"There's a place on the box for your name," said Mrs. Jackson. "Why don't I write Baartock on this one, so that we'll know that it's yours. All the new students have a pencil box just like this. We have to be able to tell them apart." She got a pen from the counter and wrote 'BAARTOCK' in big letters on the top of the box.
Baartock looked at the marks she had made on it. "This say my box?" he asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Jackson. "This word is 'Baartock'."
He looked at the marks some more, then got the pen from the counter. On one end of the box, he made another mark. It was a mark his mother had shown him how to make, his special mark. He had practiced making it and put it on all his things. He even had cut it into one of the stones of his bridge, working carefully, the way his father had shown him.
"This say my box, too," he said, holding it up for Mrs. Jackson to see. "Now I know my box."
What Mrs. Jackson saw was not a scribbled mark that she might have expected, but carefully printed letters. They were letters of an alphabet she didn't recognize, but still clearly letters. It was just one more new thing that she now knew about trolls. She
already knew more about trolls than anyone else in town. There were only three people who even knew that there were trolls.
"Good. We all know that it's Baartock's pencil box. Now, it's almost lunch time," she said, looking up at the clock high up on the wall. "We'd better be getting you to your class, before they go to lunch without you. Aren't you getting hungry?"
Baartock hadn't thought about food, until Mrs. Jackson mentioned it. Suddenly he was hungry, very hungry. It had been a long time since his breakfast bowl of porridge and some left-over acorns and toadstools from dinner.
"Yes. Hungry," he said.