‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Alice.’

The tree-sprite made no reply, other than to shift slightly on its perch. Encouraged, Alice took a step closer.

‘Can you understand me? I don’t want to hurt you.’

Well, she thought, it’s true. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

The thing made a noise, halfway between a grunt and the dry sound of a dead branch snapping. Alice took another step forward, until she was almost underneath it, looking upwards.

‘If you can understand me,’ she said, ‘come down, and we can talk about things.’

The tree-sprite leaped, swinging completely around the branch and hurling itself towards Alice with astonishing speed. It came at her face-first, arms extended, ragged-edged claws spread wide. Alice jumped backwards just in time as it hit the ground with the force of a cannonball, rebounded neatly into another leap, and landed on its haunches a few feet away.

Alice backed away, tugging hurriedly on the silver thread. A dozen swarmers popped into being in front of her, lining up like a football squad.

‘We don’t have to fight,’ Alice said nervously. ‘If you would just listen to me . . .’

Geryon’s voice suddenly filled her skull. ‘You can’t reason with it, Alice. If it could be talked to, it wouldn’t be in a prison-book in the first place.’

The tree-sprite raised one hand to touch a low-hanging branch, as though preparing to fling itself back into the canopy. Alice, looking over her shoulder at the sound of rustling leaves, saw the willow fronds behind her twitch and reach inwards as though pressed by a strong breeze, then spread out towards her like a mass of writhing tendrils. She gave an involuntary shriek and back-pedalled, away from the sprite and the searching leaves, only to back into another hanging branch. The tree-sprite’s clawed fingers, nails now sunk smoothly into the bark of the branch, twitched as though they were manipulating a marionette, and the limb behind Alice twisted out of place with a mass of rustling, groaning sounds, curving round to embrace her.

She quickly lost all desire to talk to the thing. She ducked away from the circling branch, and at a mental command the swarmers charged beak-first like a tiny squadron of lancers. They pecked the tree-sprite around the legs, ripping viciously at its wooden skin and tearing it away in strips. This appeared to bother the thing not at all, however, and it swept its free paw down to scatter the little creatures, grabbing one that was unable to get its beak free in time and hurling it against the trunk of the tree. Alice expected it to bounce, but instead it simply sank into the wooden surface as though into muddy ground, the wood rippling and closing over it. An instant later, she cried out with the little creature’s pain as it died, remorseless wood closing all around it with the strength of an industrial press.