Deirdre Green is the heir to Ackerly Green Publishing and daughter of Sullivan Green. She moved to New York City after inheriting her father’s brownstone in 2016.
Personality
Deirdre is an adventurous and brave girl, willing to take risks in order to pursue her dreams. She is highly ambitious, seeking to build her own company from the ground up with minimal help. On her blog, she often mentions feeling like an outsider, in both Ireland and the United States.
Deirdre has an interest in writing and reading, noting that she “was considered quite the Dorothy Parker in university”. Early in her blog, she discusses the possibilities for a potential novel about a young woman in Victorian London who gets involved with a secret society in America.
Biography
Little is known about Deirdre’s childhood, other than the fact that she was brought to Aunt Monica at the age of 6. Deirdre grew up in Ireland, living a relatively normal life. In early posts, Deirdre mentioned knowing little about her father other than his name. In later posts, she mentioned having a recurring dream of a "dad-like’ individual carrying her 4 or 5-year-old self down a hallway. She went to university and took a job at a consulting firm in London sometime after.
On January 1, 2016, Deirdre created the blog Deeds Done. Early posts describe her life in Kentish Town, staying at her ex-boyfriend’s apartment. Grieving the end of her relationship and a working a job she hated (and was eventually fired from), Deirdre’s early posts cataloged her discontent with her current life. Beginning with the post “Strange Things”, Deirdre began to experience magical occurrences, including a stranger who knew her name and a man looking up at her window and then disappearing.
In the July 12th post “Stranger Things,” Deirdre was contacted by a lawyer notifying her of her father’s passing and her inheritance of his estate. Having learned that Sullivan had provisions for Deirdre in his will, she set off for New York to manage his passing. Upon arriving in New York City, Deirdre met with Orvin Wallace and was given a copy of the Ackerly Green book Through the Night, a pocket watch, and two pieces of paper that belonged to her father.
Phase One
Deirdre was first encountered by recruits on July 25, 2016, after Ascender posted about finding Sullivan Green’s heir. Ascender had set up a Google alert for the words “Sullivan Green,” and it had picked up on Deirdre’s post “The Conversation,” where she mentioned inheriting her father’s estate. Concerned about scaring her off, Ascender asked the Mountaineers not to contact her while he thought up a way to approach her. After Deirdre posted the picture of her father’s belongings, Ascender contacted her on Instagram, pretending to be from a historical society interested in Ackerly Green Publishing. Deirdre agreed to scan the pages for him, which led to the discovery of Fragment One.
During the events of Fragment Two Deirdre began to get settled in New York, posting about her various trips to different areas of the city. However, she soon began to be stalked by King Rabbit, noting that the strange man who had stared into her window in Kentish Town was staring at her during a shopping trip. Unbeknownst to her, King Rabbit was posting photos of her from afar on his Instagram account. This culminated in “Miss Havisham Takes a Tumble,” where King Rabbit chased Deirdre down the streets of New York until she fell, then took the opportunity to steal her pocket watch.
In the latter half of Fragment Two, The Last Traveller began posting lines of a poem to Deirdre’s blog, leading to Fragment Three. Deirdre was unable to see the comments he posted, nor the comments recruits posted in response to him. The Last Traveller disappeared before he could post his final line, but the line came in the form of a handwritten note inside Deirdre’s package of The Wolf and the Wild.
Phase Two
Shortly after receiving her package of The Wolf and the Wild, Deirdre felt claustrophobic and decided to go on a trip to Hudson, NY. There, she made the choice to revive Ackerly Green Publishing and begin printing more books, old and new. At the beginning of Fragment Five, Deirdre found a strange piece of paper in The Wolf and the Wild, which led to the discovery of The Cagliostro’s website. In order to get a better sense of the Ackerly Green company, she spoke with her Aunt Monica about her childhood and her father. Monica realized that there was a box of Sullivan’s things in her attic, which she shipped to Deirdre. It contained The Monarch Papers Volume One, a Herman the Hippocampus necklace, and a scarf, which she posted in “What to Do.” The contents of the journal allowed recruits to solve Fragment Six by using Sullivan’s hints to find real-world locations. However, most of the journal was nonsensical to Deirdre, which she described as the chaos of a fractured mind in the post “Happy Feelings.”
