Adventures of Herbert and His Friends in Flower Kingdom

The next adventure brings Herbert and his friends to Flower Kingdom and makes them… detectives.
Princess Lily is kidnapped. Prince Lotus is devastated.
Who could have done such a crime? The flower-knights that lost the royal tournament? Some jealous relatives or other greedy creatures?
The investigation takes Herbert and his mushroom-friends through the fragrant poppy fields, dangerous swamps of Duke Iris, enchanted forest of Lord Peony and the labyrinths of royal intrigues of King Dahlia’s court.
In the course of solving this puzzle Herbert gets bitten by a leech, stung by a bumblebee, poisoned by drugs and is nearly caught by a vicious caterpillar. He might have not survived the Flower Kingdom mission at all – if not for his friends.


The beginning of the book:


It was a very scary scene. The Slug was enraged.  He swelled to three times his normal size. An army of hungry alien worms swarmed behind him, ready to flood the town. The Slug glowed red from anger and grew bigger with every breath.  And little Herbert with his bat and basket with balls looked like a tiny bug.

The enemy was closer and closer. Behind the towering Slug there was an ocean of alien worms; and behind Herbert, there was the whole town of mushrooms watching him with growing amazement…

Herbert woke up in his own sweat. He touched his bed sheets and blanket, and the tension of his dream started to dissolve. He wanted to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. He gazed at the ceiling trying to trace innumerous imaginary camels that were slowly pacing the vastness of the dark space, carefully turning at the sight of a lighting fixture. The figures of the animals became foggy, and he saw the camels transforming into marching mushrooms, and the throngs of them were crossing the ceiling of his room…

Herbert remembered every step of his adventures in Mushroomland: how he landed there a size of a mushroom, how he was saved by a mushroom-boy named Bolly, how he became a part of his family of noble mushrooms. Herbert thought of Bolly’s sister Tolly who had a crash on him, of their best friend Chanterelle – the smartest mushroom that ever lived, - of Saffry – their ‘shroom gang’s poet, of Grandpa Boletus. The scenes from the times when he was a spy and a great hero during the epic war between mushrooms and a giant alien Slug were cluttering his mind. Finally, exhausted from his memories, Herbert dosed off.

Through his sleep he heard tiny voices: “We miss you. Come back. It has been too long. We need you.” They belonged to his mushroom friends. Then he saw Bolly as clearly as if he was sitting on Herbert’s bed right next to him.

“Remember the broken tree at the end of the park?” He said. “Come there with your "magician's" cap, put it on the top of your head, close your eyes and, while turning three times counter-clock-wise, repeat these words: "Cap of the mushroom, forces of the forest, trees of the grove, bring me to my friends - make me a mushroom again!"