Introduction
This is a short story in the 11 Quests world. While I don’t really think it gives anything away, I wrote it with the idea that people would read it after reading The Quests of Underice.
And now… Gringar’s Tunnels
“Mama, Papa,” Gringar shouted with glee, “you’ll never guess what I’ve invented!”
Gringar had come bursting out from the kitchen of their small home in Norway. Gnome homes are small in all three dimensions, much like the gnomes themselves. In his home, Gringar looked the size of an eleven-year-old human, but he was little more than half as tall. His face was smudged with dirt or grease, which was common for gnome boys and girls alike. The grease only partly covered his freckles, and his mass of curly red hair had successfully evaded attacks from well-intentioned combs.
“I think this might count as my Creation!” he exclaimed. Between the ages of eleven and twelve, gnomes are expected to create their first truly original invention. Most were successful, and those who weren’t tended to shrug it off and just keep tinkering with machines.
Anna, his mother, was used to sudden excited outbursts from the boy. Nonetheless, Anna literally jumped up from the chair in which she had been seated. The motion was so sudden that her straight red hair had flown every which way and would have to seek out a comb later on.
“Gringar —” she started, pointing at the door to the boy’s room. She was certain that he had entered his bedroom fifteen minutes prior and had not left it. The door to Gringar’s room was opposite that of the kitchen, and Anna had been sitting in her favorite chair in the sitting room the whole time.
A stranger stood up from their sofa, his head reaching nearly to the ceiling. He had long black hair and a beard to match. His eyes were gray and focused on the gnome child with such intense curiosity that Gringar looked at the floor to avoid his gaze.
“Hello, lad,” said the stranger.
Gringar’s father, Lukas, also rose since everyone else was standing. “Son,” he said, “this is Culpepper Fangorn. He is a powerful wizard who can do amazing things with ice.”
Gringar then noticed the smell of fresh cookies. Despite having come from the kitchen, he had somehow missed it. A plate of chocolate chip cookies sat invitingly on the wooden table in the center of the room.
“Hello, sir,” Gringar said after a moment, inching toward the table. He bowed at the waist, his hand quickly shooting out and grabbing a cookie. The boy stood quickly, gave the stranger a little wink, and ran to his room. Before anyone had a chance to react, he opened the door, stepped inside, and shut it quickly.
Anna’s freckled face turned a shade closer to that of her hair. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Fangorn, sir —”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into him —” said Lukas at the same time.
Culpepper raised a hand. “It’s quite all right,” he said. “Children at that age have funny ideas about new people sometimes.” He raised his voice slightly. “It’s a shame Gringar ran off. I was very curious to learn about his invention!”
All three adults flinched in surprise as Gringar stepped out of the kitchen again, this time with a bit of chocolate mixed in with the dirt on his chin. He grinned and then ran back into his room, closing the door behind him.
Anna ran quickly to Gringar’s door, her years of practice chasing after him paying off. She opened the door in time to see Gringar opening a crude, round wooden door set into the wall on the far side of the room. A door that had never been there before.
She crossed the room and opened the door as Lukas and Culpepper arrived at the entrance to the young gnome’s room. A dark tunnel extended from the mysterious new doorway, and a light at the end of the tunnel disappeared as a door closed. The tunnel was then dimly lit by a single torch halfway along the tunnel’s length.
Gringar’s room had a window set in the wall just a couple of feet away from the tunnel. Anna peered out the window just as the other two adults arrived and looked into the tunnel. Outside, the sun was shining and the grassy field was as open as ever, with no tunnel in sight.
They jumped as Gringar cheerfully asked, “Cool, isn’t it?”
It was Culpepper who spoke first. “It is truly amazing, Gringar.”
Anna looked back into the tunnel, her eyes wide and a small frown on her lips. “You’ve made a tunnel to our kitchen?”
“Yeah,” Gringar said. “Now I can go there whenever I want without having to go through the living room to get there.”
