Bambi's Children Read online

  Chapter One

  THE DARKNESS TOWARD THE EAST was thinning now. Still the owl’s cry drifted down the pathways of the forest, pale stars glimmered in the farthest gloom; but fox and marten paused from hunting, belly-deep in mist, and sniffed the coming dawn.

  Trees, unwilling to awake, turned restless leaves; the birds that roosted in their branches opened round and sleepy eyes. A twig snapped suddenly.

  “Who’s that?” a startled magpie cried. “Who’s that moving there?”

  Her mate drew a sleepy head from under his wing.

  “No one! Who could it be?” he chided her crossly. “Just worry, worry, worry, and it’s hardly dawn . . . !”

  “We heard it, too, we did! There’s surely something coming!” the tomtits in the bushes whispered fearfully.

  A blackbird tried a fluty note. A jay, inquisitive and unafraid, screeched cheerfully:

  “It’s Faline, the roe-deer! Faline and her children!”

  Crows came flapping from their nests.

  “Faline!” they echoed disapprovingly. “She spoils her children. They have their own way in everything. Disgraceful!”

  Faline turned her quiet brown eyes upward to the treetops.

  “You see, Geno,” she said, “what they think of me? Now, be a good boy and stop whining.”

  “But I’m tired. I want to lie down,” Geno complained.

  “He’s not a bit tired!” His sister Gurri trotted close to her mother’s red-brown flanks. “It’s just because I ran faster than he did when I played his stupid old game. He’s an old sorehead!”

  “I’m not a sorehead, and you can’t run as fast as I can! You’re just a girl, that’s all you are . . . !”

  “I’d like to know what that’s got to do with it!” Gurri tossed her head and a shower of dewdrops fell gleaming from a low-hanging bush.

  “Children!” Faline remonstrated soothingly.

  “Well, Mother, if he wasn’t such a spoilsport! Boso and Lana wanted to go on playing, but he,” she mimicked him disparagingly, “he was so tired!”

  Angrily Geno drummed his small hoofs on the winding path.

  “You’ll see! I won’t show you any more games!”

  “All right, I’ll make up my own!”

  “You will!”

  “All right, Boso will! He’s cleverer than you are and he’s nice!”

  The crows flew away with great flapping of black wings.

  “You see? What did we tell you!” they croaked scornfully. “Just listen to those children!”

  “Nasty black things!” Geno scoffed. “If my father, Bambi, were here, he’d show you!”

  “Ho, ho, ho!” chortled the crows. “Teach him manners, Faline!”

  A woodpecker paused in his drumming at an old oak tree.

  “That’s it, Faline,” he cried shrilly; “otherwise he’ll have no friends when he needs them.”

  “The woodpecker’s giving good advice,” Faline told her son; but Geno interrupted her. He leaped away from the path-side, jostling his sister.

  “Something’s coming through the bushes!” Black nostrils trembled; ears peaked toward the sound.

  Faline regarded him placidly. “It’s only the polecat,” she told him. “He won’t hurt you. Don’t be frightened.”

  “The polecat smells awful!” Gurri shied a little, nostrils closed.

  “That’s how he protects himself. It’s good protection. He doesn’t have to run fast, or to watch forever, even in the most dangerous place.”

  “I’d rather run.” Gurri trotted proudly, her slightly speckled coat shining with the dew.

  Their mother snorted, unruffled.

  “In the end, it’s all the same. Birds fly, snails hide in shells, skunks smell peculiar, we run and hide and watch.” They came to a tiny glade, ringed close about with fern and bush and thorny vine. High beech and ash, the sturdy oak and towering poplar, gave it dappled shade. Dogwood bloomed in season, elderberries shed their clustered fruit, privet made a deep green wall. “Perhaps even He has something that He fears, although,” Faline sighed, settling herself comfortably on folded forelegs, “I doubt it.”

  Mention of Him shed gloom upon them for a while. They snuggled close, Geno and Gurri drawing warmth from their mother’s body.

  “Tell us a story, Mother,” Geno begged.

  “I thought you were sleepy,” Gurri mocked.

