Ten minutes into the battle, however, Johnnie-O began to worry. Mary’s children just kept coming and soon it became clear to Johnnie-O what their objective was. The train.

“Keep them back!” he ordered. “Don’t let them near the train.” But there were simply too many of them. Johnnie-O and Charlie had dispatched at least fifty or sixty with coins, but there were hundreds more. The Sky Witch had tricked them!

“Take coins,” he told the others. “Everyone, take coins and put them into their hands. Do it!” But that backfired miserably, because every kid who grabbed a coin from the bucket couldn’t resist the urge to grasp the coin themselves, and vanish. They were losing more of their own than the enemy.

It was over in less than twenty minutes. Their entire fighting force was backed up against the train, hands in the air, and the train itself had been captured. It took four Afterlights to hold Johnnie-O down. Then, as he struggled to break free, he felt a drop of water on his forehead, then another, then another and when he looked up, he saw a wet kid in a wetter bathing suit looking down at him. Water dripped into Johnnie-O’s eye from a little silver key dangling around the kid’s neck.

“The Sniffer told us all about you, Johnnie-O,” the wet kid said. “Mary was even looking for a punching bag, to give you something to do until the end of time, but she never did find one. Guess you’ll just have to shadowbox,” which was a nasty thing to say, since Afterlights didn’t cast shadows.

Johnnie-O wasn’t about to be defeated by a kid in a bathing suit, so he fought himself free from the Afterlights holding him. “Dry up!” he told the wet kid, which was an equally nasty thing to say, because he couldn’t. Then Johnnie-O pushed him out of the way, and ran to Charlie, who was sitting on the bucket of coins, hands behind his head and surrounded by a cluster of Mary’s kids. Johnnie-O pushed his way in, pulled Charlie up, and grabbed the bucket, swinging it like a weapon.

“C’mon!” he said to Charlie, and they both ran.

Mary’s forces had captured the Chocolate Ogre’s army and they had taken his train—but there was still one more means of transportation available for someone with the nerve to take it.

The Hindenburg was not too difficult to find, as it was taller than anything around it. There were still dozens of Mary’s Afterlights holding it down with ropes, keeping it from being torn away by the brutal wind.

“There’s a whole bunch of them, and only two of us,” Charlie said. “I don’t like those odds.”