The first three short stories in Stone Mattress focus on Constance Starr. “Alphinland” introduces her and the fantasy series she wrote under the name C.W. Starr. She created the series when she was young and living with poet Gavin Putnam. Gavin continually dismisses Alphinland until his death, teasing Constance that her work was “commercial trash” (24). While her original reason for writing about Alphinland was to support Gavin and her, it becomes clear that Constance uses the series as escapism to protect her from real life.

Constance read fairytale books since she was a child, and so when she is hurt by Gavin—whom Constance finds in bed with another woman—she locks him in an oak cask in Alphinland’s winery, admitting that she uses Alphinland for therapeutic reasons:

One of the good things about Alphinland is that she can move the more disturbing items from her past through its stone gateway and store them in there on the memory palace model […] You associate the things you want to remember with imaginary rooms, and when you total recall you go into that room (20).

Constance also uses Alphinland to escape the reality that her husband, Ewan, is dead. At first, she hears the dead Ewan speak with her around the house.