Alex and his friends, Shabby Tabby Chum and Ludo the wolpertinger are on a mission to save the magician Halo. Halo is being held prisoner by Prince Ruff Rumble. The giant prince wants the magician to make gold for him. Halo's magic books are now unreadable after falling into the lake but he couldn't have made the gold even if his books hadn't gotten wet. The prince doesn't know that, and Alex's real mission is to find a magician that can help Halo and get him set free. Excerpt: Halo put me under a spell that shrank me till I was just as little as Chum the old tomcat. And suddenly I was able to speak the language of the animals! On the back of the fat cat I traveled to an oak wood. On the way I met two friends, William Wing the miller and Alfred Axe the woodcutter. With their help I reached the tallest oak of the wood. It was there that I first met Ludo the wolpertinger. He had blue fur and a lanky figure. His feet were very, very big. When I asked the wolpertinger how we could reach the Downhills, he said: "You have to believe in the Downhills. If you don't believe in them, then you will bump your head on the trunk of the oak tree. If you do believe in them, then you will walk straight through it, and you will be where you want to be." He was right! Chum and I believed in the Downhills, walked right into the oak, stepped right through the bark, and ended up in a tunnel. There we reached a mysterious land and saw a big, red sun in the sky.