Buttersby, a snobbish, self-centered alpaca, is sent into the jungles of Peru with a quest: to find the legendary cave of the alpaca ancestors, aided by a prophetic mouse, ancient Vicunas, and the trusty male alpaca, Meander.

From the back cover:

“Beware! Beware the coming doom!”

Buttersby looked around for where the voice had come from.

“Down here.”

That helped. She looked down to see a mouse so white it seemed to glow in the dark. Buttersby put her head down next to the mouse so that they were practically looking eye to eye. Or they would have, except for the fact that it seemed the mouse was blind. Both its eyes were glazed over with some sort of white film. Poor thing. “What did you say?” she asked.

The mouse cleared its pipy throat and repeated, “Beware! Beware the coming doom!”

So it was one of those mice, Buttersby thought. “Is this a coming doom for me, or more of a general sort of gloom over everyone?”

“Fools mock, but they shall mourn,” the mouse said. It seemed to think it was a prophet, the way it was going on with that sort of archaic language. Then the rodent shot its hand to its head and closed its eyes, as if going into a trance. “The silver goose shall come and take you to your destiny: the Cavern of Babel. You must find it, and find it quickly, or all I see is doom.”