Lukas was still peering into the tunnel, his face was all smiles. “My boy! This is the Creation of the century! I’m so proud of you.” The smile slipped and a puzzled look swept across his face. “How is this possible?”
“You know how everything seems so solid, but you were just telling me a few weeks ago that there’s actually a whole bunch of empty space in every atom in our bodies?”
“Yes?”
“Well, I thought, ‘what if the opposite is also true’. What if there is also lots of solid stuff where it seems like it’s just open space?”
“Wait, what?”
Gringar walked to a corner of his room and lifted a sheet of cloth that had been covering a device. The device had a handle and crank on one side. Chains snaked away from the crank and wrapped around gears that were further attached to pulleys that themselves connected to wheels that were angled every which way. Sticking out from the wheels were small scoops of gray, black, and clear rock, each coming to a point that was so tiny and sharp that the tip was invisible.
“This is the Digger. Whenever we went out to the mountains or fjords, I collected different kinds of minerals. With a little help from my friend Rollin, I was able to make these super sharp scoopers. I also got a bit of an enchantment from the old witch in the shack by the sea. Then I stuck the scoops into this machine so that when I turn the crank, the Digger will dig through the nothing. I can connect two places with a tunnel through the nothing.”
“A tunnel — through nothing?” Lukas asked. “I can’t say I understand that, but I also have to believe in what I’m seeing. How is it that the tunnel is leaving your room in the opposite direction from the kitchen, where it ends up?”
“Um, well, I’m not quite as sure about that part. I was thinking of the kitchen as I used the Digger, and the tunnel came out in the exact spot I was thinking of.”
The initial wonder had passed, and Culpepper was looking at the tunnel intently when he spoke. “Gringar, how far do you think these tunnels can go? Is the length of the tunnel connected at all to the distance it crosses on the Earth?”
Gringar stared into the opening, every bit as focused as the tall visitor. “I think they can go very far, and its length is not connected to how far it goes. I’m not sure, but I think it takes longer to dig a tunnel that goes farther.”
Culpepper turned to face Gringar, his eyes sparkling and beard raising slightly as a broad smile covered his face. “You may have just saved the Elder Folk with this Creation of yours. Let me tell you my plan …”
Gringar, his parents and Culpepper spent the rest of the day talking. It wasn’t as boring as it sounds, though. Culpepper told them at length about his plans for a place he called “Underice.” It would be a whole country, tucked away inside a huge glacier. It would keep the Elder Folk safe from the increasingly distrustful non-magical humans, he said. Lukas and Anna agreed to allow Gringar to help connect places around the planet with Underice, as long as they could be among the first to move to the new country.
Late in the day, as Culpepper readied to leave, Gringar said, “I still don’t understand why we need to move to Underice. Everything seems fine here. Are the humans really a big problem?”
Culpepper knelt to get himself closer to eye level with the young gnome. “They don’t understand magic, so they don’t trust it or anything that seems even a little magical. Some of them do, but too many of them seem ready to fight against anything unfamiliar. Anxious to fight, even. I don’t think we have much time before we have some big problems.”
Gringar wasn’t convinced, but he also knew that he was only eleven and had always lived in Norway. He figured there must be a lot more going on in the world than what he had seen near home.
The next day, Culpepper was back. Though he had described the non-magical humans as anxious, it seemed to Gringar that Culpepper was the anxious one. Even so, Gringar admitted to himself that he was excited. Excited to be leaving home to see the world, and excited to be using the Digger to connect everything together.
Culpepper towered over the gnomes in their living room. “Are we all ready to leave?”
“I just need to load my Digger onto the wagon,” Gringar said.
He carried his Digger out of his room, stumbling a bit with the bulky, heavy machine. Once outside, Gringar carefully set his creation down on a platform that rested on a single wheel that was right in the center underneath it. The platform wobbled under the new, unbalanced weight. Copper pipes encircled the platform and Gringar heard liquid moving through the pipes as the platform steadied.
