“Akh!” cried the jays. They screamed their warning loudly.
Suddenly all the deer shrank together at once as though a blow had struck them. Then they stood still snuffing the air.
It was He.
A heavy wave of scent blew past. There was nothing they could do. The scent filled their nostrils, it numbed their senses and made their hearts stop beating.
The magpies were still chattering. The jays were still screaming overhead. In the woods around them everything had sprung to life. The titmice flitted through the branches, like tiny feathered balls, chirping, “Run! Run!”
The blackbirds fled swiftly and darkly above them with long-drawn twittering cries. Through the dark tangle of bare bushes, they saw on the white snow a wild aimless scurrying of smaller, shadowy creatures. These were the pheasants. Then a flash of red streaked by. That was the fox. But no one was afraid of him now. For that fearful scent kept streaming on in a wider wave, sending terror into their hearts and uniting them all in one mad fear, in a single feverish impulse to flee, to save themselves.
That mysterious overpowering scent filled the woods with such strength that they knew that this time He was not alone, but had come with many others, and there would be no end to the killing.
They did not move. They looked at the titmice, whisking away in a sudden flutter, at the blackbirds and the squirrels who dashed from treetop to treetop in mad bounds. They knew that all the little creatures on the ground had nothing to fear. But they understood their flight when they smelled Him, for no forest creature could bear His presence.
Presently Friend Hare hopped up. He hesitated, sat still and then hopped on again.
“What is it?” Karus called after him impatiently.
But Friend Hare only looked around with bewildered eyes and could not even speak. He was completely terrified.
“What’s the use of asking?” said Ronno gloomily.
Friend Hare gasped for breath. “We are surrounded,” he said in a lifeless voice. “We can’t escape on any side. He is everywhere.”
At the same instant they heard His voice. Twenty or thirty strong, He cried, “Ho! ho! Ha! ha!” It roared like the sound of winds and storms. He beat on the tree trunks as through they were drums. It was wracking and terrifying. A distant twisting and rending of parted bushes rang out. There was a snapping and cracking of broken boughs.
He was coming.
He was coming into the heart of the thicket.
Then short whistling flutelike trills sounded together with the loud flap of soaring wings. A pheasant rose from under His very feet. The deer heard the wing beats of the pheasant grow fainter as he mounted into the air. There was a loud crash like thunder. Then silence. Then a dull thud on the ground.
“He is dead,” said Bambi’s mother, trembling.
“The first,” Ronno added.
The young doe, Marena, said, “In this very hour many of us are going to die. Perhaps I shall be one of them.” No one listened to her, for a mad terror had seized them all.
Bambi tried to think. But His savage noises grew louder and louder and paralyzed Bambi’s senses. He heard nothing but those noises. They numbed him while amidst the howling, shouting and crashing he could hear his own heart pounding. He felt nothing but curiosity and did not even realize that he was trembling in every limb. From time to time his mother whispered in his ear, “Stay close to me.” She was shouting, but in the uproar it sounded to Bambi as if she were whispering. Her “Stay close to me” encouraged him. It was like a chain holding him. Without it he would have rushed off senselessly, and he heard it at the very moment when his wits were wandering and he wanted to dash away.
He looked around. All sorts of creatures were swarming past, scampering blindly over one another. A pair of weasels ran by like thin snakelike streaks. The eye could scarcely follow them. A ferret listened as though bewitched to every shriek that desperate Friend Hare let out.
A fox was standing in a whole flurry of fluttering pheasants. They paid no attention to him. They ran right under his nose and he paid no attention to them. Motionless, with his head thrust forward, he listened to the onrushing tumult, lifting his pointed ears, and snuffed the air with his nose. Only his tail moved, slowly wagging with his intense concentration.
A pheasant dashed up. He had come from where the danger was worst and was beside himself with fear.
“Don’t try to fly,” he shouted to the others. “Don’t fly, just run! Don’t lose your head! Don’t try to fly! Just run, run, run!”
