Beneath the still, sacred waters of Lake Fundudzi in the Soutpansberg dwells the great white python, the god of fertility to whom the Vhavenḓa look for rain and for the increase of people, herds and fields. In older days, the tradition holds, the python lived upon the surface of the lake and took human women as his wives, coming to them unseen in the dark. When one curious wife looked upon him, his shame and terror drove him down into the depths, and a ruinous drought fell upon the land; only when the woman walked into the lake to rejoin her serpent-husband were the rains restored. The lake is guarded by strict taboos and shares its waters, in Venda belief, with the zwidutwane, the half-visible one-legged water-sprites. The serpent's power over fertility is re-enacted in the domba, the great girls' initiation school, whose linked dancers wind in a single line in imitation of the python.