And since these moments are at peace with eternity, they do not bluster and blow. One may ask, then, without a jet stream surging in the sky, how did the Hindenburg—the largest zeppelin ever built and burst by mankind—how did such a massive airship drift across the Atlantic Ocean? The answer is quite simple; one does not need a natural wind to be blown eastward, when there’s an unnatural one.

“I’ve been working on the railroad, all the live-long day!”

On the day that Mary defeated Nick, and her army took over his train, Mary’s former mode of transportation, the giant airship Hindenburg, was set adrift into the sky over Memphis. There were only two Afterlights aboard: the juvenile train conductor known as Choo-choo Charlie, and Johnnie-O; two kids loyal to Nick and caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I’ve been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away!”

The control room of the airship was empty, sealed by a lock with no key—which meant there was no way to pilot the craft. Its engines were off, its rudder was stuck, and it would stay that way.

“Can’t you hear the whistle blowing, rise up so early in the morn?”

That first day, they sat across from each other with a bucket of Everlost coins between them. Both Charlie and Johnnie-O knew what the coins were for. Holding a coin would pay the passage into the next world. The tunnel would open before them; they would remember who they were in life, and then they would be gone down the tunnel, and into the light. After all these years, they would get where they were going . . . if they held a coin.

“Can’t ya hear the captain shouting, ‘Dina blow your horn.’”

But neither of them had taken their coins. At the time, Charlie was just plain scared, and Johnnie-O knew he wasn’t ready. Something deep inside Johnnie told him he had more to do in Everlost.

When their journey had first begun, the unnatural wind blowing them back from the Mississippi was powerful enough to give them an eastern momentum. The Everlost air offered them no friction, no resistance, nothing to stop their drift, and so a few days after leaving Memphis, they passed the eastern seaboard and were out over the Atlantic Ocean. That ocean seemed endless. Each day Johnnie would look out of the window to see yet more ocean around them, to every horizon.

That’s when Charlie had begun to sing. At first he’d just hum to himself, then he’d mumble the words, and soon he’d become lost in the endless verses.

“Dinah won’t you blow . . .”

For weeks Charlie had been singing the same song over and over again.

“Dinah won’t you blow . . .”

He sang it twenty-four hours a day, with that same vacant, cheerful tone.

“Dinah won’t you blow your hor-or-orn?”