It was a cold and foggy day, darkness enveloped the village even though it was morning, and no one could even see three feet in front of them. The village was surrounded by a forest that was rotting, it was always very dark but never as dark as it was today. The villagers never wanted to leave the village because it was not safe. They always wondered what was outside of the village behind the forest. There were men from the village that went out to explore but they never came back because the men didn’t know their way back through the darkness. The people in the village looked after each other. They were all they had. They are all living in penury; meaning they are living in extreme poverty and have nothing.

When he was only five years old, a little boy named Ivanho lived in the smallest house in the village. It was a small black house the size of a small shack that looked like it had been rotting for a hundred years; all the windows were broken, and just like the others, there was no running water or electricity in his house. When Ivanho and his mother slept, they had to sleep on the ice cold ground with one blanket that he and his mom had to share. His dad was gone. He was one of the men that went out and never came back/never returned. The last thing his dad told him was to watch out for his mother and that he loved him every much. Ivanho was almost seventeen and has done what his father has asked him but his mom is getting weak and might not make it though the winter this year. She became ill when his father left, and ever since, then she has just been getting worse.

They haven’t been able to grow any crops for years because it hasn't rained. But today, on this dark day, it looked like it was going to rain. When you looked up at the sky, you could barley see the sky with next to no sunlight coming through the clouds. Rain was desperately needed because everything was as dry as the desert. Ivanho has tried to plant crops but they have always died. The only crops that would actually grow were potatoes and little berry bushes, which grew in front of their house. Just half an hour later, it started raining and everyone in the village went out and jumped with happiness. They all went running to get their seeds and started planting crops and putting out buckets to save some water. It rained for the next 4 days without stopping and color began to come back into their very grey world as plants started growing.

The next day, the villagers woke up and it had stopped raining. Most of the rotten trees had fallen down so they could see farther out. The villagers thought it would be a good idea for all the men to go out and look for something new beyond this village, and that’s exactly what they did. Six weeks went by and Ivanho was getting worried about his mother, even though she has gotten better because the crops provided food, actual food to eat. Winter was setting in and it was getting very cold. They needed blankets and fire wood for warmth, but the men haven’t
come back. The women have no one to go out and get the wood for them, but they have been making blankets with all the usable materials they have.

The night of Ivanho’s Birthday, it was a cold clear night. The villagers heard people outside of the village yelling, they ran out of their houses trying to see what they could with the moon light. A little girl named Sky, from the village, saw a glow in the distance and ran up to Ivanho. She showed him, only because he was the oldest male left in the village. He started running toward the light and saw that it was the men coming back with other people. They yelled to Ivanho saying that not to far from here was another village. It was abandoned and had supplies that they needed for their village. Ivanho looked at the men and realized that he didn’t know all of them. When they finally got back to the village, the men told everyone that the people they had with them were the men that left eleven years ago. They all had gotten lost and couldn’t find their way back to the village because of all the fog and darkness surrounding them and they had been too far away to notice any landmarks to show them they were near their village.

Ivanho looked around searching for his father but couldn’t find him. He heard his mother calling for him , “Ivanhoe, come here!” saying with her quiet little voice. He started walking toward the house. When he got inside, he saw a man with a long beard and long tangled brown hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. As he asked his mother what she needed, the man turned around and said “hello son.” Ivanho just stood still in shock, crying with joy and gave his father a huge hug. He said, “Father, I have waited for this day ever since you left and I knew that someday you would come back.” All his father could say was, “I love you both very much and I will never leave again.”