More branches quickly curved in to block Alice’s path, and she had to dodge and weave to avoid them. The swarmers ran along the tree limbs, snipping and snapping at any fronds that looked like they might get hold of Alice as she passed. Even so, she had several near misses that left her with stinging cuts, and the fronds in front of her were getting thicker. She didn’t look over her shoulder – she didn’t need to, the Swarm could see everything – but she kept as much attention as she dared on the tree-sprite itself. The branches it leaped to were mostly the very highest on the tree, as they could stretch the furthest, but as it closed in behind her it jumped down, swinging from a suddenly still limb and landing on one of the lower branches directly in Alice’s path. She pulled up short, skidding to a halt in a cloud of flying dirt, and the glow in the sprite’s eyes seemed to brighten with triumph. Fronds raced in towards her from all directions.

It didn’t notice the swarmers piling onto the branch behind it. How could it? Alice thought, almost pityingly. It only had one pair of eyes.

The little creatures raced out along the limb to where it thinned, then attacked it with their beaks like a swarm of maddened woodpeckers. Chips of bark flew. The tree-sprite spun, perhaps feeling some echo of the tree’s agony, but it was far too late. Two dozen swarmers were already slashing at the weakened branch, and before the sprite could jump free, the wood gave way under its weight with a mighty crack. It fell almost directly towards Alice, who had to duck backwards to avoid it.

The sprite’s left hand, with its ragged, bark-like claw, was still sunk deep in the wood of the branch. But the branch was no longer connected to the tree. As Alice had observed, without that connection, the willow was just a willow, not a multi-limbed engine of destruction. All the branches stopped at once, swaying gently with suddenly halted momentum. All the fronds twitched and fell limp, hanging in gentle curtains like willow fronds ought to, and there was a shower of dislodged leaves and twigs.

If the tree-sprite got its hand back on the tree, Alice was certain, it would all start back up again. The fall seemed to have stunned it, and she didn’t intend to give it a chance to recover. The swarmers dropped from the branches like a rain of strange-shaped fruit, bouncing and rolling across the uneven ground, then homing in on the ape-like thing. They charged beak-first, burying the points into its skin, slashing and cutting. Alice, recalling the vicious sharpness of those beaks, quailed at the sight, but there seemed to be no flesh or blood in the tree-sprite. Chunks of bark came away with dry cracks and pops.