Gurri, who generally never slept by night, heard in this song the peak of all the joy and love she had ever known. It soothed her sorrow; hope bloomed in her heart again.
“Tell me,” she whispered to the brooding owl, “what is it that sings so beautifully?”
“That?” The owl cocked his head attentively. “Oh, that! It’s just an unimportant bird of very common appearance. We call it a lark.”
“Does it live in the sky?”
“In the sky?” The horned owl seemed to have the habit of repeating every last sentence that was said to him. “Oh, no! It hasn’t even the sense to build its nest in a tree. It lives on the ground in the very poorest circumstances. I think of all the birds I know, it has less to sing about than any.”
“I love its singing!”
“Oh, yes, it’s all right!” the horned owl admitted thoughtfully. “But you get used to it. It seems to go on all the time like the grasshopper’s chirping or the frog’s croak.”
Right near at hand a cock crowed: “Kikeriki-iii!” Another answered from the middle distance, and far away a third. Gurri jumped, remembering the pheasant’s shattering cry as it flapped from its sleeping place in a forest tree.
“What is that?” she asked.
“That?” The horned owl looked very fierce. “That’s the stupid yowling of the most conceited, stuck-up, pompous fathead of a bird I know. That is the domestic fowl, so called. The male of the species. You’ll see one later on. He’ll go strutting by here with about fourteen wives for whom he does nothing whatsoever, looking as though he was lord of the air. I want to tell you,” the horned owl said, blinking his eyes very rapidly and cutting each word short with a snap of his beak, “I’d like five minutes alone with him. Just five minutes!”
The great bird lost himself in thinking rapturously about unbridled violence in the neighboring farms. Gurri looked around her. The expansive plain to the west was made up of cultivated fields, the land was a checkerboard of wheat and barley, cabbages and potatoes. Right across from her inclosure was a tall field of yellow oats. As she watched, she heard a loud swishing in the grain and several roe-deer slipped out and vanished in the woods.
“My people!” Gurri stammered. “My people, even if I don’t know their names.”
“They come every night,” the horned owl told her. “It’s very dangerous because sometimes He lies in wait for them. But they’ve managed to get away so far.”
“I didn’t know anyone came out here,” confessed Gurri.
“It’s the oats,” the owl said wisely. “That’s the way the world is. Not one of us but will risk his life for the food with which he hopes to sustain it.”
He closed his eyes, but flicked them open again when a hen cackled close at hand.
“There!” he said excitedly. “Do you hear? That’s one of the domestic fowl’s wives. Did you ever hear such a disgusting racket? And do you know why? She’s just laid an egg! It’s unbelievable, that’s what it is. Every day she lays another egg, but does she become accustomed to it? Does she think for one moment that she may be tearing the sensitive nerves of a bird like me? No, sir! She goes on cackling and croaking and—and . . .” Words failed the horned owl. He rocked on his perch, the very picture of resignation and despair. “You’ll see,” he promised gloomily, “they’ll all be at it soon. Then you’re going to hear something!”
Some farm-hands appeared, scythes in hand, to mow the grain. Gurri dashed about in terror when she caught their scent.
“No need to worry,” the horned owl reassured her placidly, “they’ll mind their own business. I’ve noticed that He seems to divide into two classes. Some are hunters. Some are not. These are not.”
The scythes swished through the grain, laying it in even swathes.
“When it’s all cut,” the owl said, “it’ll be my turn.”
“Your turn? Why, what do you do?”
“You’ll see,” the bird said bodingly.
He drooped his head. His eyes closed almost before had hidden it under his wing. He was asleep.
Chapter Nine
GURRI GRADUALLY BEGAN TO alter her habits. She stayed awake during the daytime and slept at night. She basked luxuriously in the sun.
She found Him no longer an object of fear. He brought her clover and the touch of His hand behind her ear calmed and excited her at one and the same time. Not even the dog bothered her any more. He seemed to be a harmless, noisy creature whose only aim was to please Him. Moreover, the vine was between her and danger. She came to regard the vine as her great protection. More and more she became an interested spectator before whom the world passed in review.
