It had hit a tree and injured a hamadryad, who cursed the prince with the sickness.
From the en.wikipedia.org
In the ground they associate with a plant becoming a hamadryad, an ethereal guardian of vegetal, also inhabiting under the soil or tree's holes.
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Hence, in some of these accounts, persons who were under altered state of consciousness, claim to have made contact with the purported hamadryad of the entheogenic plant.
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The hamadryad told Melampus that the boy would be healed if the knife was taken out of the trunk of the tree and boiled, then the prince should drink the rusty water that resulted.
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More examples
The nymph or spirit of a particular tree
Large cobra of southeastern Asia and the East Indies; the largest venomous snake; sometimes placed in genus Naja
A hamadryad (/hu00E6mu0259u02C8drau026A.u00E6d/; Greek: u1F09u03BCu03B1u03B4u03C1u03C5u03ACu03B4u03B5u03C2, Hamadryu00E1des) is a Greek mythological being that lives in trees. They are a particular type of dryad, which are a particular type of nymph. Hamadryads are born bonded to a certain tree. Some believe that hamadryads are the actual tree, while normal dryads are simply the entities, or spirits, of the trees...
This is a list of fictional alien and modified human races in the fictional Revelation Space universe created by Alastair Reynolds.
A wood-nymph who was physically a part of her tree; fell the tree, kill the nymph; The king cobra; A kind of baboon, Papio hamadryas, venerated by the ancient Egyptians
A wood nymph whose life is connected with that of the tree she inhabits