He kept repeating the same thing over and over again as though to encourage himself. But he no longer knew what he was saying.
“Ho! ho! Ha! ha!” came the death cry, from quite near apparently.
“Don’t lose your head,” screamed the pheasant. And at the same time his voice broke in a whistling gasp and, spreading his wings, he flew up with a loud whir. Bambi watched how he flew straight up, directly between the trees, beating his wings. The dark metallic blue and greenish-brown markings on his body gleamed like gold. His long tail feathers swept proudly behind him. A short crash like thunder sounded sharply. The pheasant suddenly crumpled up in mid-flight. He turned head over tail as though he wanted to catch his claws with his beak, and then dropped violently to earth. He fell among the others and did not move again.
Then everyone lost his senses. They all rushed toward one another. Five or six pheasants rose at one time with a loud whir. “Don’t fly,” cried the rest and ran. The thunder cracked five or six times and more of the flying birds dropped lifeless to the ground.
“Come,” said Bambi’s mother. Bambi looked around. Ronno and Karus had already fled. Old Nettla was disappearing. Only Marena was still beside them. Bambi went with his mother, Marena following them timidly. All around them was a roaring and shouting, and the thunder was crashing. Bambi’s mother was calm. She trembled quietly, but she kept her wits together.
“Bambi, my child,” she said, “keep behind me all the time. We’ll have to get out of here and across the open place. But now we’ll go slowly.”
The din was maddening. The thunder crashed ten, twelve times as He hurled it from His hands.
“Watch out,” said Bambi’s mother. “Don’t run. But when we have to cross the open place, run as fast as you can. And don’t forget, Bambi, my child, don’t pay any attention to me when we get out there. Even if I fall, don’t pay any attention to me, just keep on running. Do you understand, Bambi?”
His mother walked carefully step by step amidst the uproar. The pheasants were running up and down, burying themselves in the snow. Suddenly they would spring out and begin to run again. The whole Hare family was hopping to and fro, squatting down and then hopping again. No one said a word. They were all spent with terror and numbed by the din and thunderclaps.
It grew lighter in front of Bambi and his mother. The clearing showed through the bushes. Behind them the terrifying drumming on the tree trunks came crashing nearer and nearer. The breaking branches snapped. There was a roaring of “Ha, ha! Ho, ho!”
Then Friend Hare and two of his cousins rushed past them across the clearing. Bing! Ping! Bang! roared the thunder. Bambi saw how one hare struck an elder in the middle of his flight and lay with his white belly turned upward. He quivered a little and then was still. Bambi stood petrified. But from behind him came the cry, “Here they are! Run! Run!”
There was a loud clapping of wings suddenly opened. There were gasps, sobs, showers of feathers, flutterings. The pheasants took wing and the whole flock rose almost at one instant. The air was throbbing with repeated thunderclaps and the dull thuds of the fallen and the high, piercing shrieks of those who had escaped.
Bambi heard steps and looked behind him. He was there. He came bursting through the bushes on all sides. He sprang up everywhere, struck about Him, beat the bushes, drummed on the tree trunks and shouted with a fiendish voice.
“Now,” said Bambi’s mother. “Get away from here. And don’t stay too close to me.” She was off with a bound that barely skimmed the snow. Bambi rushed out after her. The thunder crashed around them on all sides. It seemed as if the earth would split in half. Bambi saw nothing. He kept running. A growing desire to get away from the tumult and out of reach of that scent which seemed to strangle him, the growing impulse to flee, the longing to save himself were loosed in him at last. He ran. It seemed to him as if he saw his mother hit but he did not know if it was really she or not. He felt a film come over his eyes from fear of the thunder crashing behind him. It had gripped him completely at last. He could think of nothing or see nothing around him. He kept running.
The open space was crossed. Another thicket took him in. The hue and cry still rang behind him. The sharp reports still thundered. And in the branches above him there was a light pattering like the first fall of hail. Then it grew quieter. Bambi kept running.