With a “pop,” Gringar was suddenly covered with a bright green liquid that sprayed out from a joint between the pipes at the corner. He jumped out of the way as the Digger tumbled off of the platform.
“Ugh!” he exclaimed. “Mama! The wagon is leaking again.”
“Oh, dear,” was the reply from inside the house. A few seconds later, Anna rushed out with a dark visor covering her face and a tiny, green creature cupped in her small hands.
“Gringar, can you go inside and get some more balancing juice?” she asked.
As Gringar ran inside, Anna sat beside the wagon. She opened her hands and the creature jumped over to stand on her left palm. The creature was a mini dragon and he spread his wings and stretched his legs. He let out a little squeak, and Anna rubbed his neck.
“Olaf,” she said, “this is metal we’re dealing with, so you’ll need to make the fire really hot, okay?”
Olaf was covered in scales like most lizard-like creatures, but his ears were large, furry and floppy, and bounced around as he nodded.
Anna pulled a spool of metal wire from her pocket. She unspooled several inches of the stiff wire and held the end up to the spot of the tube that was leaking. She gently squeezed Olaf’s sides and a white hot flame shot from his mouth. The metal wire quickly melted and fused with the tube on the wagon.
The fire stopped and Anna and Olaf both looked closely at their handiwork. Olaf nodded in satisfaction.
“Perfect, Olaf. Thank you,” Anna said. The dragon gave a little squeak in response. They returned to the house just as Gringar emerged carrying a bottle filled with more of the bright green liquid.
Gringar unscrewed a cap at one end of the wagon and emptied the bottle into the wagon’s pipes. He placed the Digger back onto the wagon, which balanced the machine perfectly on its single wheel.
Culpepper had been pacing restlessly, but stopped as soon as the wagon was loaded. “Aha! We’re ready to go!” he exclaimed cheerfully.
Gringar’s parents had just stepped out of the house and Culpepper was already walking away. It took a couple of minutes for him to slow down as he finally realized that the gnomes couldn’t keep up with his long strides.
About fifteen minutes later, they reached an opening in the side of a small mountain.
“This is the place I was telling you about,” Culpepper said. “It seemed like the perfect spot to hide the tunnel so that random humans wouldn’t encounter it.”
The group stepped into the cave. A wooden door was leaning against the wall. Gringar was curious about where the door had come from, but he was a lot more curious about how well the Digger would work. He had only made one tunnel with the Digger and it had only taken a few minutes. Now, he was starting the machine with the intention to go hundreds of miles.
The day passed with few breaks, and the Digger had made a tunnel that was only about a foot long and still ended in a wall of solid rock. Gringar was tired, sweaty, a touch achy and, he was sorry to admit, more than a little bored.
Culpepper had spent the day pacing around the cave, and then pacing around outside. Then he had made a beautiful ice sculpture of a fairy, only to melt it down to a puddle an hour later.
When the end of the day arrived and they had not reached their destination, Culpepper asked, “Do you have any idea how far this tunnel has gone?”
Gringar shrugged. “It feels like it’s longer than the tunnel between my bedroom and our kitchen, but I can’t really tell how far it goes.” He tapped on the rock wall inside the tunnel. “I can’t see anything more than you can.”
“Is it even working? How do you know you’re not just digging through the rock of the cave? Give me a pickaxe, and I’ll make a much bigger tunnel than this one!”
Gringar’s parents had sat quietly the whole day, tinkering with a couple of small machines of their own. Lukas jumped to his feet, his face red with anger. “If you think you’ll have more success tunneling to your glacier with a pickaxe, I suggest you do so. Gringar has worked hard today, and I will not have you talking ill of that work.”
Culpepper ran a hand down his face and sighed. He turned to Gringar. “Your father is absolutely right. I’m sorry, Gringar. Forgive me. It has been a long day and I’m sure your tunnel is coming along well. Let’s pick it up tomorrow, okay?”
Gringar nodded, and they all left without another word.
They met at the cave again the next day.