She joined the great horned owl in acid comment on the domestic fowl. When the young rooster strutted by, splendid in his golden-yellow body with the arched tail feathers and the full, red comb she almost wished that the owl could get loose to take the wind out of him. To Gurri, accustomed to the wild, free life of the forest, the gluttonous, cackling hens seemed worthless good-for-nothings, fat and stupid members of a society of slaves.
If Gurri had grown used to Him, she still would not have served Him. There was simply an armistice between them that her flight would end.
Flight! She had her sudden dreams of forest glade, of dewy bank and misted stream. She heard sometimes in the poignancy of memory Geno’s drumming hoofs, the calm voice of Faline. At such times she would run uncertainly about the corral, her black nose seeking out the distant scent, her keen ears pricked toward the life she could not even hear.
The fowl attempted a clumsy flight to the top of the vine. He threw out his chest, flapped his wings with a noise like a forest wind among the chestnuts and seemed to try to run up steps of air that he alone could see. When he fell back squawking his disappointment, his fat wives gathered anxiously around him as though he had essayed some feat of monstrous and breath-taking daring. Gurri heard the horned owl muttering in his cage, and hissing fiercely. To divert him, Gurri said:
“What happens when it’s ‘your turn’?”
“My turn?” the horned owl repeated. “Why must you remind me of that?”
“You promised to tell me,” Gurri said meekly. “I’ve waited a long time.”
“Well,” the owl said, “I thought it would have happened long ago, but it hasn’t, thank goodness.”
Gurri settled down beside the cage. “It’s difficult to believe I was afraid of you once,” she mused. “I thought you smelled bad.”
“You did, did you!” the horned owl replied rather haughtily. “At least, I’m glad you’ve changed your opinion.”
“Oh, but I haven’t,” Gurri told him frankly. “I’ve just got used to it. That’s all.”
“Well!” the owl gasped. “A fine thing to be saying! A fine thing!”
“I’m sorry! I don’t want to offend you,” Gurri said to avert his anger. “But how do I smell to you, for instance?”
“How do you smell!” The horned owl drew himself together as though by making himself more compact he could add force to his words. “You smell like sour milk and grass. A rather sickly odor . . .”
“Exactly!” Gurri interposed triumphantly. “Whereas you,” she shuddered slightly, “you smell of—meat and blood.”
“Meat and blood! And very good smells, in my opinion.”
“Perhaps they are,” Gurri sighed, “but don’t let’s quarrel about it. Tell me your story.”
“My story? Oh, yes. Well then, in brief, I am a lure.”
“A lure! What’s that? You don’t mean a liar, do you? The fox is a liar.” Again Gurri shuddered at the memories that name conjured up.
The horned owl said with dignity, “I do not mean a liar! I mean a lure.”
“What is a lure, then?”
“A lure sits on a post with a chain round his leg so that he can’t fly away.”
“How unpleasant! Why does he do that?”
“Because He fixes it that way. Then He hides in a thing He calls a ‘blind’ with His thunder-st
ick, and when my enemies see me sitting on the post they come from all over to make fun of me and even, if they’re not too scared, to take their chances at a peck.”
“Enemies?” Gurri echoed. “You mean, things you’re afraid of?”
“No,” the horned owl said proudly, “I mean things that are afraid of me. I’d eat ’em before breakfast, that I would, if I got the chance!” he said somberly. “I’d tear ’em apart! I’d have their livers, believe me I would!”
“I’ve no doubt you would!” Gurri agreed faintly, watching him stump up and down his perch with every feather puffed out fiercely to its full extent. It had never occurred to her before that things that feared you were also enemies. Why, she thought with a sort of despair, that makes the whole world enemies!
