She shook the bag and then spilled its contents. The bones clattered onto the stone floor, bouncing off her toes and coming to rest in a pattern that was at once familiar and yet wholly unexpected. So that was it then, she thought. The bones were always right. The bones had never lied to her, and now they were telling her that she was about to face the thing she feared most.

By the time Oli Phant Cob, Chief Engineer of the Yellow Brick Express, saw the purple fog, it was too late to stop the train. Instinctively he reached for the hand-brake, but he knew that jerking on the brake lever could easily send the train off the tracks. They’d never gotten around to working on the braking system, even though both he and Smalls knew it was lacking the necessary maintenance.