While Deirdre was waiting for her aunt’s package, she received a Google alert for The Wolf and the Wild. The alert led her to Cole Sumner, who had posted about his childhood experience with Ackerly Green novels on his blog. After Deirdre reached out to Cole on his Tumblr account, the pair continued talking and became close.
While Cole struggled with hiding the truth about magic and the Mountaineers from Deirdre, the secret to Deirdre’s missing comments was revealed in Fragment Eight. Sullivan had hidden the Briarverse from Deirdre using a spell to shield her from magic. Despite that, due to his secret desire for Deirdre to learn the truth, a “crack” existed in the spell, one that would allow her to reverse his actions and see the real world. As recruits pieced together the solution for Fragment Eight, Deirdre traveled to upstate New York, where she unknowingly gathered six objects pertaining to the six magimystic elements, which she would need for the spell to work.
After returning to New York City, she agreed to meet with Cole at the train station. He told her the truth about magic and gave her the letter he found in the Morgan Library, as well as the way to reverse the spell. Using the Mountaineer’s magic as a grounding agent, Deirdre was able to finish the spell with a magic-infused poem in “The Sea”. Confirming that the spell did indeed work, all of the comments on Deirdre’s blog became visible. As such, she would now be able to interact with recruits and view the Basecamp 33 Forum.
Phase Three
Deirdre remained silent for a month after the events of Phase Two, refraining from posting on both her blog and her Instagram account. On March 2, she posted a location-tagged image on her Instagram of her hometown in Bunratty, Ireland. She had visited her Aunt Monica after a call from a family friend told her that her dementia was getting worse, and that Deirdre should come back to visit before it progressed even further. After Monica told her that pursuing her father had made her “glow” and had been the best thing for her, Deirdre left on a globe-trotting adventure using the clues in Sullivan’s journal. For the next month, she continued to quietly post pictures on her Instagram, of her in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Granada, and Istanbul. Deirdre finally broke her silence on March 22, with “The Monarch Papers:” an open letter to the Mountaineers. She explained that she had caught up with the forums and, while she understood the Mountaineers’ intentions were good, she was struggling to accept everything that had happened. She explained that her copy of The Monarch Papers, which had previously been obscured to her due to Sullivan’s spell, was finally legible. The journal gave her hints that led to different parts of the world, and she had been following it to learn more about her father’s legacy and the magic he uncovered. She promised the Mounties that she would keep in touch and that the reason she left New York was not because of Cole.
In “Istanbul*****,” Deirdre revealed that she was stuck in Turkey, and asked for help from the Mounties. She revealed that the clue was “A line of lovers offer a sorrowful rest in Topkapi.” A week later, in “Something’s Worked,” Deirdre revealed that a new clue had come from the journal after visiting several places related to Topkapi Palace. The journal stated “return to the line of silver, the line of the craftsmen. Where Archemedes’ cry shines brightest through its adoring cut,” which recruits traced to the Eureka Diamond in the Kimberley Mine Museum. Deirdre traveled to Cape Town in “In Air,” further explaining her silence as she traveled to the museum. She had been following a path created by Sullivan, which he created from the paths of Wool and Silver—two ancient journeys through art and craftsmanship that once led to the truth of magiq.
Recruits sent Deirdre to Israel in pursuit of “One Hundred Stories of Demons and Spirits.” She arrived in “Knockered,” and recalled her experiences with a strange knocking on her door. In Istanbul, it had been a slow pounding on her hotel room door. She heard the same knocking in Cape Town, but, after calling a manager, they stated the knocking was coming from inside the hotel room. This culminated in “Knocking Back,” when Deirdre met with Ishi, the art collector who Deirdre was told was an expert on the piece. After going to Ishi’s house, she was able to view the painting, but Ishi left briefly after thinking she heard a knock at her door. When the knock sounded from Ishi’s closet door, she turned to ask Deirdre what she’s brought into her house. Ishi dragged Deirdre out of her house while Deirdre begged her to explain what was going on, doors knocking all the while. As Deirdre walked down the street, every door in every home was knocking, and Deirdre collapsed and wept in the street. Sullivan’s journal feel out of her purse, leaving her with a clue about a ruined city and a note that said “Keep going,” which led her to not give up.
