Wasps were all around, a thousand stick-like legs scratching my face and neck, paper-thin wings transparent before bogging down with the darkness.

I held my breath as I plunged face-first, face-down into frigid water. People laughed, and I thought I saw them moving or were they marionettes? Part of the show? The woman stood near as I tried hard to grab an apple with my teeth; oh they had wanted to tie my hands, restrict me, confine me. But we will use the soft silk cords, she said. Try them, you will see. Will not be so bad. I said that cords are cords be they silk or rope, real or figurative, and none shall bind my hands. So I clasped them behind my back of my own power, and then things went dark as the water rushed in, rushed past. The last things I saw were the scintillating lights of a million stars dancing on the horizon, diamonds spilling like souls upon black velvet. And it all looked beautiful at first, until I dipped below the surface.

The horizon was actually the rim of the large clay vat brought in from the yard and the lights came not from stars or diamonds, but from the wet, glistening thoraxes of hundreds of black and white wasps, floating dead in the water. Each was still, its jointed legs folded back to its body as if in prayer and the candlelight from the room bounced off the hard backs of each one as they brushed my face, filled my mouth, and danced the minuet with my eyelashes.

It was New Years and I was supposed to be bobbing for apples at a party, a festive social function based on local customs and fertility rites but instead of apples, I was bobbing for wasps.

And as I was under the water, searching, searching for the way out, I felt wasp wings tickling my cheeks in a creepy-crawly sort of way, and I felt mandibles scraping my forehead as I tried to stay calm, struggling to recall what my tutor had taught me about wasps. We had watched them beneath the cherry trees that one lazy summer day, as they flitted and crawled, sucking fruit. Wasps are parasites when they are young. They must be cared for and coddled. Many wasps are predatory, hunting other insects. Killing one wasp at a time is not as effective as killing the entire hive. Had someone tried to drown this hive? Is that why it was here in the vat on New Years Eve?

There were no apples under the water, only more and more wasps. I felt a big one lodge in my right nostril as another jammed in my ear. I rose screaming to the surface, frantically brushing and scraping the wasps from my skin, ready to dig them from my wig, only to find none. I panted, panicked and pale.

I was dry and clean albeit a bit sweaty and nervous.

Across from me sat the gypsy lady.

She smiled and fanned the sweet-smelling incense.

She gestured behind me to the street show and carnivals.

Down the center marched a band of harlequins, people dressed as giant wasps wearing pied tights and costumes.

Black, she said as she rolled the dice and fanned the cards.

-.-