Bambi by Felix Salten

it, but I don’t blame you for
going.” He was alert and serious.
    â€œCome, Gobo. Come, Faline. Softly now, go slowly. And keep behind
me,” Aunt Ena warned them. She slipped away with the children.
    Time passed. They stood still, listening and trembling.
    â€œAs if we hadn’t suffered enough already,” old
­Nettla began. “We still have this to go through. . . .”
She was very angry. Bambi looked at her, and he felt that she was thinking of something
horrible.
    Three or four magpies had already begun to chatter on the side of the
thicket from which the crows had come. “Look out! Look out, out, out!” they
cried. The deer could not see them, but could hear them calling and warning each other.
Sometimes one of them, and sometimes all of them together, would cry, “Look out,
out, out!” Then they came nearer. They fluttered in terror from tree to tree,
peered back and fluttered away again in fear and alarm.
    â€œAkh!” 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.
    â€œWhat 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.
    â€œWhat’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.
    â€œHe is dead,” said Bambi’s mother, trembling.
    â€œThe first,” Ronno added.
    The young doe, Marena, said, “In this very hour many of us are going
to