“But I can’t!” the owl went on. “I have to sit on top of the post and pretend I’m indifferent and they come, dozens of ’em, crows mostly, a few hawks and buzzards and a mess of smaller fry: magpies, jays, all eager to take a bite out of me. And pretty soon, as I say, the bolder ones try it. Down they come, talking a fine fight and—bang, bang! the thunder-stick gets ’em, and that’s that!”
“The thunder-stick! But how is it you’re not killed too?”
“I’ve given some thought to that, as you can imagine, and do you know what I think?” The horned owl fixed Gurri with a wide and cunning eye. “I think that He has some way of directing the thunder-stick. It doesn’t just go bang offhand, and then something dies. I know it doesn’t because I’ve watched very carefully and sometimes it goes off and nothing happens. Nothing whatever is hurt! It opens up vistas of possibilities for an agile bird. . . .” The horned owl shook his head sadly. “But there, you’d have to be a martin or a swallow, maybe, to be swift enough, and I’m not built that way. I like to stand up and fight.”
“Poor owl,” Gurri said softly, “but tell me more about yourself as a lure.”
“Well, as I said, first come the crows. They make such a racket you can hear them from far away. They’re clever birds, let me tell you, and generally you can’t get them anywhere near the thunder-stick. But they’re so anxious to spite me, they lose all their sense. They come shrieking: ‘There he is, the robber of nests, the murderer of innocents!’ Such piffle! As though they weren’t the greatest rogues uncaged! They come closer and closer, wondering if they dare make a try for my eyes, and then—bang, bang!”
“What else comes?”
“I’ve told you. All the thieves and rogues of the air. And that’s a funny thing. You’ve heard the old adage: ‘Set a thief to catch a thief’? Well, it’s true. They come shrieking about atrocities and unfair treatment and making the air safe for crows or hawks, or buzzards—whatever their kind may be. You’d think they were all new-hatched eggs that never had an evil thought, to listen to them go on, I give you my word you would. But it doesn’t make the slightest difference. The thunder-stick bangs them all down. And that’s something else, now. The way He picks on their sort, you’d think He knew something about their characters. I’ve never seen a wren or a lark or a titmouse hurt by the thunder-stick around here, or an owl either, as I come to think about it, although the screech-owl comes around for a chat once in a while.
“Once a couple of ospreys came over and, let me tell you, ospreys are tough. I got down from my post when they came—the chain is fixed to a string that’s long enough to let me get down to the ground—I got down and rolled over on my back, which is the best way to fight a swooping enemy when you’re on the ground. I keep my claws pretty sharp on this perch and I didn’t feel too badly about the outcome, not that it would matter very much, I guess. I’d just as soon die fighting as rot to pieces in this place.”
“Don’t say such a thing!” Gurri implored. “You’re so strong and healthy—yes, and handsome, too!”
“What good are health and strength to me?” the horned owl demanded hotly. “Do you think I was allowed to fight the ospreys? Certainly not! Bang, bang! And that was that, too.”
“You speak as though you envy them!”
“I do. All of the rotten bunch of thieves who died in freedom. They lived heartily and died quickly. What more can a creature ask?”
It made Gurri sad to hear him. Only the flooding song of the untiring lark gave her courage to wonder if there was not something left to hope for. But the great horned owl had no ear for music. He was sunk in the depths of black despair.
Chapter Ten
BAMBI WALKED A STRANGE AND lonely path. Geno asked after him in vain; his mother could not give him information.
Faline, in fact, was worried. She had become accustomed to Bambi’s frequent absences, but never before had she gone so long without news of him.
Geno said once, “Since Gurri went, we’ve lost Father, too.”
Was that possible? Had Bambi left her? Or, more credible, had some accident befallen him?
She considered his knowledge of the woods, that never-failing skill which was a byword in the forest. Could he have fallen victim to an enemy? No, it was impossible! Bambi was not to be taken, tricked by Him, or stricken down by the thunder-stick.
She consulted with Perri, who informed her comfortingly:
“No, we have no news of any killing.”
The rest of the watchers, summoned for their news, bore this assertion out. If Bambi had fallen, the whole forest would have rung with it.
