Grape Leaves
by KJ Hannah Greenberg

 

 

Brona checked her account, again. Unlike last month, it was brimming. All she had had to do was to accept gold from those extraterrestrials.

 

Those entities had neither cared that she normally made grape leaves into dolmas or into baked feta or that her mom used those verdant, lateral appendages to stop bleeding, reduce inflammation, and eliminate pain. They had no interest in the fact that the pile from which they had withdrawn some foliage had been intended for her family’s compost pile. More exactly, at least in her mind's eye, those strange-looking guests had wanted those glucose producers for currency.

 

Brona had pictured those organisms as living on a planet, where similar, beautiful verdure was rare. On that world, resplendent vegetation was so scare that it had become legal tender. Unlike comparable, Earthly bits, though, those sprouting from the aliens’ vines neither withered nor died but grew glossier and glossier with each sentient being that they consumed. To wit, Brona’s callers were extremely interested in pieces of flora that resembled local vegetation yet drank only sunshine and ate only surface minerals.

 

It was when Brona had been pruning her mother’s arbor that she thought that those beings approached her. Initially, she had believed that the tableau was a delusion caused by her having smoked a different sort of leaf. After all, she had a very creative way of looking at life. Accordingly, initially, Brona had nodded to her visitors and had continued to trim.

 

However, when they rolled a gold lump at her, she turned toward back to them and tried to refocus. Ordinarily, weed-influenced fantasies did not pay her in tacit coin. Ordinarily, weed-influenced fantasies, likewise, did not swell her interest in horticulture. Whereas Brona’s mother was a reputed herbalist, Brona had no interest in anything remotely agronomic.

 

More precisely, all that the young woman wanted was to be able complete her auto mechanic certification. If not for a lack of funds for her final term’s tuition, she would already be wielding an impact wrench or a battery carrier. Alternatively, she might be repairing ship engines.

 

Thus, it was predictable that when Brona saw a gold-hued nugget being bowled toward her, she thought about her town’s pawn shop hours and not about intergalactic diplomacy. Besides, what happened in her mother’s garden ought to stay in her mother’s garden.

 

Reaching into one pocket of her coveralls, Brona withdrew a handful of crushed, black peppercorns. She sniffed the snuff, which had been newly ground by her mother.  Her head cleared a little.

 

The space creatures’ features took on better definition. They were heliotrope-hued, had one head, two legs, and four arms apiece, plus feline-like whiskers. What’s more, in lieu of ears, they had feathers.

 

Brona immediately regretted dampening her high. Those outer spacers were scary.

 

On balance, if she could withstand their presence, she might be able to finish school. They young one breathed deeply and then picked up the nugget that had been tossed. She carefully placed it in a pocket empty of ground pepper.

 

Straightway, one of the bizarre homunculi grabbed a leaf from the pile that Brona had been raking away from the lianas. Just as instantly, it jumped back.

 

Brona shuddered. The thing had come close enough to be able to spit on her. Its saliva might contain a corrosive acid or base.

 

Nonetheless, she picked up its second proffered nugget.

 

In turn, the mannikin picked up another leaf.

 

That exchange continued until Brona’s pockets were so full of aureate lumps that she could barely walk. She determined that only a part of her treasure needed to be left at the pawn shop. The rest could be exchanged for cash, over a very, very long period, whenever she traveled to a major city. Meanwhile, she’d hide most of the yellowish chunks beneath her childhood rock collection, which she kept in a milk delivery box.

 

Pruning could wait. She needed to get to the pawn shop before it closed for the day. On the way home, she could buy her mom a gift card for the mall. The pharmacy, there, sold tincture bottles. Her mom had wanted more amber ones.

 

Brona never told her mom how she had suddenly become able to pay the last of her tuition. Mom never asked — Mom had become extremely busy helping subdue the local outbreak of a global pandemic. Eupatorium perfoliatum and Usnea had been embraced as reliable means to deliverance, causing a high demand for folks who know how to decoct those herbs. What’s more, no one at Brona’s school, except for the bursar who collected her fees, knew that she had come into money.

 

One day, after earning her certification, when loosening the nuts holding a flange on a wheel, Brona slipped. While her accident did not require her to endure a hospital stay, it did suffer her to remain in bed for a few weeks. Her doctor was conservative when treating serious concussions.

 

During that span, when she was allegedly sleeping on the living room sofa, she saw, through barely slitted eyes, her mother cross from their kitchen to her mother’s office. Her parent held not with twigs or leaves, but small rocks and a can of spray paint.

 

After her convalescence, all that remained for Brona was to account the not-so-green little men. She weighed applying for a rocket maintenance job.

 

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