie down and its smog waters my face, it is hard to see, not quite dark enough to be blind, but hazy enough to squint, I also cannot hear, yes, I can hear little, it is murky and wet, I see words are shouted but aren’t quite visible – bad sounds, half-words if anything, split by its tongue and in the cacophony of breath, I still hear them, Eowyn, yes, the spikes of rhetoric, snagged between each pant, one clause, then another, but what was it, what was said who said it and when.