The Marked Ones

The Moving

I’d been so excited to move to a state that had other animals.

Not just the gray squirrel, the white-tailed deer—boring Midwestern animals.

I was so excited that I had even tattooed this animal onto the inside of my left arm as my announcement: I’m moving to Arkansas!

The animal, dear reader, was an armadillo.

In early August, after nearly 10 hours of driving to our new home with stops—followed by a U-Haul and with two small dogs, two middle-school-aged children, and one dwarf hamster in the SUV—I felt incredibly blessed to have made my first sighting that very evening, walking my dogs.

Bleary-eyed and ready to sleep on an air mattress, I stumbled out into the street, flip flops flopping noisily.

There it was, ambling out of the culvert, a single street light illuminating its shell-like skin.

I gasped.

The armadillo and I locked eyes.

My beagle mix caught wind of the strange creature and immediately started tugging on the leash, barking.

It scuttled back down the culvert as I pulled back on the leash, saying “Loretta, no! It’s a friend!”

I could have sworn I heard someone say, “No friend to her!”

Moving can make you feel crazy. I decided never to do it again (the moving) and dragged the dogs back into the house.

The Meeting

I hadn’t seen any armadillos since that first night at the new house. Summer turned to fall; fall turned to winter. I was positive we’d scared any armadillos away with Loretta’s barking. Or maybe they were rare to begin with. We were in the Northwest corner of Arkansas, much closer to Missouri than Texas.

It was December now and holidays were approaching. We’d gotten a new Christmas tree and set upon a very Instagram-aesthetic mix of gold and white ornaments.

One night, I strung Christmas lights on the porch from the plant hooks a former tenant had installed, I heard a faint hissing behind me.

I looked around, startled. Was a hose on? Was it a snake? Oh, God, snakes.

But it wasn’t a snake. It was an armadillo.

“Oh, hi!” I said, raising my voice into animal-appropriate baby talk. It just looked at me.

“I didn’t realize armadillos hissed,” I said to myself.

The armadillo stood very still before opening its tiny mouth and saying, in a high, clear, somewhat nasal-y voice, “We don’t.”

Surely one of my kids was in the window, playing a trick on me.

“I was just trying to get your attention. It wasn’t a hiss,” the armadillo said.

“So you did talk!” I said, a little too loudly. It shrank back, its little body rounding to the edge of the house.

“Quiet! I don’t want them to hear us!” it said.

“Who is them?”

“Meet me outside the shed at midnight. Bring no one!” the armadillo said quickly, and jostled off the porch.

I started to follow it, but then my daughter opened the door, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the Christmas lights.

The Meaning

Maybe I was losing my mind.

I’d set my alarm to 11:45 p.m.

I made myself a cup of decaf and Googled, “what do armadillos eat?” before heading out with a saucer of cut strawberries.

As midnight neared, I began to get a little jumpy.

At 11:59, the armadillo crawled out from underneath our shed and whispered, “In here.”

“Oh, I don’t have a key to the shed,” I stammered. “We’re just renting…”

But sure enough, the armadillo motioned to a piece of the ground I hadn’t quite noticed—what looked like a normal divot underneath a very standard gardening shed now looked large enough for a human body to slide under.

I crouched down and sidled into it and began to fall—quickly landing on my knees in a soft, earthen room.

The armadillo was chewing on the strawberries that had fallen from my hand during my fall, when it said, “Thank you for coming. We knew the moment you came that you were one of the Marked Ones.”

“The Marked Ones?”

“Yes! An ally of the armadillo. We keep track of those who tattoo our symbol on their human bodies.”

I blinked. “What?! You know who tattoos armadillos on their skin?!”

“Oh, yes,” the armadillo shared, a piece of strawberry falling from its mouth. “You see, we armadillos have been in danger. We need all the human help we can get.”

“But—you can talk!?”

“Yes; this is why we’re in danger. Most animals pretend they can’t talk or have forgotten how. Your dogs seem perfectly content barking and growling. But we armadillos are of a superior race. We have a rich culture, history, pride… and it’s being wiped away by the RAA.”

“RAA?” I questioned.

“Yes. The Razorbacks Against Armadillos. Nasty bunch.” I swore the armadillo shuddered along its armor as it willingly gave this information.

Over the course of the hour, the armadillo told me of their plight.

Armadillos against the feral pigs that had taken over the hearts and minds of the people.

“It’s even their sports teams!” the armadillo said at one point, exasperated.

The razorbacks were rooting out armadillos everywhere they could, trying to drive them back into Texas, killing the ones who stood in their way.

“You didn’t really believe that many of us get hit by cars, did you?” the armadillo challenged.

By the end of the meeting, I was covered in dirt and moved to tears. Armadillos didn’t have to live like this.

“So will you help us?” it asked.

“Yes,” I promised, fervently. “But how?”

“Wait for my instructions,” it said. “We’ll have to move quickly before the Big Event. That’s all you need to know for now.”

“But wait—I don’t even know your name,” I said.

“You can call me Aria,” it said.

I crawled out from under the shed and took a long, hot shower, questioning everything I’d ever known about reality.