Recognizing the clue on her own, Deirdre booked a flight for Montreal to visit the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum. She arrived in “The Door - Part One.” The clue mentioned ruins below a city in the new world, and the north, and “carved from the living, if only one could listen,” and “it marks the end of the path,” which Deirdre followed to a set of bricks behind a plexiglass shield. She heard a faint knocking from the other end, but couldn’t reach it past the plexiglass. As she went to leave, she ran into Colby Fortin, who apologized for his part in Sullivan’s Calling of the Corners spell. In “The Door - Part Two,” Deirdre followed Colby out of the museum and down towards the river, where they began talking about the past. He introduced himself to her and explained that he had been waiting in Montreal to fulfill a promise to Sullivan. Colby asked to see Deirdre’s book, stating that all the nonsense writing in the journal was actually a hidden story that could only be heard by someone whose mind and heart were bound to it. He told Deirdre “Sully” had given him permission to hear it as well. Colby was going to “ignite” the book, experience the story firsthand, and then share it with her, acting as a buffer for the power. Deirdre learned the history of her father, how he met her mother, Aisling Green, and the fact that she was born at the crossroads of both their journeys. She learned that her father, discontent with minor magiq, had left Aisling a virtual single mother. However, when Sullivan returned and tried to take Deirdre away, Aisling cursed Sullivan to protect her daughter. Unfortunately, the curse eventually killed Aisling, leaving Deirdre with Sullivan. After performing the Calling the Corners spell on her, he sent her to live with Aunt Monica, where she grew up knowing little of her heritage. Meanwhile, Sullivan was trying to do something. Find the truth. But he was being hunted. And the pursuit, the confinement, combined with whatever Deirdre’s mother did to protect her, drove him mad.
After learning the story of her family, Colby told her that it was the end of the path. Deirdre was shocked and stunned by the hopeless ending, and Colby tried to console her by stating that what you find on the path, not at the end of it, is what matters. Deirdre asked about the doors and the knocking. He said many have heard it in their lives at one point or another, but he thought it was an echo of whatever used to be at the end of the roads, part of a spell that no longer worked. While Deirdre and Colby cried in the park, Colby said he would stay her heart, but her heart was already well-guarded. Wanting something tangible, Deirdre left Montreal, unintentionally leaving her father’s journal behind on the park bench. Returning to New York, she sought out the comfort of Cole, stating that “for my own sake, and for the memories of Sullivan and Aisling Green, I’m done with The Monarch Papers.”
Deirdre spent the next two weeks with Cole in Hoboken, away from magiq and her father’s legacy. She fell in love with Cole, admiring his passion and sincerity. After visiting the Unicorn Tapestries in The Cloisters, Deirdre had a revelation and rushed back to her father’s brownstone, where she found her mother’s wool scarf and her father’s silver pendant. Realizing the two items represented the paths of Wool and Silver, all the doors in the apartment started knocking. This led her to post “Did I Say Done?” where Deirdre announced she was not quite giving up the search for the truth. In “Birthday Girl,” Deirdre reiterated her intent to keep seeking the truth, stating that Cole agreed with her that her time with The Monarch Papers and The Book of Briars wasn’t over.
Phase Four
Deirdre returned to action on July 10 with “Picking Up the Thread.” She had been fiddling with her mother’s scarf while sitting with Cole, when she realized that there was an itchy part of the fabric that was different from the rest of the scarf. There was one coarse thread running down the middle of the scarf, which Cole and Deirdre then pulled apart. After examining the thread, they noticed it had dots and dashes on it, which Cole immediately recognized as Morse code. Deirdre read out the code to Cole, who translated it into an address of a hundred-year-old apartment building that at some point had been converted into a boutique hotel. The next day, Deirdre traveled to the hotel with Cole, and they asked the manager about her father. The manager was initially confused until they mentioned room 7G, telling them to go to room 717 on the 7th floor and that they wouldn’t need a key.
