He ran a finger beneath the string, but didn’t undo the knot yet. Too soon and you’re a loon.

He reached into the drawer, removed a votive candle and a box of matches. He’d pocketed both in the hospital chapel, where he attended Mass every day.

He lit the candle, then untied the string binding his manuscript. He’d begun it four years ago, working on it in every spare moment. He turned the pages, stopping to peruse a picture he’d drawn of an outsize, misshapen hand clutching someone’s throat. The someone was meant to be a girl but looked more like a turnip. Not one of his better efforts. He continued shuffling pages until he came to one filled with more blocky writing:

Never had General Dargero encountered such a foe as that evil General Forestor. “My heart fills with pity for those brave Girls” he thought. “How they will escape i cannot imagine. He has defiled this once beautiful countryside and when he lets the floods loose there will be no safe refuge for anyone, Least of all these brave Girls. Brave though they may be they are shockingly outnumbered.”

The page needed an illustration. From the drawer he withdrew a cardboard folder that contained dozens of pages from newspapers and magazines culled from trash bins. Pictures of children, all of them girls. Dotty Darling from the Woman’s Home Companion. Illustrations from The Little Girl’s Sewing Book. A holy card depicting Saint Joan in armor, leading an army of blond angels. The Kewpies.

He traced their faces with a calloused finger. Only here were they safe. Only here could he truly protect them.

As a boy at the asylum, he’d secretly traced illustrations he found in books. He copied countless pictures of Dorothy Gale and her friends, especially Princess Ozma, the girl who turned into a boy. There was a good illustrated book about the Battle of Gettysburg, too. He traced its fierce generals and brave soldiers and began to combine these drawings with those of the girls from Oz. The girls brandished firearms and sabers. The Scarecrow and Tik Tok took their places among the generals.

All of this came to an end when he was discovered one afternoon by the asylum’s school librarian.

“I wondered who’d been vandalizing all those books!” Knocking the volume from his hands, she slapped him so hard he fell from his chair. “Who’s going to pay for that, you imbecile?”

He attacked her as she snatched up his drawing, and ended up being beaten with a hose, then left alone in a concrete cell for two days. It was only since he’d arrived at the Workingmen’s House that he’d begun writing and drawing again.

He traced Princess Ozma’s mouth, but his pencil was dull and the paper kept tearing. In a rage, he balled it up and shoved the picture of Ozma back inside the folder.