  Faline looked wistfully about. This was the place where the children had been born. Here it was she had known the pain and Perri the squirrel had come, inquisitive and kind, to sympathize. Here their other friends had homes in bush and treetop: the magpie, jay and woodpecker, keen-eyed outposts who stood guard and warned when harm approached.

  “What would you like to hear?” she asked.

  “Tell us,” Gurri’s eyes glowed with eagerness, “tell us about Gobo.”

  “About Gobo? But you’ve heard about him so often.”

  “Never mind.” For once Geno agreed with his sister. “It’s so exciting. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”

  Faline moved her jaws reflectively.

  “Well,” she began, “as a child my brother Gobo was very delicate. He was small for his age, his legs were a little wobbly and he couldn’t stand the winter.”

  “What’s winter?” demanded Geno.

  “Good gracious, must we go into that again!” Gurri said crossly.

  “It belongs to the story,” Geno rejoined with dignity.

  Faline’s eyes smiled.

  “One day he’ll know about winter and then he won’t have to ask again; and you’ll know about it, too, and realize how important it is.

  “Winter,” she said, wishing she herself knew less about it, “is the time when there isn’t much to eat. Trees are bare, bushes blackly dead, and plant leaves shrivel with the cold. There is no sun, days are short and the sky is gray like the back of a fish.

  “Then, one day before the wind, comes snow . . . !”

  “Now he’ll ask what snow is!” Gurri grumbled.

  Geno arched his neck to look into his mother’s eyes.

  “Yes,” he said, “what is snow?”

  “Snow is white like daisies and it falls from the sky. But it is not soft or sweet like daisies. It is sharp, like a claw. It comes slowly at first, falling slowly as leaves fall in autumn, and then more quickly and more quickly. It doesn’t stop when day goes, but it falls in the night too.”

  “It must get awfully thick,” Geno said.

  His mother sighed. “It does. You have to scrape very hard for food and it is so difficult to move from place to place. That’s what made it bad for Gobo. He wasn’t strong enough to bound high in the air as you must when you want to run in snow, and when He came . . .”

  The youngsters shivered and drew closer to Faline.

  “When He came and we had to run, Gobo fell into a drift and couldn’t move. Your father, running past strong and fleet—he was no older than Gobo then, but already he was handsome and the muscles rippled under his skin like a fast-moving stream—stopped and begged him not to give up. But Gobo couldn’t manage it and the two said goodbye, forever as they thought. Your father had already seen his mother die by the thunder-stick and many others of our friends as well: pheasants, hares, even the sly fox. . . .”

  “And then . . . ?” urged Geno, tense with terror.

  “Then one day, when we’d given up all hope, Gobo came back, plump, handsome, healthier than he’d ever been before. Mother was beside herself with joy, as indeed we all were, all, that is, except the leader. He shook his head, pulling a long face, when Gobo told how He had dragged him from the drift and cared for him.

  “He wants you to grow and have antlers” he said, “and then, in the end, the thunder-stick!”r />
  “It made us very unhappy to listen to him, but he was wiser than all of us.”

  “The wisest is always the leader,” Gurri began proudly; but she was interrupted by a sudden bang.

  Faline started. The young ones sprang quivering to their feet.

  “The thunder-stick!” Geno whispered, pricking his ears toward the sound. “Perhaps—perhaps it’s Father!”

  Gurri began to whimper, but Faline said to them assuringly:

  “There’s nothing to worry about, my dears. Your father’s the leader now and far too clever for any Him to get him.”

  She stopped as Perri came leaping through the branches, her button eyes agleam.

  “They got him—that bloodthirsty marten!” she chattered gleefully. “Knocked him right out of a tree!”

  Faline said comfortably: “There you are, children! Now, settle down. We must get some sleep.”

  The gold of the sun lay caught in netted branches of the trees; full-voiced the blackbird sang; pigeons crooned their love-songs; the cuckoo called from far and near; and like a shining dart the oriole flung himself from tree to tree, crying in his joy: “I’m so happy! So happy!”

