forty years of age, but poverty had aged his face, making him appear a much older man but somehow not a shade wiser. This is the story of how Li Wei, intending only to feed his young son, encountered the baiji and set the Princess free. On the night it happened, Li Wei had been fishing, but there were so few good fish he had caught nothing to eat. He sat on the edge of the river smoking and staring into the water. It was something he did often, not that Li Wei was any kind of philosophical man; he merely had nothing else to do. He was used to being alone, all his life he had been a loner. People found his demeanour strange, and he lived the shameful lifestyle of a tramp. He sat shirtless; the hot, humid air was suffocating. The sky was stained by the light pollution from the city to the East. The moon sat low in the sky, the river wreathed in fog. Branches cast crooked shadows. A man could have been standing in the dark shapes, waiting to attack, and Li Wei would not have known. Li Wei was picking at a scab on his foot and didn’t notice the lull in the cicada’s roar, as if something had scared them into silence. Li Wei was started by the sudden pschooh noise of the baiji, as she crept to the surface to expel air through that curious hole in the top of her head. He looked up with wild searching eyes. Of course he knew of the baiji, and the story of the Princess, but had never seen one and never paid any mind to its whereabouts. Whether it was gone forever or not, or whether it really was the Princess or not, he had never had cause to consider. But there it was in front of him, the notoriously shy baiji. He lunged at the baiji. He wrapped his legs around its body, grasping at its narrow dorsal fin. The terrified creature writhed and rolled in the shallows, but Li Wei remained determined, feeling for the hunting knife in his pocket. He clasped the cheap plastic handle and flicked the blade out. Now free, Li Wei drove the blade as hard as he could into the animal. Covered in blood and sweat, reeds sticking to his skin, Li Wei pulled the beast onto the bank. He sprawled out on his back, chest heaving. Li Wei laughed out loud. The villagers would scold him, with their backwards beliefs, but he had no daughters to curse and would feed his son for a month with the meat. Perhaps he could sell its skin, maybe even send the boy to school with the money. Li Wei felt exhilaration and pride. It was better than making love to a woman. Li Wei sat up and looked at the baiji, lying still in a dark pool of blood. Its eyes were dull and beady, while its bluishsilver skin took on an eerie whiteness now that it was out of the water. Staring at the corpse perturbed Li Wei. He would skin and clean it as soon as he could. Then something strange began to happen. The baiji was moving, its body squirming as if something inside was trying to get out. No, it wasn’t moving. The baiji was changing. Her nose receded and her face flattened. Stiff, flat flippers lengthened and her tail separated into the long, delicate limbs of a young woman. Li Wei was motionless, his body paralysed in disbelief. The baiji’s face had dark lashes, round cheekbones, and cold red lips just slightly open. After little deliberation Li Wei cleaned his knife and began carving the girl’s body. Princess or no princess, he still needed to feed his son. It was no different than skinning a
pangolin, just with soft skin falling free rather than the hard armoured coat of the animal. With decisive movements he cut the meat from the Princess’ bones, wrapped each portion in clean cloth he took out from his bag. When he was finished Li Wei cleaned his knife again, and returned it to its sheathe. Then he dug a hole in the bank and buried what was left of the Princess Baiji. After washing in the river, Li Wei picked up his now heavy bag and made his way back to camp. He followed the smell of smoke from the fire the boy had started in hope that his father would bring back something to cook.
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