A dying pheasant, with its neck twisted, lay on the snow, beating feebly with its wings. When he heard Bambi coming he ceased his convulsive movements and whispered: “It’s all over with me.” Bambi paid no attention to him and ran on.
A tangle of bushes he blundered into forced him to slacken his pace and look for a path. He pawed the ground impatiently with his hoofs. “This way!” called someone with a gasping voice. Bambi obeyed involuntarily and found an opening at once. Someone moved feebly in front of him. It was Friend Hare’s wife who had called.
“Can you help me a little?” she said. Bambi looked at her and shuddered. Her hind leg dangled lifelessly in the snow, dyeing it red and melting it with warm, oozing blood. “Can you help me a little?” she repeated. She spoke as if she were well and whole, almost as if she were happy. “I don’t know what can have happened to me,” she went on. “There’s really no sense to it, but I just can’t seem to walk . . .”
In the middle of her words she rolled over on her side and died. Bambi was seized with horror again and ran.
“Bambi!”
He stopped with a jolt. A deer was calling him. Again he heard the cry. “Is that you, Bambi?”
Bambi saw Gobo floundering helplessly in the snow. All his strength was gone; he could no longer stand on his feet. He lay there half buried and lifted his head feebly. Bambi went up to him excitedly.
“Where’s you mother, Gobo?” he asked, gasping for breath. “Where’s Faline?” Bambi spoke quickly and impatiently. Terror still gripped his heart.
“Mother and Faline had to go on,” Gobo answered resignedly. He spoke softly, but as seriously and as well as a grown deer. “They had to leave me here. I fell down. You must go on, too, Bambi.”
“Get up,” cried Bambi. “Get up, Gobo! You’ve rested long enough. There’s not a minute to lose now. Get up and come with me!”
“No, leave me,” Gobo answered quietly. “I can’t stand up. It’s impossible. I’d like to, but I’m too weak.”
“What will happen to you?” Bambi persisted.
“I don’t know. Probably I’ll die,” said Gobo simply.
The uproar began again and re-echoed. New crashes of thunder followed. Bambi shrank together. Suddenly a branch snapped. Young Karus pounded swiftly through the snow, galloping ahead of the din.
“Run,” he called when he saw Bambi. “Don’t stand there if you can run!” He was gone in a flash and his headlong flight carried Bambi along with it. Bambi was hardly aware that he had begun to run again, and only after an interval did he say, “Goodbye, Gobo.” But he was already too far away. Gobo could no longer hear him.
He ran till nightfall through the woods that was filled with shouting and thunder. As darkness closed in, it grew quiet. Soon a light wind carried away the horrible scent that spread everywhere. But the excitement remained.
The first friend whom Bambi saw again was Ronno. He was limping more than ever.
“Over in the oak grove the fox has a burning fever from his wound,” Ronno said. “I just passed him. He’s suffering terribly. He keeps biting the snow and the ground.”
“Have you seen my mother?” asked Bambi.
“No,” answered Ronno evasively, and walked quickly away.
Later during the night Bambi met old Nettla with Faline. All three were delighted to meet.
“Have you seen my mother?” asked Bambi.
“No,” Faline answered. “I don’t even know where my own mother is.”
“Well,” said old Nettla cheerfully. “Here’s a nice mess. I was so glad that I didn’t have to bother with children any more and now I have to look after two at once. I’m heartily grateful.”
Bambi and Faline laughed.
They talked about Gobo. Bambi told how he had found him, and they grew so sad they began to cry. But old Nettla would not have them crying. “Before everything else you have got to get something to eat. I never heard of such a thing. You haven’t had a bite to eat this livelong day!”
