Ackerly Green’s Secret Society E-Book

C.J. Bernstein

• Herausgeber: Ackerly Green Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Briar Archive
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 233

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Artifacts lost in time, supernatural alliances, and a desperate choice that changed the world. The adventure that began with The Monarch Papers continues with Ackerly Green’s Secret Society.

When Deirdre Green places the stewardship of Ackerly Green Publishing in author C.J. Bernstein’s hands, he expects his days to be filled with copy edits, contracts, and cover designs. 

But when a box of collectible pins is discovered in a long-forgotten storage room, it triggers the reformation of The Ackerly Green Secret Society, a fan club from the company’s lost history. Armed with the pins, the Mountaineers begin to find themselves inexplicably drawn to forgotten magimystic corners of the world, and it becomes clear that there is more to the society than simply honoring Ackerly Green’s enigmatic past.

As magimystic artifacts from the alternate timeline begin surfacing, CJ and the Mountaineers realize a new story is rising from the ashes of The Monarch Papers.

Leseprobe

Ackerly Green’s Secret Society

December 2017 – April 2019

C.J. Bernstein

Adapted for print byCatherine Thoms

Copyright © 2020 by Ackerly Green Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

Ackerly Green Publishing

333 S. State Street

Suite V-60

Lake Oswego, OR 97034

www.ackerlygreen.com

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

Cover Design: Micaela Alcaino

Publisher: Ackerly Green Publishing, LLC

Editor: Bethany Bryan

ISBN: 978-0-9990387-9-6

1. Fantasy - Contemporary 2. Dark Fantasy 3. Epistolary

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Contents

Introduction

1. Publisher’s Letter

2. The Lost Post of Deirdre Green

3. The Ackerly Green Secret Society

4. Wonder

5. The Ackerly Green Book Shop

6. A Quick Check-In

7. The Ackerly Green Update: March 2018

8. “I looked across the cold and silver swirling sea.”

9. The Ghost of Ackerly Green Publishing

10. Wet Woolie

11. The Fan Club

12. Ackerly Green Changes

13. We’ve Done Something

14. Date Night

15. Cellar Door

16. On the Atlantic

17. Saberlane’s Summer

18. The Brooklyn Public Library

19. Moving Office

20. Buzzed

21. Down to City Hall Station

22. The Dreamer

23. Intertwined

24. Of Two Minds

An Excerpt from the next book in the series:

25. The 30-Day Spell

About C.J. Bernstein

Introduction

If you’re reading this, it’s very possible that you’ve just finished The Monarch Papers and found yourself unable to extricate yourself from this strange and wonderful world that you’ve discovered. If that’s the case, then welcome. You’ve come to the right place. This is where the story continues.

Much like TMP, this is an adaptation of events that occurred throughout the course of a year, as documented originally on the Ackerly Green Community Forum. While the original threads are still available to read, I have condensed the information most relevant to the story in these chapters and have retold it from my perspective, so that you may follow one narrative voice as you make your way through the books of Ackerly Green.

I suppose that means I should introduce myself. My name is Catherine Thoms, and I began working as the publishing assistant for Ackerly Green in June of 2018. The events of the Secret Society were well underway by then, and The Monarch Papers adaptation had yet to be published in book form. When I started, I thought that was going to be my job: helping to get a series of fantasy books out into the world. I had no idea I’d be haunted by a magimystic ghost or doing deep dives into old forum threads and blog posts, searching for applicable spells to protect said ghost from harm, never mind helping to perform them. But I’m getting ahead of myself—that’s what you’re here to read about.

The story, as I am telling it, begins in December of 2017, a rare liminal time for Ackerly Green, in which things appeared to have finally quieted down. The events of The Monarch Papers had concluded, leaving many wondering where to turn next and what was to come of the community that had formed around this fantastic experience. None felt this more keenly than C.J. Bernstein, who had been left with the stewardship of Ackerly Green in Deirdre Green’s absence, consequently becoming the hesitant voice of the company. It is with his words, his promise to the Ackerly Green community, that we begin this story.

I’ve done my best to report the events of the Secret Society as they happened. For the most part, I have merely reprinted the relevant blog posts from Saberlane and included the actions and reactions of the Secret Society members as they were posted, with minor formatting edits. Any editorializing or speculation about the thoughts and feelings of the Mountaineers that were not explicitly expressed at the time is my own, as are any mistakes about the nature of magiq or the history of events at Ackerly Green. Much like you, reader, I believed the action to have already happened when I came in, but instead found myself dropped squarely in the middle of it and left to play catch-up. I hope that for you, this can be the resource I never had (but would have desperately appreciated). I also hope that, when you’re ready, you can join us in on the forum in creating even more magiq.

