“You’ve just got to keep a watch out for him,” the magpie added.
“Yeah, you certainly do,” said the crow sadly. “Cheerio.” She flew away and her family went with her.
Bambi looked around. His mother was no longer there.
What are they talking about? he thought. I can’t understand everything they’re saying. Who is this ‘He’ they’re talking about? It must be that ‘He’ that I saw in the woods that time ... but he didn’t kill me ...
Bambi thought of the prince whom he had just seen lying in front of him with a bloody, shredded shoulder. He was now dead. Bambi walked on. The forest was again in song with a thousand voices, the sun drove its broad beams of light through the tree tops, everywhere was light, the leaves began to steam, high in the air called the falcons, and here, close by, a woodpecker was laughing out loud as if nothing had happened. Bambi did not become cheerful. He felt under threat from something dark, he could not understand how the others could be so gay and carefree when life was so hard and so dangerous. At that moment he was gripped by the desire to get a long way away from there, to go deeper and deeper into the woods. He felt the urge to go to a place where the trees were at their densest, where he could find a corner to slide into, a place surrounded broad and far by the most impenetrable undergrowth, where he could not possibly be seen. He did not want to go back out onto that meadow.
Something gently moved in the bushes beside him. Bambi was greatly startled. There, in front of him, stood the elder.
There was something twitching in Bambi; he wanted to run away but he took control of himself and remained. The elder looked at him with his big, deep eyes. “Were you there when it happened?”
“Yes,” said Bambi quietly. His heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his mouth.
“Where is your mother?” the elder asked.
Bambi answered, still speaking quietly, “I don’t know.”