Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode I handpick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

Well, y'all, today we are going to trip the light fantastic into the realm of legend and folklore.

This is a story by the American fantasy author and illustrator Ursula Vernon

who also writes under the nom de plume T. Kingfisher.

I've always been fascinated by people who write under more than one name.

It's like I can barely get out anything written by me.

Calling myself me, let alone be imaginative enough to write shit by somebody else who lives inside of me.

She's probably best known for her Eisner Award-nominated Hugo Award-winning graphic novel, Digger,

or she's got a series for children called Dragon Breath.

But she's also written some amazing short fiction for adults and this story is one of them.

It's a nebula award-winning piece called Jackaloke Wives.

It was first published in Apex magazine and is now available in Ursula's collected short stories.

Now, this story takes on a couple of familiar myths like the animal bride.

In a lot of those stories, think Swan Lake, a young unmarried man,

steals a magic coat of Swan feathers from a Swan maiden so that she will not fly away and he marries her.

It doesn't always turn out so great for the young man, but never mind.

And then in this story, we have the Jackaloke, which is a newer bit of American folklore.

Here's the story. A couple of brothers dreamed up the Jackaloke from a rabbit and antelope antlers

and made up the whole mythos behind it.

They took pieces of the American West, adopted them as their own,

...