And to the lucky, treasured few who contributed their efforts to this story as it was happening or as it continued in The Search for Magiq, and who may be reading this to rekindle old memories, we’d like to say that we see you and we thank you for your continued support. This adaptation is as much for you as it is for those who follow in your footsteps.

Yours in wonder,

CT

1

Publisher’s Letter

Saberlane: December 1, 2017, 9:32 AM

This past year wasn’t my first brush with magiq, or so I’ve come to learn. Through the events that unfolded via the volumes of The Monarch Papers, I’ve learned more about myself than I could’ve ever imagined. I’d been in a kind of denial, even when my children found The Guide to MAGIQ in the park. Even after the Guide consumed my thoughts. Even after the current Mountaineers came asking for it years later and my dreams became haunted by visions of an untold life I lived as a young man.

A life I thought was fantasy.

I was blocked by a denial that I’ve come to learn was magiq that I’d cast on myself as a young man, to save my own life. But The Monarch Papers, and the Mountaineers, showed me the truth. Not just about the world. About me.

I had refused The Guide to MAGIQ’s call, refused to be involved in all this, though I couldn’t explain why. But now I know. This was my second quest to find the truth. And this time the Mountaineers, after centuries of failure, have succeeded. It could be a coincidence that I’m here now, just as the Book is finally opened, to help usher in this new age. An author, a publisher, a lover of magiq and literature . . . but perhaps my soul’s providence has led me here. Either way, I welcome the chance. As you may have guessed, Ackerly Green is more than a publishing house. More than a bookseller. Ackerly Green will turn Martin Rank’s account of The Monarch Papers into a new story for others to read and explore. Ackerly Green will, with the blessing we’ve recently received by the Council of the 18 Gates (a story for another time), we will publish The Book of Briars, so everyone can learn a truth that so many wanted hidden. Ackerly Green, and I, in its heir’s absence, will do whatever we can to bring wonder to this world.

It’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly, and a burden I hope I can bear.

C.J. Bernstein

Saberlane

Steward of Ackerly Green Publishing

And now, backtracking a bit, here is a familiar voice for those of you coming directly from The Monarch Papers. This next post was found by C.J. Bernstein in December of 2017 and dates back to the day Deirdre first joined the Forum to tell the Mountaineers what she learned about her father from Orvin Wallace during Fragment Sixteen. It has the same formatting and style as the entries posted to her blog, “Deeds Done,” but was never posted there, as far as we can tell. C.J. found the draft of this post included with the relevant Ackerly Green Publishing documents Deirdre forwarded to him before leaving for Neithernor. It explains how she came to find C.J. and pass on the stewardship of Ackerly Green, so I will now defer to Deirdre herself for a more thorough account of the events that transpired.

2

The Lost Post of Deirdre Green

Deirdre: October 1, 2017:

I am writing this all down as quickly as I can. I’m leaving for Neithernor and don’t know when I’ll be back. I’d made a promise that I would wait to reveal what I’m about to reveal until all of this was finished. If it was safe to reveal it at all.

First off, hello! I hope all’s well with you. So yes, I have a secret. One I’ve kept from everyone, even Cole—a secret I promised to keep. This all started in November of 2016, back when I was going to restart Ackerly Green on my own. Before things took a dozen or more turns for the weird and my life changed forever.

It all started with this:

I didn’t receive a response when I messaged whoever it was who registered the Ackerly Green social accounts. So . . . I did a little more digging. And by digging I mean I did some borderline unethical things like emailing Instagram and claiming the @AckerlyGreen account was mine, but I couldn’t remember what email address I used. I needed it to reset the password. (I only wanted the address to email them directly, I swear.)

Instagram helpfully responded . . .

[email protected]

The email of the man whose children found the Guide to MAGIQ my father had left in the park. The man whose son recreated the Guide and essentially set us all on this path. The man who claimed he wanted nothing to do with all of this magiq business and asked to be left alone.

Well, if he wanted to be left alone, why was he claiming Ackerly Green social media accounts?!

So I emailed him. Over and over and over.