“I think I know why we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere,” Gringar said. “I was concentrating on where we wanted to go and I also didn’t want the tunnel to be too long. By thinking about both of those things together, maybe the tunnel went a long way, but stayed super short.”
“Do you think the tunnel is almost there, then?” asked Culpepper.
Gringar shrugged. “I think so. Maybe if I don’t worry too much about how long the tunnel is, it will go faster.”
“Let’s get to it, then!’ Culpepper said.
Lukas scowled and wondered if they were making the right choice by working with this man. He thought that Culpepper was more than a little impatient.
Gringar set the Digger in motion. Slowly, the end of the day came and the four people in the cave stood staring at a wall of rock now two feet in from the main part of the cave.
Culpepper stalked out of the cave without saying a word.
Gringar stretched his arms and legs. “Mama, I don’t know how long this will take.”
Anna tried to smile encouragingly at Gringar, but the smile just looked tired. “My mama used to say, ‘Sometimes the things worth doing take more time than the things we think about doing while we’re doing other things that we forgot to do while we were doing the things we thought were worth doing.’”
Gringar stared at her for a few seconds. “I don’t get it. What does that mean?”
She put her arm around Gringar’s shoulders and led him from the cave, with Lukas following a step behind. “I think she just said that to take our minds off of boring things that take a lot of work.”
Early the next morning, Culpepper arrived at the gnomes’ house before they had a chance to leave for the cave. He was holding a blue box that was tied with brown string.
Culpepper knelt on the grass to be closer to eye level with Gringar.
“It was unreasonable of me to think that we could cross one-and-a-half thousand miles in a day or two,” Culpepper said, absently scratching at his beard. “I have something for you.” He held the box out to Gringar.
The boy took the box, untied the string and opened it. Inside, he found a small, clear, intricately carved sculpture of a shovel, attached to a chain with clear links.
“I was up all night making this just for you,” Culpepper said. “I’ve learned to make different kinds of ice for different purposes, and I’ve also collected some useful spells that I finally had a use for.
“First of all, this ice won’t melt. Not at any normal temperatures, at least. Second, I noticed that you were getting hot working in the cave, so this chain is made of an ice that will cool your neck when your skin is hot and even warm you in the cold. That should help some.
“Finally, if you touch the shovel and say my name, you can speak directly to me. Call me any time, but definitely call me once you reach ice!”
Gringar stood, staring at the beautiful necklace as it sparkled in the sunlight.
“That is very thoughtful, Culpepper,” Anna said. “Gringar, don’t you have anything you want to say after receiving such an impressive gift?”
Gringar nodded and put the necklace on. “Thank you, Culpepper. I will call you just as soon as the tunnel is ready.”
Gringar certainly couldn’t spend all day every day working on the tunnel, but he did head out to the cave often and spent hours at a time working on it. Most of the time, he worked as if in a trance, almost feeling like a part of the rock and nothing through which he was digging. As time passed, he could tell that his skills with the Digger had improved. He still had no idea how close he was to Greenland, and the tunnel appeared to be only about the same length as the tunnel between his bedroom and the kitchen.
Just over a year after Gringar started digging the tunnel, he felt a change in the rock in front of him. He brought his torch in for a closer look and discovered that he had struck ice. He let out a shout that echoed from his tunnel to the empty cave.
He touched the ice shovel that hung at his neck. “Culpepper! I’ve reached ice! Get my parents and come to the cave.”
Culpepper’s voice came from the shovel. “At last! We’ll be right there.”
Thirty minutes later, Culpepper rushed into the cave, about a minute ahead of Lukas and Anna.
Culpepper leaned over gave Gringar a friendly slap on the back. “Gringar, you’ve done it! You’ve created the first tunnel to Underice. This is how the Elder Folk will come to their new, safe home.”
Anna looked skeptical. “All I see is a wall of ice.”
“You see ice, but I see endless possibility!”
