The chapel exhaled as Eleanor made the final cut, its bone walls shuddering like a living creature shaking off deep sleep. The last tangle of false memories fell away in rotting strands, dissolving into the earth where new shoots immediately pushed through the soil - thin, pale tendrils that reached for her ankles with unsettling purpose.
Mira clapped her hands together, the sound echoing strangely in the transformed space. "It's working," she whispered, her black eyes reflecting the chapel's shifting architecture. The stained-glass teeth windows had begun vibrating, emitting a low hum that resonated in Eleanor's molars.
The gardener's shears grew heavier in her grip, their blades fusing to her bark-covered fingers with each passing moment. She tried to open her hand, to drop them, but the metal had become an extension of her flesh - the rust flaking away to reveal gleaming silver beneath.
A scream tore through the orchard.
Not from pain.
From birth.
Eleanor stumbled outside to see the first villagers emerging from the chapel walls, their bodies woven from memory and thorn. The tailor's widow stepped forward on legs made of braided rose stems, her empty eye sockets now home to blooming white flowers that turned to face the sun. Where her mouth had been, a cluster of blackberries swelled and burst, their juice running down her wooden chin like ink.
"They're beautiful," Mira breathed, reaching out to touch the widow's petal-soft arm.
The field hand came next, his new form towering and angular, with fingers that ended in delicate pruning shears of their own. The midwife followed, her hair still braided but now growing living wheat that rustled with every movement.
One by one, the Forgotten took their new shapes, each transformation more wondrous than the last. Children became flocks of starlings with human eyes. The butcher unfolded into a great oak with meat-red leaves. The baker's wife dissolved into a swarm of honeybees that spelled out words in the air.
Eleanor's crown of roots pulsed in time with their awakening, sending sharp jolts of understanding through her skull. She saw now what the gardener had known all along - this wasn't punishment.
It was metamorphosis.
The crow landed on her shoulder, its feathers brushing against her bark-covered cheek. "The story grows anew," it croaked. "But every garden needs its keeper."
Mira took Eleanor's hand - the human one, not the shears - and pressed something small and hard into her palm. A single tooth, inscribed with a name Eleanor couldn't quite read.
"Yours," the girl said simply.
The ground trembled as the chapel's doors swung shut behind them with finality. Somewhere in the distance, a new sound began - the crisp snip-snip of shears moving through unseen foliage.
The next gardener had begun their work.