  Mice, scuttling in the undergrowth, peeped out to see how peacefully Faline and her children slept. The forest was awake. Only the hunted were asleep.

  Chapter Two

  DAY GREW AND BLOOMED IN the forest. In a great, radiant arc the sun swung overhead, coming from the east, hurrying smoothly toward its setting in the west. Trees spread their leaves to it, the scent of grateful flowers was sweet, bees hummed, the caterpillar crept upon the frond of fern; only Faline and her children did not move until evening grayly spread across the land. Then easily they woke and slowly, with much scouting and care, returned to their meadow.

  Gurri was impatient, would have hurried on ahead, but Faline sternly called her back.

  “How many times have I told you!” Faline scolded. “Sometimes I think the crows are right and I’m too easy on you children! Now, stay behind me with your brother and wait until I give you permission to go ahead.”

  “I’m hungry,” Gurri said stubbornly.

  “You forget everything then,” Geno gibed at her.

  “That’s enough, Geno!” Faline snapped. “Both of you remember that food tastes better when it’s eaten in security.”

  Rather pleased with the wisdom of this observation which, she thought, even Bambi would have approved, Faline turned the last corner in the path before it opened into the meadow.

  She paused there, sampling the air with sensitive nose. Shoulder-high in fern, shielded by the undergrowth, she searched every nook and cranny with sharpened eyes.

  A magpie flying overhead called cheerily, “There’s nothing there.”

  “Nothing anywhere,” repeated Perri, scurrying down from the topmost branches of a mighty elm. “I assure you, I’ve looked the prospect over with the utmost care, and there’s not the slightest danger anywhere.”

  She sat upright on a sturdy branch, her tail spread above her, her hands folded on her spotless chest.

  “Are Aunt Rolla and Boso and Lana there yet?” Gurri whispered impatiently.

  “No,” answered Faline.

  A rushing flight of duck swept overhead; a heron, his long, thin legs held stiffly out behind him, went like a ghost through the darkening sky.

  “They would be late!” Gurri said.

  Perri said again, twitching her nose at them: “I tell you, everything’s all right. You can’t see half so far as I can.”

  Step by step, braced for a sideward jump and quick retreat, Faline emerged into the open grass. From an elder thicket came the mellow song of the nightingale.

  “You can come now,” Faline called softly.

  The young ones bounded out, nuzzling their mother, seeking the soft grass.

  “There’s Boso,” Gurri cried. “Look! Aunt Rolla, Lana and Boso!”

  The three came wandering across the field, Rolla sedately feeding while the youngsters played together and, now and then, nibbled a little themselves. Gurri hurried toward them with charming awkwardness, Geno following more slowly with timid leaps, frequent hesitations and impetuous, knowing tosses of the head. Boso and Lana came to meet them in such a rush that they had to spread all four legs wide to stop.

  Boso began to talk at once. “There’s a most extraordinary creature over there,” he said breathlessly. “I don’t know what it is. . . .”

  “Over where?” Gurri asked.

  Lana tossed her head. “We’ll show you. Come on.”

  Geno objected rather loftily. “Do you suppose whatever it is is just sitting there waiting for us to go and see it?”

  “Oh, it can’t walk fast. Perhaps it can’t walk at all. What do you think, Boso?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw anything like it before. I thought perhaps they’d know, but, of course, if Geno’s not interested . . .” Boso fell to cropping the grass as though he had dismissed the whole matter from his mind.

  Geno said, “Well, I suppose it’s just a snail, but if you want me to go . . .”

  “Come on then!” Lana urged.

  Boso sprang away, Gurri and Lana at his heels, Geno lingering in the rear.

  “Come over here!” Boso called.

  Gurri was already peering at something half-hidden in the shadow of a clump of sedge grass.

  “It’s a very peculiar thing,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s dangerous.”

  Geno trotted over, impelled by a curiosity he could not restrain. The thing on the ground stared at him with sullen, beady eyes. Geno felt a shudder run along his spine, but he made up his mind to sniff this thing. He did so, and sprang back, his four legs stiffened with dismay.