After knocking on the door to room 717, an elderly man answered the door and asked if she was Deirdre. After stating that she was, the man introduced himself as Meredith Grey Ackerly. The conversation continued in Deirdre’s post, “M. Grey Ackerly.” He told Deirdre that his fake death had been Sullivan’s plan. Sullivan believed that forces were out to kill the Ackerlys. Grey explained that the apartment had been preserved at great cost, first to protect him and others in the families, then eventually Deirdre. It existed as a safe haven for Deirdre to find. He pointed to the front door where there were two locks. One was normal, one was not. He said one simply locked the door, the other one locked out the world. Ackerly eventually remembered the task Sullivan had given him - to give Deirdre a box. The box was magically sealed, and Deirdre opened it by pressing her Herman the Hippocampus necklace to the hippocampus emblem on the box. In it was a chronocompass and a journal that was empty, save for a title page dubbed “The Monarch Papers: Neithernor.” Sullivan explained that her destiny was intertwined with everyone else’s and that she had to travel to a dangerous place in order to defeat The Churning Storm. He ended the letter by saying that “The Mountaineers must reach out to the past, and you, my dear, must go to Neithernor.”
Deirdre left Grey, but kept in touch with him on the phone, seeing him as a last gift from her father. When she returned to Cole’s apartment, she realized that new pages had been unlocked in the journal, which she recorded in “Here/Where We Go.” She told Mountaineers that she believed it had been triggered by her visiting the Mountaineers, and she resolved to go back. The new pages included “A Brief History of Neithernor,” and a letter to the Mountaineers telling them that they needed to reach out to the past to save the Book of Briars. In “For the Mountaineers,” Deirdre posted two pages from the journal that were used to solve Fragment Thirteen. Two days later, Deirdre secured her website with the Joradian Non-Material Safeguard in “Safeguards,” and questioned her future after finding what could possibly be the last of her father’s journals.
On August 4, 2017, during Fragment Fourteen, Deirdre returned to Bunratty with Cole, after the passing of her Aunt Monica. After several days, Deirdre insisted Cole return to New York to help the Mountaineers, giving him the chronocompass and the journal. The compass led him to several landmarks across town and caused him to unlock a very personal journal entry, which Deirdre described in “Neither Here Nor There.” After learning about Neithernor, Sullivan had sacrificed everything in his life to reach it. For years, Sullivan would travel the world, coming back from time to time to visit Deirdre and Aisling. Eventually, he came back to visit them, having been pursued by the Storm, and he told Aisling he had been to Neithernor and seen The Little Red House. He tried to get Aisling to come with him, but she told him he had been consumed by madness and she refused to come along. When she refused, Sullivan tried to carry Deirdre out of the apartment but was stopped by Aisling. She used a magiqal artifact to wound him, destroying his mind and her body. She died a year later. Sullivan disappeared, only returning to take Deirdre to Aunt Monica after Aisling died. Determined to learn what was so important that Sullivan would sacrifice everything to find it, Deirdre returned to the brownstone in “Neither Here Nor There Part Two.” She knew that Sullivan would protect the location at all costs, so he would give her hints that only she could figure out. It was then that Deirdre realized the significance of the knocks that had followed her throughout her globetrotting journey and she began knocking back inside the brownstone.
Cole went to find Deirdre after her blog post but found that the brownstone was empty and the journal and chronocompass were missing. Cole added that he had written down the locations he went to from his chronocompass journey and had found it near the entrance to the brownstone, wondering if it had any relevance to Deirdre’s disappearance. Deirdre confirmed that Cole’s note had been the secret to entering Neithernor in “My Mother’s Daughter.” Knocking on the brownstone’s door had led her to a broom closet in a warren, which she realized was thick with magiq. She fell asleep in the warren before knocking back into the mundane world, where she found that a much shorter amount of time had passed. Deirdre learned that she had gained the power to summon a knocking door at will, allowing her access to Neithernor. The trip to the warren had unlocked a new journal entry, in which Sullivan described his pursuit of Neithernor and his life fleeing the Storm. He eventually found his way to Central Park, where he found the Storm couldn’t follow him. A door to Neithernor existed there, as well as the dying Council of the 18 Gates. Together, the two grew stronger and devised a plan to open the Book of Briars and stop the Storm once and for all. Sullivan had placed his hopes in Deirdre, saying he knew that she would find her way to magiq because she was her mother’s daughter. He told her to explore Neithernor and to take his Walking Stick with her, which he had placed near the warren’s bed. After reading the entry, Deirdre and Cole had their first fight, because Cole didn’t want to stay in the warren after it reminded him of a traumatic time from his childhood. Deirdre and Cole parted ways, with Deirdre continuing to explore Neithernor.
