time passes, and bambi learns how good grass tastes, how tender the buds of leaves are, and how sweet clover is. when he presses himself against his mother to get some refreshment she often pushes him away. “you’re not a little child any more,” she says. sometimes she will be even more direct and say, “go away, leave me in peace.” sometimes his mother would even stand up in the middle of the day in their little place in the wood and just walk away without looking to see whether bambi is following her or not. there are even times when she is walking along the familiar paths when she seems not to notice whether bambi is trotting behind her like a good boy. one day his mother was not there, and bambi does not know how that is possible, cannot understand it. but his mother is gone and bambi, for the first time, is alone.
he is bewildered, he becomes uneasy, he becomes nervous and anxious, and he begins to long for her quite pitifully. very sadly he stands there and calls to her. no-one answers, no-one comes.
he listens, he smells the air. nothing. he calls again. gently, inside himself, imploringly, he calls, “mother ... mother ...” all in vain.
now he is gripped with doubt as to whether he can endure it, so he begins to walk.
he wanders along all the paths he knows, stops and calls out, walks on with hesitant steps, fearful and unable to understand. he is very sad.
he carries on walking and finds himself on paths where he has never been before, he finds himself in parts of the wood which are strange to him. he is lost.
then he hears the voices of two children who are calling out like him:
“mother ... mother ...!”
surely that is gobo and faline. it must be them.
he runs quickly towards the voices and soon sees their red coats shining through between the leaves. gobo and faline. there they stand next to each other under a dogwood, looking forlorn and calling, “mother ... mother ...!”
they’re glad that they can hear something rusting in the undergrowth, but they are disappointed when they see it is only bambi. but they are a little bit glad to see him. and bambi is glad that he is not quite so alone any more.
“my mother’s gone away somewhere,” says bambi.
“ours is gone too,” lamented gobo.
they look at each other in their dismay.
“but where could they be?” asks bambi, almost in tears.
“i don’t know,” sighs gobo. his heart is beating fast and he is feeling quite miserable.
suddenly, faline says, “i think ... they’re with our fathers ...”
gobo and bambi look at each other in astonishment. they are immediately gripped by a sense of awe. “you mean ... with our fathers?” asked bambi and shudders.
faline shudders too, but she makes a face that seems to be saying a lot. she looks like someone who knows more than he is willing to say. she does not really know anything at all of course; she does not even know where she got the idea from. but as gobo repeats, “do you really mean that?,” she makes herself look clever and says each time, “yes, i think so.”
that is, of course, a guess, but it is at least worth thinking about. it does not make bambi any less uneasy though. he is not now capable of thinking, he is too anxious and too sad.
he moves away. he does not like to spend too much time on one spot. faline and gobo go with him a little way; all three of them call “mother ... mother ...” but now gobo and faline have stopped; they do not dare to go any further. faline says, “where are we going? our mother knows where we should be. so let’s stay there so that she can find us when she comes back.”
bambi walks on by himself. he wanders through a thicket where there is a little bare patch. in the middle of the bare patch bambi stops. it is as if he is held there by his roots and cannot leave the spot.
there, at the edge of the bare patch, in a tall hazel bush, he could make out a form. bambi has never seen a form like this. at the same time a scent came to him in the air, a scent he has never smelt before. it is a strange aroma, heavy and sharp and exciting, enough to make you mad.
bambi stares at the form. it is remarkably erect, exceptionally narrow, and it has a pale face which is quite naked on the nose and around the eyes. horribly naked. this is a face that projects a dreadful horror. cold and gruesome. this face has a monstrous power to it, a power that could leave you crippled. this face is painful to behold, hardly bearable to behold, but bambi nonetheless stands there and stares at it, captivated.
the form remains there motionless for a long time. then it reaches one leg out, a leg that is positioned high up, and puts it near its face. bambi has not noticed that it was there at all. this terrible leg stretches right out into the air, and it is merely this gesture that sweeps bambi away like a candle in the wind. in an instant he is back in the thicket he has just left. and he runs.
suddenly his mother is back with him. she leaps through bush and undergrowth next to him. the two of them run as fast as they can. his mother leads the way, she knows the path, and bambi follows. in this way they keep running until they are at the entrance to their chamber.
“did you ... did you see that?” asks his mother gently. bambi cannot answer, he has no breath left. he merely nods.
“that was ... that was him!” she says.
the two of them shuddered in horror.
