“I can’t help you,” said the old stag, “you’ll have to get up yourself.” Bambi reached the top. He felt the hot trickle on his shoulder again. He felt his strength ebbing for the second time.
“You’re bleeding again,” said the old stag, “I thought you would. But it’s only a little,” he added in a whisper, “and it doesn’t make any difference now.”
They walked very slowly through a grove of lofty beeches. The ground was soft and level. They walked easily on it. Bambi felt a longing to lie down there, to stretch out and never move his limbs again. He couldn’t go any further. His head ached. There was a humming in his ears. His nerves were quivering, and fever began to rack him. There was a darkness before his eyes. He felt nothing but a desire for rest and a detached amazement at finding his life so changed and shattered. He remembered how he had walked whole and uninjured through the woods that morning. It was barely an hour ago, and it seemed to him like some memory out of a distant, long-vanished past.
They passed through a scrub-oak and dogwood thicket. A huge, hollow beech trunk, thickly entangled with the bushes, lay right in front of them, barring the way.
“Here we are,” Bambi heard the old stag saying. He walked along the beech trunk and Bambi walked beside him. He nearly fell into a hollow that lay in front of him.
“Here it is,” said the old stag at the moment, “you can lie down here.”
Bambi sank down and did not move again.
The hollow was still deeper under the beech trunk and formed a little chamber. The bushes closed thickly across the top so that whoever was within lay hidden.
“You’ll be safe here,” said the old stag.
Days passed.
Bambi lay on the warm earth with the mouldering bark of the fallen tree above him. He felt his pain intensify and then grow less and less until it died away more and more gently.
Sometimes he would creep out and stand swaying weakly on his unsteady legs. He would take a few steps to look for food. He ate plants now that he had never noticed before. Now they appealed to his taste and attracted him by their strange, enticing acrid smell. Everything that he had disdained before and would spit out if it got accidentally into his mouth, seemed appetizing to him. He still disliked many of the little leaves and short, coarse shoots, but he ate them anyway, as though he were compelled to, and his wound healed faster. He felt his strength returning.
He was cured, but he didn’t leave the hollow yet. He walked around a little at night, but lay quietly on his bed by day. Not until the fever had entirely left his body did Bambi begin to think over all that had happened to him. Then a great terror awoke in him, and a profound tremor passed through his heart. He could not shake himself free of it. He could not get up and run about as before. He lay still and troubled. He felt terrified, ashamed, amazed and troubled by turns. Sometimes he was full of despair, at others of joy.
The old stag was always with him. At first he stayed day and night at Bambi’s side. Then he left him alone at times, especially when he saw Bambi deep in thought. But he always kept close at hand.
One night there was thunder and lightning and a downpour of rain, although the sky was clear and the setting sun was streaming down. The blackbirds sang loudly in all the neighboring treetops, the finches warbled, the titmice chirped in the bushes. Among the grasses or from under the bushes, the metallic, throaty cackling of the pheasants sounded at intervals. The woodpecker laughed exultantly and the doves cooed their fervid love.
Bambi crept out of the hollow. Life was beautiful. The old stag was standing there as though he expected Bambi. They sauntered on together. But Bambi did not return to the hollow or the old stag again.
XXII
One night when the air was whispering with the autumnal fall of leaves the screech-owl shrieked piercingly among the branches. Then he waited.
But Bambi had spied him already through the thinning leaves, and stopped.
The screech-owl flew nearer and shrieked louder. Then he waited again. But Bambi did not say anything.
Then the owl could restrain himself no longer. “Aren’t you frightened?” he asked, displeased.
“Well,” Bambi replied, “a little.”
“Is that so?” the screech-owl cooed in an offended tone. “Only a little. You used to get terribly frightened. It was really a pleasure to see how frightened you’d get. But for some reason or other you’re only a little frightened now.” He grew angrier and repeated, “Only a little!”
The screech-owl was getting old, and that was why he was so much vainer and so much more sensitive than before.
Bambi wanted to answer, “I wasn’t ever frightened before either,” but he decided to keep that to himself. He was sorry to see the good old screech-owl sitting there so angry. He tried to soothe him. “Maybe it’s because I thought of you right away,” he said.
“What?” said the screech-owl becoming happy again, “you really did think of me?”
“Yes,” Bambi answered with some hesitation, “as soon as I heard you screech. Otherwise, of course, I’d have been as scared as ever.”
“Really?” cooed the owl.
Bambi hadn’t the heart to deny it. What difference did it make anyhow? Let the little old child enjoy himself.
“I really did,” he assured him, and went on, “I’m so happy, for a thrill goes through me when I hear you so suddenly.”
The screech-owl fluffed up his feathers into a soft, brownish-gray, downy ball. He was happy. “It’s nice of you to think of me,” he cooed tenderly, “very nice. We haven’t seen each other for a long
