Bambi

by Felix Salten

But our friend, the hare, just looked around, madness in his eyes, and could not speak straight away. He was very disturbed.

“What’s the point of asking ...” said Ronno grimly.

Our friend the hare gasped for breath. “We are surrounded,” he said in a monotone. “There’s no way out on any side. He is everywhere!”

Just then they heard His voice. Twenty times, thirty times He called out. Hoho! Haha! It rang out and shook them more than thunder and lightning. It struck the trunks of the trees which trumpeted the sound out. It brought them horror, it threw them down. A distant rustling and cracking of the undergrowth as the bushes were pushed apart and the sound forced itself over to them, the screams and bangs of twigs as they broke.

He was coming! He was coming right here, into the thicket.

Now, behind them, they could hear short whistles and trills. Already, there was a pheasant there standing up as he heard His steps. They heard the flapping of the pheasant’s wings fading as he rose high into the air. A flash and a clap of thunder. Quiet. Then the muffled sound of something hitting the ground. “The pheasant has fallen,” said Bambi’s mother with a shudder.

“The first ...” added Ronno.

Then Marena, the young girl, spoke. “There are many of us who are going to die very soon. I might be one of them.” No-one listened to her. Now the great terror was among them.

Bambi tried to think. But the raging noise, which He was raising higher and higher, tore all his thoughts apart. Bambi could hear nothing but this noise, a noise that made you numb, and in among all this howling, bellowing and banging he could hear the thump of his own heart. All he felt was curiosity and was completely unaware that all his limbs were shaking. Now and then his mother came close to his ear and said, “Stay with me.” She shouted, but in all that uproar it seemed to Bambi that she was whispering. This “Stay with me” offered him some support. It held him fast as if he were held in place with a chain, otherwise he would have run away without a second thought, and he always heard it again just when he would have lost self control fled. He looked around. There was a crowd of many different people running around in a blind panic between each other. A pair of weasels ran past, slender lines like a snake which it nearly impossible to follow with the eye. A polecat listened spellbound for all the information he could get from the stuttering, confused hare. The fox stood there among the disordered rush of the pheasants. They paid no attention to him, ran right past his nose, and he paid no attention to them. Without becoming excited, his head stretched forward, his ears pointing up high, his nose working hard, he strained himself to hear through the tumult as it came closer. The only thing moving was his tail. It looked as if he were straining to think. A pheasant hurried past, out from behind, out of the most serious danger, and he was in a panic. “Don’t go up there!” he shouted to the other birds. “Don’t go up there ... just run! Don’t let them get you! Nobody go up there! Just run, run, run!” He kept on repeating the same thing, as if he were trying to warn himself. But he no longer knew what he was saying. A clamour of “Hoho! Haha!” seemed to come from somewhere quite close. “Don’t let them get you!” called the pheasant. At the same time his voice suddenly became a whistle-like sobbing, with a loud rattle he spread his wings and flew upwards. Bambi watched him as he went, flapping his wings loudly, flying up directly and steeply between the trees, his resplendent body glittering with its metallic dark blue, gold-brown sheen, as majestic as a precious gem. His long tail feathers swept proudly behind him like the train of a gown. The curt thunderclap rang out sharp. The pheasant in the sky collapsed suddenly into himself, twisted himself round as if trying to snap at his feet with his beak, and hurtled heavily to the ground. He fell in the middle of the others and moved no more.

Now no-one was able to stay calm. They all rushed around away from each other. Five, six pheasants rose into the air with noisy clattering. “Don’t go up there” shouted the others as they ran. The thunderclap came again, five times, six times, and some of those who had flown up in the air fell back to the ground lifeless.