And it wasn’t until February or so that he finally wrote back:

I said I didn’t want anything to do with this, yes, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. I can’t explain why, but I’ve been fixated on all of this ever since they came looking for the guide and I created these accounts . . . I don’t know . . . as sort of a lure? To see if anyone else out there felt the way I did when they heard the words Ackerly Green. And the messages started rolling in, from all over the world. People with stories and memories, asking what I knew, what I remembered . . . It was overwhelming, in a way I didn’t understand, until recently. And so I had to ignore them—tried to anyway. If you want the accounts, they’re yours. I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble.

I felt wretched. I responded, reassuring him, explaining that I understood.

And we started a correspondence. The only thing he asked was that I not tell anyone about our talks. He said that something in him was scared for everyone to know. He wanted to protect his children, his husband, but there was something else pushing him away from all things “Mountaineer” and he couldn’t explain why. I learned he was a writer, an indie publisher, and self-described geek . . .

We became friends. Though, I admit that as the months rolled on and the craziness of my life increased, I corresponded less and less. But it didn’t matter. C.J. had decided to help me manage the business here in New York City while I was traveling the world, running from (and to) knocking doors and mysterious, far-off locations.

C.J. took on the responsibility of helping me gather up everything I’d need to restart Ackerly Green Publishing when I came home, learning more about the company he’d found himself so drawn to.

But as you know, my interests in publishing waned as I dug deeper into the mysteries of The Monarch Papers and finally saw Neithernor, the world my father led me to.

I’d missed dozens of emails from C.J.. In the time I’d been away, he’d become a sort of expert on Ackerly Green. The emails were all about the company, its strange history, the memories others had shared with him . . . And a few secrets C.J. himself had been keeping and was finally willing to share with me. (Editor’s note: you can read about this in C.J.’s Publisher’s Letter.)

So last night we met for coffee.

And I put the company in his hands. He refused at first, but we finally agreed that he would run it while I was away, and if I wanted it when I came back, I could have it.

I’m about to join the forum—about to tell you what I’ve learned about my father, what I’ve decided . . .

I don’t know when I’m coming back, but I’m sure we’ll cross paths again. But between the Mountaineers and C.J., I’m more sure than ever that Ackerly Green Publishing is in very good hands.

DGx – Stormslayer

This post, though technically written before her appearance on the Forum, is the last that we have heard from Deirdre Green as of November 2019. The following email was then sent out by Saberlane to everyone who had participated in The Monarch Papers, after taking on the stewardship of Ackerly Green and making a strange discovery.

3

The Ackerly Green Secret Society

Saberlane: December 12, 2017

First, hello, and if you're wondering who I am and why I'm emailing you, at some point, you joined a group called the Mountaineers and you worked to unlock a mysterious novel called The Book of Briars, a series of events that has come to be called The Monarch Papers.

I can't believe it's been almost two years since all of this started. We've learned magic (or magiq) is real and fading from the world, we've unlocked The Book of Briars. We even found a pocket world called “Neithernor,” and now we're all wondering what’s going to happen next.

Well, as we begin to unpack (literally and figuratively) the history of Ackerly Green Publishing, we've begun to find some interesting things. Not least of which are materials from something called the Ackerly Green Secret Society.

The original email featured a photo of a small cardboard box filled with about a hundred hippocampus pins on black paper backings. The pins were approximately an inch and a half tall, and a deep bronze color that appeared gold in the light. The outline of the hippocampus was raised, almost serrated, like the scales of a dragon, which traveled across its pointed ears to its forked tongue, raised forelegs, and down the length of its small body to its curled tail, which looped in front of its trunk at the bottom.

Orvin Wallace (the executor of the Green estate and expert on all things AGP) and I found a box of pins in a storage unit that held documents and materials from the first iteration of Ackerly Green Publishing way back in the 1950s.

At first, we thought they were just promotional materials, a golden hippocampus, the company's mascot.

And then I put one on.

And very strange things started happening:

I found myself feeling “called” to wander around the city while I was wearing it—like when Sullivan Green said Central Park “talked” to him.

I also started receiving strange notifications on my phone that would disappear before I could capture them or write them down.

I’m not completely certain it was the pin making these things happen . . . but they always happened when I was wearing the pin. It felt like the pin was trying to show me something.

And then one night I was going through old Ackerly Green documents, as I do most nights now, when I found a handwritten note that read, Share them. Share it all. It’s the only way to put everything together. To keep the truth, and wonder, alive.

I have absolutely no reason to believe that this note was about the pins, but it felt like it answered a question I’d been asking myself.

What we've all been asking since we unlocked The Book of Briars . . .

