Page 769 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Yes it is!"
"Cut down the tree!"
"There's another!"
"Look, the little bastards are attacking!"
"Break them in half!"
"Give me that scythe if you aren't going to use it!" "Tear the little swine apart!"
"For Quim and Christ!"
Blood sprays in a wide arc and spatters into Grego's face as he lunges forward, trying to stop them. Did I know this one? Did I know this pequenino's voice before it was torn into this cry of agony and death? I can't put this back together again, they've broken him. Her. Broken her. A wife. A never-seen wife. Then we must be near the middle of the forest, and that giant must be the mothertree.
"Here's a killer tree if I ever saw one!"
Around the perimeter of the clearing where the great tree stood, the lesser trees suddenly began to lean, then toppled down, broken off at the trunks. For a moment Grego thought that it was humans cutting them down, but now he realized that no one was near those trees. They were breaking off by themselves, throwing themselves down to their deaths in order to crush the murdering humans under their trunks and branches, trying to save the mothertree.
For a moment it worked. Men screamed in agony; perhaps a dozen or two were crushed or trapped or broken under the falling trees. But then all had fallen that could, and still the mothertree stood there, her trunk undulating strangely, as if some inner peristalsis were at work, swallowing deeply.
"Let it live!" cried Grego. "It's the mothertree! She's innocent!"
But he was drowned out by the cries of the injured and trapped, and by the terror as they realized that the forest could strike back, that this was not all a vengeful game of justice and retribution, but a real war, with both sides dangerous.
"Burn it! Burn it!" The chant was loud enough to drown out the cries of the dying. And now the leaves and branches of the fallen trees were stretched out toward the mothertree; they lighted those branches and they burned readily. A few men came to their senses enough to realize that a fire that burned the mothertree would also burn the men pinned under the fallen brothertrees, and they began to try to rescue them. But most of the men were caught up in the passion of their success. To