“The automatons were created to protect Gutenberg. Hubert destroyed this one, which suggests it wasn’t under his control. So if we can repair it, it might lead us to them both.” One by one, I pressed the letters back into the matching indentations in the wood. They snapped into place, as if the wooden body was the world’s strongest magnet. When I was done, Lena gripped the branch in its chest and twisted. Her fingers sank into the wood, all the way to the knuckles. The muscles in her arms, shoulders and neck tightened like ropes as she slowly pulled it free. The other end of the branch had penetrated a good four feet into the earth, hammered by the weight of the falling tree.

“Aside from the hole in the chest, the most significant damage was to the head.” I scooted over to examine the two halves, which had fallen away like the shell of an enormous coconut. The jaw hung from a bent brass pin on one side. I gathered other gears and rods from the ground. There were no springs that I could find. Magic took the place of mechanical propulsion.

A metal rod an inch wide jutted from the neck. Broken silver chains threaded through smaller, brass-rimmed holes. I picked up a small wooden wheel which appeared to fit into the back of the empty eye socket. A second wheel followed at an angle from the first. I pressed the glass eye into place. A metal ring was supposed to screw into the front of the socket to hold it there, but that ring was dented beyond repair.

“Move your hand.” Lena touched the eye socket, and the wood swelled slightly, just enough to keep the glass sphere from rolling free. She rotated the eye one way, then another. I could hear gears grinding behind the glass.

“The head rotates side to side on a primary axis here.” I tapped the rod in the neck. “This rod threads through a hole in the larger one to allow it to look up and down, giving it a full range of motion.” I fitted a small gear over the first rod, pressing it down into the neck. The chains would have looped up over the secondary rod, fitting with two spiked gears to provide movement on the vertical axis.

I could visualize most of the mechanism. A secondary chain and gear system ran to the jaw. A copper cone fitted up against the ear, providing hearing. But there were a handful of larger gears and disks that lacked any obvious function. They appeared to fit in the center of the head, but they didn’t connect to anything, nor did they provide any additional articulation.

I rubbed the disks clean on my shirt. There were letters along the edges. J-O on one, S-T on another, beautifully etched in careful, flowing calligraphy. The J was even decorated, like an illuminated manuscript in brass. “This is another spell.”