What now?

So we're restarting the Ackerly Green Secret Society and sharing the (limited number of) pins with those of you who have joined this strange, wonderful journey. Let’s see if we can “put everything together.”

Almost forty brave souls signed on to receive a Herman the Hippocampus pin and revitalize the Ackerly Green Secret Society, not including Saberlane, Saberlane’s assistant Devin, or myself, as I came on when the Society and its many intricacies were already in full swing. No one was exactly sure what they had signed up for, but they took to wearing their Herman pins proudly on jackets and hats throughout the winter.

Saberlane continued with his regular updates from the publisher’s desk, which had become a blog of sorts: about the company, about magic, about coming to terms with magic in his own life and figuring out what to do now that The Monarch Papers had concluded. The posts reminded the Mountaineers of everything they had accomplished, and more often than not, left them feeling as though there was something still left to do. No one could quite put their finger on it just yet, but through Saberlane’s next two posts, it became clear that something strange was at work in the Ackerly Green offices, and that the Secret Society members, in particular, would be needed sooner than they had thought.

4

Wonder

Saberlane: January 14, 2018, 2:52 PM

Last week an older, well-dressed woman walked up to me on the street, took my arm, leaned in, and whispered nonsense to me for about ten seconds. I assumed she was going to ask for directions and I kept trying to discern what she was saying. It wasn’t another language. It wasn’t just a jumble of words. They weren’t words at all.

Normally I would chalk it up to weirdness of living in New York City, but now, after all the crazy things we’ve experienced, everything becomes tinged with wonder, mystery, and even a little bit of danger. Which, I guess, is New York City, after all.

Looking back on what we know about Ackerly Green Publishing (I do that a lot lately), I’m struck by how in . . . this “book” or age, the Book of Kings, that Ackerly Green Publishing was a failure. Decisions were made out of fear and hubris, which led to its very early death after only seven years in business.

So if all that’s true, when did the Ackerly Green Secret Society come into play? Why would a company create something like that if there was no readership? If no one was buying the potboilers they were publishing?

Unless . . .

Unless the boxes Orvin and I found in the warehouse weren’t from The Book of Kings. What if that warehouse, or the storage unit was a “well”—one of those places that holds on to weird, magical things? What if the pins were from the Book of The Wild? The Lost Age?

Is that why they seem to have some sort of draw, some kind of calling? Is my pin trying to show me more places that have hidden bits of magiq?

This all sounds like a pitch to sell pins, but honestly, I’m so overwhelmed with . . . wonder lately. And I want to share it with all of you. I also want to do things right with the current iteration of Ackerly Green Publishing. I want it to be a success. For you, for Deirdre, for myself. And to do that, I have to tap into this sense of wonderment. Awe. The curiosity of what could be just around the corner.

I think that’s the key to this company’s success.

I keep hoping I’ll hear from Deirdre, or Martin. Just so I know we’re not the only ones here. I also wouldn’t mind receiving some kind of sign from the Council of the 18 Gates . . . (when I was cobbling this site together last fall I woke up one morning to find The Book of Briars magically available for preorder and I yelled so loud I woke up the whole house and even my dogs thought I’d lost my mind, but that was the last time they reached out, if that was them at all.) Did they use everything they had to help us, and with so little magic left in the world, are we ever going to hear from them again?

I’d just like to know the Council is somewhere out there and feel that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I mean, it feels right, building the company that will help send these books out into the world and create new sparks of magic and wonder. But as is usually the case, we’re all left wondering if we’re doing what we’re supposed to, and wondering when magic will find us again.

5

The Ackerly Green Book Shop

Saberlane: February 3, 2018, 4:41 PM

All right, so this is . . . weird.

I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours on calls and email with Instagram and on support threads for a tech security forum. I even paid a guy $20 on a freelance site to try and explain how this could happen unless someone hacked my account.

Sorry, backing up . . .

This photo:

The photo was a flat lay of the book Ojo in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson. Though this post has since disappeared from the Ackerly Green Instagram profile, the original post featured the book in the center, with what appears to be broken shards of pottery in the bottom left corner and the edges of other similarly antique-looking books featuring on the opposite sides of the frame, all laid on a backdrop of dark brown wood.

