The three of them spoke at the same time.
Ena looked at Bambi’s mother. “There, what did I tell you? They’ve already become inseparable.”
Then something else happened, and it was something much bigger than all the other things that Bambi had experienced that day.
A thumping and a stamping coming out of the woods could be felt all through ground. Branches of trees cracked, twigs rustled, and before anyone could even prick up his ears it broke its way out of the thicket. One of them with a rustling and a banging, the other in a great rush behind him. They ran forward like a storm wind, completed a broad arch across the meadow, disappeared back into the woods where they could be heard galloping, they hurtled once more out of the thicket and then they suddenly stopped and stood quietly, twenty paces apart from each other.
Bambi looked at them and did not move. They looked a little like his mother and Auntie Ena. But on their heads there was a glittering crown of antlers made of brown pearls and bright white prongs. Bambi could not move; he looked at one, and then at the other. One of them was smaller than the other, and his crown was less developed too. But the other had a beauty that gave him an air of authority. He held his head high, and his crown was even higher. It sparkled from the darkness into the light, it was adorned with the majesty of many black and brown pearls, and the long, white tips glittered.
“Oh!” exclaimed Faline in amazement. Gobo repeated her quietly. Bambi, though, said nothing at all. He was captivated and silent.
The two of them now began to move, getting further apart from each other as they went, each of them to a different side of the meadow and there they went slowly back into the woods. The majestic figure came up quite close to the children, Bambi’s mother and Auntie Ena. His step showed a quiet glory, he held his noble head up high like a king and dignified no-one with as much as a glance. The children did not dare to breathe until he had disappeared back into the thicket. They looked around, trying to see him, but just at that moment the green doors of the wood closed behind him.
Faline was the first to break the silence. “Who was that?” she exclaimed. But her little, arrogant voice had a quake in it.
In a voice that could hardly be heard, Gobo repeated her: “Who was that?”
Bambi was silent.