As Gringar pulled the Digger away from the ice wall, Culpepper stepped forward, hands outstretched. A tunnel through the ice started forming as he walked, and the gnome family followed him in. The tunnel quickly became a cylinder a few feet across that reached ever higher. As the ice above them thinned, it started getting lighter. Soon, the sun became visible far above. The sun’s shape was less round than usual and it appeared to be made of hundreds of colorful hexagons.
Gringar looked up in wonder. “Where did all of that ice go? Why weren’t we flooded when it melted?”
“Because I didn’t melt it,” Culpepper said. “I moved it. To the north pole. We wouldn’t want all of that ice to melt, because it would make the oceans rise and flood the coasts.”
The small area in which they stood was the beginning of Underice. The land inside was bare dirt and rock that had been buried for untold centuries under thousands of feet of ice.
“We’re supposed to live here?” Anna asked incredulously. “There’s nothing here!”
Culpepper grasped one of Anna’s hands and one of Lukas’s. “There’s nothing here now. But I know some fairies who are very good at growing things. Soon, we will have grass and forests. And here, at the southern end of Underice, we can have a city for the gnomes.”
Lukas’s eyes sparkled. “A new city for the gnomes. Those gnome homes are going to need ovens.”
Anna smiled. “I never thought there would be much use for my Oven Crafter. Looks like I was wrong!”
Lukas said, “Let’s call the city Gnarsh. I’ve always thought that would be a fine name for a city.”
“Gnarsh?” Culpepper asked.
“Gnarsh,” said Anna firmly. “It is a fine name for a city.”
Culpepper shrugged. “Gnarsh it is.”
Culpepper continued hollowing out Underice, and Gringar’s family moved to Gnarsh. As for Gringar, he got his chance to travel the world. While Underice grew, Gringar went to a number of places around the globe to slowly make tunnels that would bring Elder Folk to stay in Underice.
Gnomes don’t live especially long lives, but something about Gringar’s work in caused him to stay young. When he was eighty years old, he still looked, and felt, like a young gnome. Culpepper was aging well, but his beard and hair had both grown long and white.
“Gringar,” Culpepper said, “what you have done with your tunnels is beyond belief. I may have created Underice, but you have filled it with life.”
“That is so,” Gringar said. “Even now, though, I still ponder the question that I had when I was eleven: Should we all come to Underice? Shouldn’t we be a part of this world, rather than apart from it?”
“But we are part of the world. We’re just in a safe part of the world. I am old now and ready for for rest, but you are clearly still young. I am going to go into the heart of Underice and freeze myself so that someday I may return. I leave it to you to continue to find others who can be helped by coming to our country here. I have heard tales of a jungle far away that is teeming with Elder Folk.”
“I still do not accept the idea that we all belong in Underice, but I know you are wise and have worked hard to build this country. Enjoy your rest, my friend.”
Culpepper smiled. “And you enjoy your travels. I hope to see you sometime in the future.”
“Oh, I believe we will meet again.”
The tunnel to the jungle was Gringar’s most difficult to build. It took close to four years of tunneling through the nothing before he finally broke through to a lush rainforest. He thought the word “rainforest” described it perfectly: There were tall trees everywhere and he was soaked by the rain within seconds. He was thankful that the downpour let up a few minutes later.
No one Gringar knew had ever been to this part of the world, so he had no idea where he might encounter Elder Folk or even if there were any to encounter here. After about an hour, he had an answer to the question.
“You, sir, look lost,” said a voice from within the bushes.
A tiny man, just a few inches tall, stepped out from behind the plants.
Gringar knelt to get himself closer to the man’s level, an action the little gnome was not at all used to.
“I am not exactly lost,” Gringar said. “But I am looking for Elder Folk. The magical creatures. My name is Gringar and I come from the land of Underice to help the Elder Folk.”
“Well, your quest is done, then, for I am one of the Elder Folk,” the tiny man replied. “My name is Santos, and I am a giant.”
The story continues…
Whether you’ve read The Quests of the Lost Jungle or not, Gringar’s story continues right here on my site: The Giant’s Castle.