The original caption read:

{Ojo in Oz is book 27 in the staggering Oz series. Though lacking a bit of the spirit of Baum’s original works, it is widely considered the best of Plumly’s entries. Note: The dancing bear on the cover is called Snufferbux, but his full name is Snuffurious, Buxorious, Blundurious Boroso. -A.G.}

Saberlane:

I didn’t post this photo. I posted the first one on our feed, the quote from W. B. Yeats. That photo was taken in our office. But not the Oz book.

Instagram says there was no suspicious activity on the account. No weird sign-ins.

After the bio changed to “The Ackerly Green Book Shop” last week, I added two-factor authentication to make sure nobody was messing around with the account. I should’ve gotten a text on my phone, but I never did. Support at Instagram said that the new photo had similar hashtags to my previous post so I should check to see if someone else in my company had posted it (they are unaware that Dev and I are the company at the moment.) So where did it come from? Listen, if it was one of the Mounties, I don’t mind AT ALL. I just want to know, because this, combined with the bio change, and some other weird things that have been going on lately (will post about soon), it’s got me all kinds of sort of freaked out.

It soon became evident that the Mountaineers shared Saberlane’s concern over the apparent Instagram coup. After confirming that none of the Mounties had been behind the mysterious post, theories started to abound. Saberlane presented the possibility that the post was the work of the Council of 18 Gates, who may have hacked the account similar to the way they put TheBook of Briars up for preorder. Yet as much as everyone wanted to believe the Council was still out there somewhere helping behind the scenes, it seemed unlikely that they would reappear on Instagram, of all places, and this post felt strangely personal as well. Saberlane admitted that the Oz series had been a favorite of his growing up, a fact that few people could have known.

Cj_Heighton, also known as Chi, brought up the possibility that the Herman pins may be exerting a powerful effect on the physical world, which seemed in line with the strange happenings that had begun occurring ever since their discovery. Almost all of the Mountaineers had reported a kind of hypersensitivity while wearing the pin, as if magiq had been pulling the strings all along but they were only now aware of its influence.

When the second post appeared three days later—a photo of an old Payson, Dunton, and Scribner’s Penmanship workbook on a bed of handwritten envelopes—Viviane was the first to notice that the mysterious poster had left the same signature, signing the caption “–A.G.” within curly brackets. Though Saberlane’s first thought was that it was merely a reference to Ackerly Green the company, Robert suggested the possibility that it was the signature of an actual person. The only “AG” anyone could think of was Aisling Green, Deirdre’s mother, though why and how Deirdre’s late mother would be reaching out through Instagram was beyond anyone’s reasoning.

A.G. was now the first lead the Mountaineers had to the identity of the mysterious poster, and they seized the opportunity to conjecture and theorize together. It was then that Saberlane mentioned for the first time that he had been hearing strange goings-on in the Ackerly Green offices: faint voices, and sometimes, the sound of typewriters. The sounds were definitely coming from inside the Ackerly Green office, not from any of the adjacent ones, which seemed impossible, given the size of the space, but the Mountaineers were no strangers to seemingly impossible situations. While a few of the Mounties laughed about getting the Ackerly Green office onto one of those ghost hunting shows, Grimangel53 was the first to draw the connection between the current iteration of Ackerly Green, and the original, from the Book of the Wild. “Maybe the residual magiq connecting the old and new is affecting things?” he wrote. “Names have power, and taking on the mantle of AGP probably has let the magiq be released and used.”

In the midst of all the uncertainty and improbability, the idea that the two Ackerly Green offices may be connected through the shared magiq of their name seemed like the first piece of solid ground the Mountaineers had to stand on in a rapidly evolving reality. Meanwhile, the posts kept coming, and the Mountaineers started looking more deeply into the captions, the backgrounds in the photos, and pretty much any detail they could get their hands on. No detail was too trivial to investigate, no rabbit hole too absurd to fall down. They tried every approach to make meaning out of the posts, searching for patterns in post times, references to the familiar paths of Wool and Silver that they had come to understand during The Monarch Papers, and even drawing associations to the six guilds and their positions on the chronocompass, all in an effort to understand more about the mysterious A.G.. The photos were almost always a classic or vintage-looking book with a note about the book’s history or the condition of the particular copy. However, no amount of hypothesizing seemed to bring the Mountaineers closer to an explanation of why they had suddenly begun appearing on the Ackerly Green account, or who may be behind them. Any other reasonable group of people would be understandably frustrated or even discouraged after such prolonged mystery and confusion, but the Mountaineers seemed to thrive on it. “Everything unexplained is a puzzle.” Robert posted in the midst of a frenzy of far-fetched questions and theories. “That’s the fun in life.”