They were thirsty, and the river was clear, and and drank deeply from it while was off scouting the road ahead, and within the hour both of them had stomachs that hurt, and then stomachs that swelled, and then, unmistakably, stomachs that moved.
They had reached the borders of the Country of Women, a kingdom with no men in it at all, and the book's cheerful biology is this: since there are no men, the women of this land conceive by drinking from the Motherhood River when they turn twenty, and bear their daughters, and the line continues, generation after generation, entirely without husbands. And the two monks had walked up and drunk from the Motherhood River like a pair of thirsty tourists at a sacred spring, and were now, both of them, expecting.
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