The Committee of Antlered Lizards

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There are certain afternoons in the woods when the world feels like it has misplaced its sense of proportion. That’s how it was the day I stumbled onto the Committee. Five of them. Tall as highway signs, quiet as librarians, wearing black robes with gold wheels stitched on the chest. Their masks—lizard faces with glassy eyes—were carved so well I couldn’t tell if they were carved at all.

They stood in a soft semicircle, like they’d been waiting for a bus that never came.

The leader, or maybe just the one who blinked at me first, stepped forward. The antlers on his mask scraped a low branch. “You’re early,” he said, calm as a man commenting on the weather. His voice was the kind of dry rasp you hear when you flip over an old book no one has read in a decade.

“I didn’t know I was coming,” I said.

“That’s what early usually means,” he replied.

They shifted slightly, the way telephone poles might shift if they suddenly decided to develop opinions. I noticed small bits of moss caught in the grooves of their antlers, like they’d spent the morning leaning against trees in deep conversation.

“We’re walking the perimeter,” the leader said. “It’s what we do. You can join if you like, but no talking about destiny, or circles of life, or any of that heavy stuff. We get enough of that from the ravens.”

I nodded, because ravens really are insufferable when they get philosophical.

So we walked. Slow, ceremonial steps, though no one ever declared anything ceremonial. The woods didn’t seem bothered by them, which was unusual. Woods get nervous. They whisper. They creak with suspicion. But the trees behaved like the Committee was just part of the basic architecture—like moss, or rainfall, or the quiet you hear when you realize you’re far from anything important.

After a while, the leader paused and looked at me. “People think we’re frightening,” he said. “We’re not. We’re just trying to keep things in order.”

“What things?” I asked.

“Oh, you know,” he said. “Edges of paths. Boundaries between here and there. Lines that don’t draw themselves.”

It struck me as work someone should be doing.

When the loop was complete, they stopped exactly where I’d first met them. The leader gave a small nod—approval, farewell, or just acknowledgment that I still existed. Then they resumed their cluster, patient as cold stones.

I backed away down the trail.

When I turned around for one last look, the Committee was already gone. I didn’t hear them leave. They simply subtracted themselves from the scenery.

I kept walking, feeling strangely grateful.

It’s comforting to know someone out there is tending the edges.