A Gnomish Undertaking

Most might think that living in a cavern would be rather gloomy, and I guess that’s right, though to me, it’s not gloomy at all. The Big Room itself is huge and within it many of our homes, parks and merchant quarters. Outside, near what we call the Bat Cave, lay our workshops and the thing almost everyone here loves to do—inventions. If I am being completely honest, I don’t much like inventing. Sure, I can come up with a thingamajig or a whatchamacallit now and then, but it’s not what I love the most.

I should probably back up just a bit—my story, like so many other stories, started with a competition—an invention competition. It’s a great big hoopla event, held every year and all young gnomes are expected to participate. My Papa says I have to participate, though he won’t help me. He said, “Challenge makes you grow and builds character.” I might have some growing to do yet, but I already like my character. I want to explore and learn and see things that not many others get to see. And though I don’t think I need to participate to build my anything, thank you very much, and I don’t really see what all the ballyhoo is over inventions, I sure do want that prize. The chance to see the Lower Caves and places that some say the Ancients visited, leaving art and stuff behind…well, that is just too good an opportunity to explore, I don’t wanna miss out.

Maybe I should back up just a little more. My name is Emirenka Prichozka, Emi for short, and I am eight years old, which, if you ask me, is plenty old enough to do some exploring, though both Papa and Mum keep telling me to be grounded, or that I’m grounded. I’m not really sure which it is, but something to do with the ground, which is fine by me since the most interesting stuff is found in the ground. I am not too sure, though, why their faces get so stern when they say it. Maybe they wanted to find stuff too, or maybe they want me to work on inventions. Anyhoo, all I know is that I gotta come up with an invention or two to get a chance to visit those Lower Caves. And I know that has to be worth it, cuz Mayor Visselly said so and when Mayor Visselly says so, you just know it’s true.

Anyhoo. That’s enough about me. Let me show you instead, because right now—this very minute I’m telling you about—I am not where I’m supposed to be.

I’m on the Long Ledge. It runs above the Bat Cave like a shelf somebody forgot to dust, and you’re not allowed up here, which is silly, because it’s the best place in the whole world to think. Down below, the workshops clang and hiss and somebody’s contraption goes whump and everybody cheers or groans, I can’t tell which. Up here it’s just me, the cool air, and the little drippy sound the cave makes—that kerplunk, kerplunk always makes me smile.

And Pip, of course.

Pip is my bat. I don’t mean a bat I caught, I mean my bat, the way Livvy’s gears are her gears. He’s about the size of my two hands cupped together and he sleeps in my hood and he is, if you want my opinion, the cleverest person I know, even though he is not technically a person, not really.

Right now, he’s hanging off my sleeve upside down, which is how he does most of his best thinking. I was actually about to tell him my brilliant idea for an invention when—hey! All at once, he isn’t there anymore. He just drops, opens up those leathery wings, and goes flickering off along the ledge into the dark where the tunnel gets so skinny it turns into nothing—where there’s no thing, where the ledge just ends.

Except Pip doesn’t think it ends.

I know that look. Well—I know that sound, the little ticking he makes when the air’s moving somewhere it shouldn’t be. I get down on my knees on the cold stone, and I feel along the wall where he’s fussing, and there it is. A crack. Thin as a coin, breathing cool air against my fingers, air that’s coming from somewhere, from down and in and far.

“Good find, Pip,” I whisper, because you should always thank him, it’s only polite.

He clicks at me like obviously.

I don’t go in though I want to. But it’s too thin even for me, and besides—

“EMIRENKA.”

—besides, that.

***

I freeze. My knees were already glued to the cold stone, but now I turn to cold, hard granite. That voice. It doesn’t just echo up from below the Bat Cave; it bounces off the stalactites, rattles my teeth, and completely blows my cover.

It’s Papa. And he sounds like he’s using his “you’re in trouble” voice, which is at least three times deeper than his “let’s build a whatchamacallit” voice. Beside me, the crack in the wall keeps breathing its icy secrets, practically begging me to squeeze my nose in and hide, but the shouting is getting closer.

“Pip,” I shout-whisper, not daring to move anything but my lips. “We have a big problem.”

A tiny click echoes from the dark, Pip’s way of saying Correction. You have a big problem.