The screech-owl seemed to have the answer.
“Bambi is looking for Gurri,” he stated tersely.
He was right.
The memory of Gobo troubled Bambi more than he had cared to admit. When he picked up His trail on the forest path and sensed its hated implications, he went resolutely on to the rescue, determined to risk anything or all.
He did not go blindly or rashly. That would have been at odds with every deep-laid instinct that he had. Cunningly, warily, carefully, using every trick of woodcraft he had learned, he followed the trail. When he reached the end of the forest, he stopped.
A vast, open tract of country spread ahead of him, without cover, without hope if he should be sighted. He turned back from it, crouching in a thicket to consider his next move. The sky above the plain darkened. Rain began—a sudden, violent shower that beat deep into the ground and ran in frenzied trickles among the tangled roots of trees.
Bambi rushed back to the edge of the forest where, for him, the trail had stopped. For a few feet, within the shadow of the trees, the spoor was obvious. Then it vanished. The rain had washed it out.
There ended, for the time, his contact with Him; but he was not beaten. He decided to wait. For three days he awaited His return without success. Then he decided on a course which, for a deer, was extreme heroism. He began to show himself, posing where the cover of the woods was thinnest, acting the part of a lure which the great horned owl had learned to play. Once or twice he scented the fox and, with his back against a tree, prepared to give him battle, but the fox did not find him and He did not come.
It had not occurred to Bambi yet to leave the forest. This growth of trees, of shielding underbrush, of banks and paths and hidden groves, was all his world. To go beyond its secret depths was like launching at a star, a thing beyond the farthest verge of dreams.
Yet he cast wide and wider in its maze, until one day, as evening’s purple curtains fell, he found a path—a narrow way—where hardened footprints clearly marked a customary passage, where His scent and evidence were old, but strong as evil.
He muzzled these tracks and, muzzling, moved on; began to trot and, before the full import of it dawned on him, had left the outposts of the forest trees and was alone and lonely on the unprotected plain.
The path led to a house. With pricked ears, stiff legs and quivering nostrils, Bambi approached. A wave of conflicting odors came on the breeze to disturb him.
The dog Hector barked once.
Bambi froze.
A bronze statue in the evening gloom, he stood at guard, no longer a timid deer, but a thing of bold and fierce
pride spurred on by his duty to his child.
The dog did not bark again. There was complete silence. The odors, puzzling, hostile, assailed him again: the strong sour scents of creatures that ate meat.
One in particular disgusted him—a carrion smell. It came from a place that was bound around with a sort of creeping plant. Step by cautious step, he adventured closer. There was another scent, he thought, dim, hardly developed in the evening air. It was the scent of . . .
With one terrific bound he cleared the thing that kept her in.
“Gurri!”
The dog kept silence. Gurri was asleep. Was she, then, already so sluggish? Was His print so deep in her?
“Gurri!”
She was dreaming of the lark, the small, brown bird that had come to mean so much to her. She saw it rising in the blue of the sky, pouring its song like water over crystal rocks. She saw it fold its wings and, like a stone without the means of speech or song, drop headlong to the earth.
All afternoon she had watched it, had known joy of it and also fear. For once a buzzard came sailing in wide, lazy circles. The lark had dropped to earth and the buzzard after it; or so she thought. The time of silence had been agony. Then the buzzard rose again.
In her dream she waited as she had in fact that afternoon. Had the lark sung its last dear song? But no, up from the brown furrows of the earth the brown bird leaped, bursting its throat, straining to clear and fearless heights.
“I am alive, Gurri!” she seemed to hear it say. “Gurri!”
“Gurri!”
Her eyes sprang open. This was another call, dearer than the lark’s.
“Father!”
“My child!”
Two amber, gleaming eyes regarded them. Gurri began to caper around the inclosure. She ran without knowing what she did, without sense, almost without volition. She stopped only when she came to Bambi, stopped and nuzzled him as she had never dared before.