Jikan-ko Jikanjin

The Underland gnomes are the inhabitants and armed workforce of the Deep Realm: a multitude of diverse, pale figures whose quiet, ceaseless activity gives the underground kingdom its human scale and its machinery of power. They first appear as the Queen’s soldiers, then as the labourers who have tunneled almost to the surface for her invasion, and finally as people caught in the flood that follows her death. Their sadness and obedience make them both agents of the realm’s threat and a population whose own freedom remains entangled with its ruler’s magic.

Appearance and Life in the Deep Realm

The gnomes are introduced in a crowd of a hundred armed followers summoned by the Warden of the Marches of Underland. A cold, blue-grey light reveals them standing motionless with three-pronged spears. They range from figures scarcely a foot tall to those taller than human beings; some have tails, some beards, some smooth, round faces, and others striking noses or a single horn. Amid these differences, the expression shared by every face is profound sadness. The sight is frightening, but the sadness is so conspicuous that Jill almost forgets her fear and wants to cheer them up.

Their bodies are as various as their faces. As the party is surrounded and marched away, the gnomes pad on large, soft feet, some with ten toes, others with twelve, and some with none. The details give the crowd an unmistakably physical presence, while its disciplined movements show that it is acting as an organized force. The travellers have little choice but to rise, join hands, and go with their escort.

The same population fills the underground city. The travellers pass glimpses of ships, warehouses, and buildings resembling palaces or temples, amid crowds moving through streets, squares, and stairways. The city is busy but eerily quiet: there are no songs, shouts, bells, or rattling wheels, only the soft murmur of many people in motion. At the quay and through the crowded streets, gnomes of many kinds rub shoulders with the captives without showing interest in them. Their activity seems endless, though Jill cannot discover what they are busy doing; each appears both occupied and sad.

Service to the Queen and the Invasion Plan

The gnomes’ political order is expressed in the Warden’s command. He identifies himself as an officer of the Marches and declares that the Queen of the Deep Realm must be obeyed. When Scrubb asks what she wants with the prisoners, the Warden admits that he does not know; the Queen’s will is not to be questioned. The exchange presents obedience not as a personal decision made after understanding the Queen’s purpose, but as the stated rule governing her servants.

The gnomes also carry out the physical preparation for the Queen’s intended conquest. Rilian explains that they have been digging day and night beneath the chosen Overworld country, advancing until the tunnel lies less than twenty feet below the grass. The Queen plans to break through with Rilian and an armed force behind her, seize the surface settlement, kill its leaders, and take its strongholds. The invasion is therefore not merely a threat or a fantasy: it has been made materially possible by the gnomes’ sustained labour. Rilian expects a message to reach the Queen at the diggings, where she is overseeing the operation.

Their work connects the apparently remote underground city to the land above it. The thin layer of earth separating the diggers from the Overworld’s inhabitants is the boundary between ordinary life and sudden attack. By tunneling beneath peaceful fields, the gnomes make the hidden military plan part of the surface landscape, although its intended victims have no knowledge of what lies below.

Captivity, Transport, and the City

The gnomes first take the travellers into custody under the Warden’s authority. After the party is brought ashore, two gnomes guard an illuminated archway in the castle and exchange a countersign with the Warden. They discuss keeping the newcomers imprisoned until the Queen returns, explaining that she has gone away on her “great affair.” Their conversation reveals a practical division of responsibility: the Queen is absent, but her servants continue to control access and make decisions in her name.

That arrangement is interrupted when a young man’s voice calls from above and orders the travellers brought to him. The episode places the gnomes between the visitors and the captive prince, while also showing that their custody can be superseded by another authority within the castle. Their city’s quiet routines and its guarded passages are thus not separate from the plot: they provide the setting and personnel through which the travellers are delivered to Rilian.

The gnomes also operate the transport that carries the prisoners through the underground waterways. In the ship, they sit to the oars beneath a pale lantern whose light reaches only a short distance across the dark water. The children huddle beside Puddleglum, who reassures them that their route beneath the Ruined City means they have returned to Aslan’s instructions. The boat’s movement is part of the gnomes’ service to the Queen, but it also takes the travellers through the very realm where her plans and Rilian’s captivity can be uncovered.

The Flood and the Limits of Their Power

After the Queen is killed, the gnomes’ subterranean environment turns against the kingdom. The ships that had been in the harbour are driven into the city as the water rises; the Prince recognizes the flood and praises Aslan. The scene reverses the city’s earlier image of controlled, continuous movement: vessels no longer serve an orderly underground port but surge through streets under the force of the inundation.

During the escape, the travellers reach a valley where the tide is running like a mill-race. At the crossing it is only a foot or two deep, and they make it safely to the far side on horseback; behind them, water spreads across the low ground, leaving the hills as islands and extinguishing distant lamps. The gnomes’ city and realm are caught within this destruction, while the travellers’ narrow escape depends on crossing before the water deepens. The available scenes show the gnomes as builders, guards, and rowers within the Queen’s order, and as inhabitants exposed to the collapse of the world that order has made.