She led them to places where there were still a few leaves that had not completely withered. Old Nettla was wonderfully gentle. She ate nothing herself, but made Bambi and Faline eat heartily. She pawed away the snow from the grassy spots and ordered them to eat with, “The grass is good here.” Or else she would say, “No, wait. We’ll find something better farther on.” But between whiles she would grumble. “It’s perfectly ridiculous the trouble children give you.”
Suddenly they saw Aunt Ena coming and rushed toward her. “Aunt Ena,” cried Bambi. He had seen her first. Faline was beside herself with joy and bounded around her. “Mother,” she cried. But Ena was weeping and nearly dead from exhaustion.
“Gobo is gone,” she cried. “I’ve looked for him. I went to the little place where he lay when he broke down in the snow . . . there was nothing there . . . he is gone . . . my poor little Gobo. . . .”
Old Nettla grumbled. “If you had looked for his tracks it would have been more sensible than crying,” she said.
“There weren’t any tracks,” said Aunt Ena. “But . . . His . . . tracks were there. He found Gobo.”
She was silent. Then Bambi asked despondently, “Aunt Ena, have you seen my mother?”
“No,” answered Aunt Ena gently.
Bambi never saw his mother again.
Chapter Eleven
AT LAST THE WILLOWS SHED their catkins. Everything was turning green, but the young leaves on the trees and bushes were still tiny. Glowing with the soft, early morning light they looked fresh and smiling like children who have just awakened from sleep.
Bambi was standing in front of a hazel bush, beating his new antlers against the wood. It was very pleasant to do that. And an absolute necessity besides, since skin and hide still covered his splendid antlers. The skin had to come off, of course, and no sensible creature would ever wait until it split of its own accord. Bambi pounded his antlers till the skin split and long strips of it dangled about his ears. As he pounded on the hazel stems again and again, he felt how much stronger his antlers were than the wood. This feeling shot through him in a rush of power and pride. He beat more fiercely on the hazel bush and tore its bark into long pieces. The white body of the tree showed naked and quickly turned a rusty red in the open air. But Bambi paid no attention to that. He saw the bright wood of the tree flash under his strokes and it heartened him. A whole row of hazel bushes bore traces of his work.
“Well, you are nearly grown now,” said a cheerful voice close by.
Bambi tossed his head and looked around him. There sat the squirrel
observing him in a friendly way. From overhead came a short, shrill laugh, “Ha! Ha!”
Bambi and the squirrel were both half frightened. But the woodpecker who was clinging to an oak trunk called down, “Excuse me, but I always have to laugh when I see you deer acting like that.”
“What is there to laugh at?” asked Bambi politely.
“Oh!” said the woodpecker, “you go at things in such a wrongheaded way. In the first place, you ought to try big trees, for you can’t get anything out of those little wisps of hazel stalks.”
“What should I get out of them?” Bambi asked.
“Bugs,” said the woodpecker with a laugh. “Bugs and grubs. Look, do like this.” He drummed on the oak trunk, tack! tack! tack! tack!
The squirrel rushed up and scolded him. “What are you talking about?” he said. “The Prince isn’t looking for bugs and grubs.”
“Why not?” said the woodpecker in high glee. “They taste fine.” He bit a bug in half, swallowed it and began drumming again.
“You don’t understand,” the squirrel went on scolding. “A noble lord like that has far other, far higher aims. You’re only casting reflection on yourself by such talk.”
“It’s all the same to me,” answered the woodpecker. “A fig for higher aims,” he cried cheerfully and fluttered away. The squirrel bustled down again.
“Don’t you remember me?” he said, putting on a pleased expression.
“Very well,” answered Bambi in a friendly way. “Do you live up there?” he asked, pointing to the oak.
The squirrel looked at him good-humoredly.
“You’re mixing me up with my grandmother,” he said. “I knew you were mixing me up with her. My grandmother used to live up there when you were just a baby, Prince Bambi. She often told me about you. The ferret killed her long ago, last winter, you may remember it.”
“Yes,” Bambi nodded. “I’ve heard about it.”