  “He pricks!” he cried, rubbing his nose in the cool grass.

  Gurri and Lana felt impelled to try it too. Warily they sniffed at the stranger and jumped delightedly into the air.

  “So he does!” they cried.

  “Hey, you!” Boso said to him. “It’s wonderful to have things like that all over you, but you needn’t prick us. We won’t hurt you.”

  “Oh, no,” Geno assured him, “we wouldn’t hurt anything!”

  The hedgehog raised his prickles in a fury.

  “You’d better not try,” he said grimly.

  “How marvelous if we had spikes like that,” sighed Lana, “long and sharp and pointed!”

  “Lots of things would be easier,” Gurri said, looking sideways at Boso.

  “There’s no call to be making fun of me,” the hedgehog said surlily.

  “Oh, but we’re not!” Gurri cried. “Really we’re not!”

  “Who are you, anyway?” Boso asked.

  “None of your business,” the hedgehog growled.

  “Say, you’re pretty rude, aren’t you!” Geno expostulated.

  “I know how to keep myself to myself.”

  “So does the polecat,” Gurri murmured.

  “Polecat! Huh! Fine goings on, I must say!” The hedgehog erected his quills even higher than before. “I’d be obliged if you’d let me pass,” he said haughtily: “otherwise I cannot be responsible for the consequences!”

  Geno glanced at Boso. “Maybe we’d better let him go.”

  “I think so,” Boso agreed. “He really is very unpleasant.”

  The four of them started to canter away, but Gurri turned back.

  “Please forgive me,” she asked. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  The hedgehog raised his fine black nose. “Huh!” he sniffed and waddled disdainfully away.

  Gurri watched him go before turning to run after the others. Boso was galloping at full speed in a circle.

  “Boso’s the fastest!” Lana cried.

  Gurri increased her own speed.

  “Danger, danger!” she called to them.

  Immediately Geno broke into wild flight. Gurri stopped the others trying to catch up with him, and shouted:

  “It’s all right, Geno, I was only joking!�
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  He was quite breathless when he understood what she was saying and stopped to wait for them to rejoin him.

  “That’s no joke,” he said bitterly, trying not to let his heaving flanks reveal how hard he had run. “Why did you do it?”

  “Because I wanted to show that you are the fastest,” Gurri explained.

  “He is, too,” admitted Lana.

  “If I hadn’t known it was a joke, I should have run faster,” Boso argued.

  “I wonder what our mothers are talking about,” Gurri interposed.

  “They certainly have their heads close together!” Boso looked about him eagerly. “What are those things sparkling in the trees?”

  “Oh, but they’re pretty,” Lana exclaimed. “Let’s find out what they are!”

  Faline and Rolla were talking together as they grazed. Rolla was worried.

  “Really,” she sighed, “I declare I don’t know what to do!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the time is coming for the Princes to be seeking us. . . .” Rolla hesitated.

  “Well?” prompted Faline.

  “Well . . .” repeated Rolla. She pretended there was something up-wind that engaged her attention. She sighed again. “I’m wondering—whether I shall join up with one of them again.”

  Faline’s dark eyes glowed with restrained amusement. “I expect you will,” she said comfortably.

  Rolla bridled. “It’s all very well for you,” she said with a show of irritation. “You’re happy; you have Bambi!”

  “Yes,” Faline smiled, “you’re right; I have Bambi.”

  “He doesn’t come to see you very often!” Rolla was annoyed with herself for the faint pang of jealousy that disturbed her; but Faline was not distressed.

  “He has great responsibilities as a leader,” she said quietly. “I must make sacrifices.”

  Rolla was suddenly ashamed. “Yes, yes, of course!” she said. “To be the leader is not all fun and clover, and to be the leader’s mate must be even more difficult at times. I’m glad I’m not ambitious.”

  “I’m not either,” declared Faline. “Believe me, I sometimes wish he was just a member of the herd.”

  “You don’t at all,” Rolla mocked her, “you know you just burst with importance!” And then, with an access of seriousness, she added: “But doesn’t he ever come to see the children?”