Down below, the heavy thud-thud-thud of thick-soled gnome boots starts climbing the wooden scaffolding toward the Long Ledge and I know that play time is absolutely over. “Pip, you come over here right now,” my voice hoarse and whispery. I absolutely do not have time for Pip’s shenanigans. I don’t have time to invent a folding camouflage screen, no time to even invent an excuse and definitely no time to pretend I’m just up here dusting the rocks. Pip’s head emerges from the crack with a plaintive little squeak and I gather him up—carefully, because manners matter even in an emergency—and I stuff him straight into my hood. He lets out a tiny, annoyed peep and shuffles about until he’s nestled right against the back of my neck.

“Emirenka Prichozka!”

The top of Papa’s leather cap pops up over the edge of the scaffolding. His goggles are pushed up on his forehead, and his face is the exact color of a ripe cave-radish. Oooh boy, I am in for it now.

I quickly scramble away from the crack, throw my legs over the side of the ledge, and whistle a noisy little tune that has no rhythm as I look down on the bustling workshops below.

“Oh! Hullo there, Papa,” I say, giving him my best, most winning smile. “Lovely breeze up here today, dontchathink?”

Papa doesn’t look like he cares about the breeze. He crosses his arms, his tool belt clinking with a dozen different tools, and stares right at me. “Your mother and I have been looking everywhere for you. Do you know what time it is?”

“Time to… work on character building?” I offer.

“It is exactly twenty minutes past the time you were to be home, getting ready for the Youth Invention Exhibition,” Papa says, his voice dropping even lower into that stern, rumbling register. “The Mayor and the judges are already gathering for the opening ceremony. Everyone is there, Emi. Except you.”

He looks at me a long moment, and something in his face goes soft and tired all at once, and he just says, “Home. Your sister’s got her worktable set up.”

She does. She always does.

Our Livvy is ten, which she will tell you, and nearly eleven, which she will also tell you, in the same breath, every time. When we get home her workbench is covered, just covered, with little brass gears, a half-built contraption with a spring poking out of it, and her tongue stuck in the corner of her mouth the way it goes when she’s deep in thought and her work. Livvy is good at inventing. I mean really good. The kind of good where the grown-ups stop and watch.

“You were on the ledge again, weren’t you,” she says, not even looking up. “Papa’s vein was out, the forehead one.”

“It wasn’t.” I sure hope it wasn’t, but it probably was.

“It was out, Emi,” She fits a gear against another, and they go click, soft and perfect, like they were always meant to be that way. I peer over her shoulder; she really is quite good at this.

“Is that for the competition?” I ask, stepping back to get out of her light.

She nods, then inspects the gears, and pokes at the spring. She stops and turns in her chair to look at me, the contraption in her hands.

“What’re you building?” Her attention is back on the spring again, thoughtful.

And that—that—is the question. Everybody’s favorite question. The one I don’t have an answer to.

Because here’s the thing that nobody in my family seems to understand: Livvy’s gears want to be together. They click right into place and they’re happy about it. When I pick up two gears, they’re just lumps, like they’re waiting. What am I supposed to do with lumps? I dunno, but I do know what I’d rather do—explore and see new things, like skinny cracks with cold air coming through—it’s gotta come from somewhere, it’s just gotta. And I wanna know where.

“I’m still deciding,” I tell her, which is what I always tell her.

Livvy looks up then, and she doesn’t laugh at me, which is the great thing about Livvy—she never laughs at me. She just crinkles up her eyebrows like she’s trying to figure me out, like she does a stuck spring. “I could help,” she says. “I’ve got loads of extra gears. I could show you a real easy one, you’d only have to—”

“I’ve got an idea already,” I say.

And that’s true, well, kinda true. It’s been knocking around since this morning, even before the ledge, the one I never got to tell Pip. It’s a small idea and maybe even a little silly and it isn’t about gears at all.

But the competition’s in three weeks. And the prize is the Lower Caves, and I bet, I just bet, that air might come from there, or somewhere very close to them.

So, I guess I’d better make my silly idea into a real one.

I just have to figure out how.   

Visit Royal Road ( www.royalroad.com/profile/ArqtheLost) to see more on The Adventures of Emi & Pip, my submission for the upcoming Royal Road Magazine contest. Live on June 10th, 2026.

My commitment is to continue the work on Ashan, adding to the existing work while editing and revising. Once that is complete, I will share it again to both Patreon and Royal Road, most likely under a new working title and added detail to make the work more complete and consistent. Work on A Coming of Age, Book Two, following Heirs is on-going and I hope to have more on that soon.

We are live with Heirs of a Broken Circle and Stories from the Ashan, visit www.royalroad.com/profile/ArqtheLost and https://www.patreon.com/Arqthelost to see more of the books and to join in discussion and reader conversation.