In “The Three Manners of Magiq,” Deidre told Mountaineers that she had been to a new area of Neithernor using the chronocompass directions which recruits had used on the Fletcher Dawson website. The new area was a giant walled grove, which Deirdre named Grove Hall. Deirdre tried to find an exit to the wilds of Neithernor but returned home after being unable to do so. She spoke with Cole and the two reconciled, agreeing to go their separate ways while they both tried to process what they were going through. Going to the grove also unlocked a new journal entry, where Sullivan told Deirdre she would have to learn figuration magiq, the most difficult of all magiq to perform, in order to find the little red house. Deirdre returned to the grove in “The Storm - Part One” in an attempt to learn figuration, and she encountered the statues of the same animals that made up The Minnying of Ojorad poem. The statues led to a crystal door with no way to open it. Using story magiq, Deirdre was able to pass through the door.
Deirdre returned to the mundane world in “The Storm - Part Three,” and went to visit Grey, who she hadn’t seen in a few weeks. When she arrived, she realized that the Storm had followed her, realizing that she had been to Neithernor. She hid in Grey’s apartment, which had a protective spell that was able to keep the Storm at bay. Panicking, Deirdre held onto her father’s walking stick and tried to think of a spell to ward off the Storm. The chronocompass crawled out of her bag in response, along with her father’s journal, which began flapping in the air. She realized the book was trying to send a message for help, so she opened up the window and it flew out towards Cole. In response, Cole went to Central Park and opened up a door just outside of the park, leaving the door open to attract the attention of the Storm. Deirdre was able to escape and the pair spent two days in the warren to make sure that the Storm was gone. Cole’s time in the Ramble unlocked a new journal entry “Doors Unlocked,” which described Sullivan’s discovery of a door in Neithernor that led to the palace of doors and the risk he took in rescuing the Guide to Magiq from within the building.
Deirdre and Cole explored a new location in “The Hike” and “The Tunnel”, which was a long tunnel that eventually led them to a small courtyard in “The Vault.” Deirdre and Cole explored what they believed to be a castle, and navigated the stone pathways until they came across a massive vault. The vault had all manner of artifacts and thousands of books. Nearly running out of food, Deirdre and Cole repaired a door in the vault and used it to knock back to the mundane world, where they left the door open so they could easily return. However, they soon learned that a door to Neithernor could only remain open for a short amount of time before causing issues. Deirdre decided to go back to the vault without Cole so that she could process the new location and she realized that her dream of being carried through a hallway was actually the tunnel she had traveled through and that she had been in the vault as a child. The new breakthrough led her to rediscovered what she called her soul’s providence: The Myth of Elainnor.
The vaults led Deirdre to discover five books her father had read to her, and a sixth book she couldn’t open, which she described in “The Six Books.” The books were The Wishing Jar, Oskar & Pipany, The Ant and the Caterpillow, The Forest of Darkening Glass, and The Myth of Elainnor. Using the books, Deirdre wrote a story in her blog, casting her first figuration magiq. The spell led her to the sixth book she couldn’t read, which she realized was The Little Red House. It was not a place, but a book: the first book in The Lost Collection.
After returning to the mundane world, in “Mr. Wideawake,” Deirdre received a note that told her to meet them in the warren. Thinking it was Cole, she knocked in, but was surprised by a human-sized sooty tern bird named Mr. Wideawake. Mr. Wideawake told Deirdre that he was the current Collector for The Monarchs and that if the Council and the Mountaineers were wiped out, he and his associates were the last things standing between the Silver and complete control over magiq. He explained to Deirdre how the Book of The Wild had been altered to erase magiq in what became known as the Book of Kings. Mr. Wideawake told Deirdre that the reason he was there was that the Monarchs wanted to preserve The Little Red House at any cost and that they wanted to stop the Mountaineers, who were planning to exchange it with the Storm for the Book of Briars so that they could study it and understand how it fit into the changes made in the Book of Kings. The message was actually a warning to Deirdre that the Monarchs were coming for the book since they knew where to find it and how to access it from reading her blog post.