After a while the elder asked, “How are you feeling now?”
“I’m feeling better,” Bambi promptly answered. All of a sudden he was able to speak again, he could think clearly, he felt less tired.
After another pause the elder ordered him, “You go ahead now,” and after he had been walking behind Bambi for some time he said, “At last!” They stopped. “Your blood has stopped running out from your wound, so it won’t show where you are any more, He and His dog won’t be able to find where to go to take your life.”
The elder looked very tired, but there was cheer in his voice. “Come on then,” he continued, “now you need to have a rest.”
They arrived at the broad gulley that Bambi had never been across. The elder climbed down into it, Bambi tried to follow but it took him a lot of effort to climb up the steep slope on the other side.
The fierce pain he felt began once more to go through him. He fell over, pulled himself back up, fell over again and began to gasp for breath.
“I can’t help you here,” said the elder, “you’ve got to get up here yourself!” And Bambi did get up to the top. He began once more to feel the hot band of pain that shot down his shoulder and felt for the second time that he was losing his strength.
“You’re bleeding again,” said the elder, “that’s what I expected. It’s not too much, though ... and ...,” he added in a whisper, “it doesn’t matter any more.”
They made their way very slowly through a grove of beech trees, as high as the sky. The ground was soft and smooth. It did not take too much effort to go through it. Bambi yearned to just lay himself down here, to stretch himself out and not to move a finger. He just could not go any further. His head hurt, there was a buzzing in his ears, his nerves were quivering and his fever began to shake him. His eyes went dim. There was nothing more inside him than the yearning for rest and a vague astonishment at how his life had suddenly been interrupted and altered, at how he had once used to go through the forest in good health and without injury ... just that morning ... just an hour earlier ... it seemed to him now like the happiness of a distant time that had long since vanished.
They passed through a low thicket of oaks and dogwood. The fallen trunk of a beech tree lay across their path, deeply embedded in the bushes. It was very big and they could see no way of getting past it.