When the tribe is asleep; when the priests have long since ceased their chanting and returned to fitful dreams; when the forest is quiet and the islands, drenched in slow and silent moonlight, lie drained and semi-conscious in the anaesthetic black sea, the spirits emerge. Out of the pools of lava they creep, and they flit over the prostrate bodies into the brooding trees. No one stirs as the last one makes good his escape. How foolish the Lava priests are! They know how to release the spirits but they have no idea in these degenerate times how to control them. The spirits whisper to themselves and to each other, chuckling in benign triumph over the living. Then one by one they take their leave and separate wherever they will in their green world.

The spirits are not particularly coherent. Their origins are mysterious, their identities and interests different, their forms dissimilar and their thoughts diverse. Some are hidden like faces in the landscape of a child’s puzzle book. They cannot move and are not with those fleeing from the volcano. Some are half seen movements in the air. Some are dreams that move from mind to mind, jumping through a crowd of life as if each individual were a stepping stone over a void of Nivannah. Some are dark and slow, creeping on the ground like moving moss. Some can alter their shape at will, huge floating heads of frozen lightning with terrible features or subtle darting will o’ the wisp.

A few things, they all share. All are bound to this world by a stronger force that none dare name. There are laws they must obey and taboos that they cannot ignore while the present interuniversal situation lasts. It has held for almost as long as their all but immortal souls can remember. It is likely to hold for as long again. So they watch and wait with a patience that has to be hammered to the infinite on the anvil of each moment. And in their own separate ways they know all the stories that the green world tells.

This is a spirit.

It floats outside a stone hut in a land where the sun is only just below the horizon at midnight. There is an old man inside, sleeping. The spirit remembers him and is amused. His terrible lightning face creases into a condescending smile as he listens to the mortal’s dream - the same one he always dreams. With playful ease the spirit changes - a metamorphosis to a more familiar form - the form in which he once greeted two new guests of the green world. For a few moments St. Elmo’s fire flickers around the barren stones then leaves the other to his distant slumber, fading up the river.

This is a spirit.

A dark night cloud, it hovers over the band of hunters in the grim forest. They are doing well. A small fire gives off the smell of roasting meat, and the men eat and talk noisily. Perhaps for these guests the green world is not such a change. Or perhaps it will take more time for them to see the differences and to feel their own change.

This is a spirit.

It bubbles in the water within the cold fire of a big ship’s wake, hidden by the organic light, laughing loudly to itself. There are tree guardians here, it thinks to itself. And it knows what the tree guardians want. How stupid they are! The new religion breeds ignorant flatterers and ingrates worse even than the Lava priests. They act as if this expedition is going to recover the moon pearls! The spirit knows where they are and it knows how to get them, but this is not the way. To tease the crew it rises to the surface and transforms itself into a malignant little gust which blows about the rigging and sails in counter to the material wind for a few uncomfortable moments. Then it speeds into the vast oceanic night, still laughing heartily.

This is a spirit.

It peeps into a cave on a verdant hillside where a soldier sleeps. Kept at bay by the lilac glow of the light which he never extinguishes, it prowls outside for a few minutes then gives up disappointed. Cavorting and dancing round the crown of the hill it hums to itself in the language of the stones and the dust. Then, growing tired of its solitary game, it slinks off back down the track to the sea.

This is a spirit.

Puzzled it watches the latest arrivals, an invisible curl of cold air above the sea. A white yacht has been opened up by sharp coral and the sea water is already washing away the signs of life inside with an antiseptic sting. Near by, on a small island, a man and a woman are lying in exhausted sleep. A heap of their possessions salvaged from the wreck is stacked where dark fronds drop to the beach. The spirit moves closer, curious to see what manner of creatures these are. It sees a thin trail of blood running to where the man lies, and even now oozing slowly from a wound in his left foot where the dark red liquid stiffens. The coral can be cruel to the unwary or the hasty. The woman has curled into a ball. Foetus like, she mutters some premonition of birth as the spirit touches her. Startled, it skitters away into the thickets behind, and has soon forgotten all about them.

This is a spirit.

It is a very old spirit. Perhaps it is the oldest spirit in the green world for it has forgotten most things about life and love. Century after century it contracts, weathered away by the ceaseless contact with the living. Now it is no more than a fire fly; a speck of light dancing in the darkness. It pauses for a moment in a land very close to the volcano. Through the window of a well fashioned hut it can see Billy and Rosalind where the shadow strong moonlight shines on their small and taut naked bodies. They are making slow and serious love through the patient minutes. For a while the spirit stays, enjoying a kind of ethereal voyeurism as the lithe and vital forms perform their ecstatic acrobatics. There is an abstract sculptural beauty in the clear young skin and the contrast of pale and dark. But there is a world to patrol out there and over the millennia the spirit’s interest in these earthly matters has waned. It cannot hold concentration for long but must move forever onwards.

Throughout the hours of darkness the souls with power guard the green world. Like spies without a cause or country they collect its secrets from force of habit and horde them in the day, for when the new sun rises they must return to the earth. Their vigil is truly long for they can imagine no end to these night watches. Without release and with empty reason they must continue. The moon shines, the sea breathes and the air dreams. In emerald darkness, the spirits drift.