The messenger arrived while Shanta was cutting a ripe mango for her father.
"From Ayodhya, Princess," he said, holding out a folded letter.
Shanta set down the knife. The juice had run across her fingers and collected beside the brass plate. Outside, a pair of horses stamped in the courtyard, and someone called for water.
"Has something happened to the king?" she asked.
"No, Princess. The news concerns Queen Kausalya."
Shanta wiped her hands on a cloth and broke the seal.
The letter was brief. Queen Kausalya had given birth to a son. The child had been named Ram.
Shanta read the lines again.
Her younger brother had been born.
She sat down before she realised she had been standing for too long. The mango lay forgotten on the plate.
"Father must hear this," she said.
King Rompad was in the eastern courtyard, listening to a dispute between two farmers over a damaged irrigation channel. He dismissed them with instructions to return the next morning and accepted the letter from Shanta.
"A son at last," he said, smiling. "King Dashrath will be pleased."
"Yes."
Rompad looked at her. "And you?"
Shanta tried to smile. "I am pleased too."
He reached for her hand, then stopped when he noticed the mango juice on her fingers.
"You should wash before touching the letters," he said.
She laughed. He laughed with her, and for a little while the room seemed ordinary.
That evening, Shanta asked for a copy of the birth announcement to be sent to Ayodhya. She dictated a short message congratulating Queen Kausalya and King Dashrath. Then she added a line for the child.
May you grow in health and happiness. Your sister in Anga sends you her blessings.
She paused over the words your sister.
"Is that too familiar?" she asked the scribe.
The old man looked up. "You are his sister, Princess."
"Yes," she said. "I am."
She told him to keep the line.
In Anga, Shanta was known as Rompad's daughter. The palace servants knew which mornings she visited the kitchens and which afternoons she spent with the women who prepared medicines. She could recognise the sound of her father's sandals in the corridor. He called her to hear petitions, asked her to read letters from neighbouring kings, and trusted her to remember the names of people who came to the palace with small troubles.
She had grown up in this household. She loved Rompad, and she knew he loved her. She had been married to Rishyashringa for several years.
Yet Ayodhya remained a room in her mind whose door she had never learned to close.
She remembered little of her early childhood there. A patch of sunlight on a polished floor. A woman's hand fastening a bracelet around her wrist. The smell of sandalwood in a room where people spoke softly because a child was sleeping.
Her memories were scattered, and she could never be certain which ones belonged to her own experience and which had been built from other people's stories.
She knew the facts. She had been born to King Dashrath and Queen Kausalya. King Rompad, Dashrath's friend, had adopted her and raised her as his own.
The arrangement had been spoken of in the palace as a matter settled long ago. People rarely explained it to her. When they did, they spoke of affection between kings, of family ties, of the good fortune of having a daughter.
No one had told her what it felt like for a child to leave one home and grow into another.
She had never asked Rompad. She feared that asking would make him think his love had been insufficient.
Now Ram had been born, and she found herself wondering what the people of Ayodhya would tell him about his family.
Would they mention her?
Or would his childhood stories begin with the day he first held a bow, the day he learned to ride, the day his brothers came into the world? Would anyone tell him that before he had been born, his parents had already had a daughter?
Shanta began to write a letter to him.
She wrote, Dear Ram, and stopped.
He could not yet read. He could not even hold his head up without help. She imagined a nurse lifting him from his cradle, his tiny fingers curling around the edge of a cloth.
She folded the paper and put it away.
Weeks passed. The rains arrived in Anga, turning the palace gardens dark and filling the stone channels with running water. Shanta received news from Ayodhya through merchants, visiting nobles, and occasional letters from people who remembered her.
One afternoon, a court musician came to perform for Shanta. After the performance, he mentioned that he had recently performed in Ayodhya.
"In Ayodhya?" Shanta asked, sitting forward. "You were at the royal palace?"
"Yes, Princess. I performed before King Dashrath and the royal family. The celebrations for the young prince's birth were still going on."
Shanta's face brightened. "Tell me about them. How is the king? And Queen Kausalya? Have you seen the little prince?"
"The king is delighted, Princess. The people are celebrating everywhere. The prince is the joy of the palace."
"And the queen?"
"Recovering well, they say."
Shanta hesitated, then asked, "Does the king ever speak of his daughter?"
The musician looked confused. "Which daughter, Princess?"
Shanta lowered her eyes. "I mean…" she began, but the words would not come.
She dismissed the musician with a brief nod and hurried out of the room, moving quickly through the corridor in search of Rompad.
She needed to ask her father something she had been afraid to ask for years.
She found Rompad in his study, sorting through petitions. Rain tapped against the wooden shutters. A lamp burned beside his elbow.
"Father, when you brought me to Anga, did you ask King Dashrath to keep my name in the palace records?"
Rompad stopped reading. "We spoke of your future, of how you would be raised, and of the life you would have here," he said.
"I know. You did that."
He set the petition aside. "What has brought this on?"
"Ram has been born. I keep wondering what he will be told about me."
Rompad leaned back in his chair. For a moment, she saw the tiredness around his eyes, the same tiredness she had noticed when he worked late through the harvest disputes.
"I cannot tell you what King Dashrath will say to his son," he replied. "I can tell you what I know. Your father entrusted you to me, and I accepted you with all my heart. You have never been a burden in this house."
"I have never thought I was."
"Then what troubles you?"
Shanta looked towards the rain-dark window.
"I want to know whether I was missed."
Rompad said nothing at first. "I think you were," he answered eventually. "But I cannot speak for them. I should not pretend that I can."
She had expected reassurance. His honesty left her with a sharper ache, and also with something she could trust.
"Did you ever think I might want to return?"
"Yes."
"Did you want me to?"
His eyes met hers. "I wanted you to have a home where you were wanted. I hoped that would be here."
Shanta reached across the desk and touched his hand.
"It is here," she said.
He closed his fingers around hers.
That night, Shanta brought out the unfinished letter.
She lit another lamp and sat beside the open window. The rain had stopped, but water still dripped from the roof into a clay pot below.
She began again.
Dear Ram,
You do not know me yet. Perhaps you will hear my name one day. I was born before you, in Ayodhya, to our father Dashrath and our mother Kausalya. King Rompad of Anga raised me as his daughter, and I have called him Father for as long as I can remember.
She paused, then continued.
I do not know what you will be told about me. I hope you will know that I was loved in Anga. I hope you will also know that I belonged to Ayodhya before I belonged to this place.
The words looked too plain on the page. She had imagined that writing to her brother would release some hidden grief, but the ink gave her no such comfort.
She read the letter from the beginning.
Then she added one last line.
When you are old enough to ask about your family, please ask about me.
Shanta folded the letter carefully.
She could send it. A messenger could carry it to Ayodhya, where someone might place it among the king's papers. Perhaps Queen Kausalya would read it. Perhaps Dashrath would recognise the handwriting of the daughter who had once lived in his house.
Or perhaps the letter would reach a servant who would set it aside until it was forgotten.
She called for her attendant.
"Shall I prepare this for the morning messenger?" the woman asked.
Shanta looked at the sealed paper.
"Keep it here for now."
The attendant placed it in a small wooden box with her other letters. Shanta watched her close the lid.
Years later, Shanta heard more stories of Ram. His lessons, his courage, his marriage, and the events that carried him far from Ayodhya travelled across kingdoms. People spoke of his brothers, his parents, and the many people who shaped his life.
Shanta listened whenever news arrived.
She took pleasure in learning that her brother had grown into a man worthy of the name given to him. Sometimes she wondered whether he had ever asked about her. She never got to know for certain.
And the letter remained in Anga.