'Stone, ' the first story in Indiana Winter, begins: 'My home is a harbor. It floats on limestone high above the Ohio. Underneath our feet, acids eat away the stone and there are underground rivers and caves and, I swear it, if you were small enough and didn't mind tight black places, darker than any dark you could imagine, and you could crawl through slime and rushing water through tunnels that could end with any step in a cavern so deep you would never stop falling, if you didn't mind knowing that could happen at any moment, it the thought of cave-ins and earthquakes does not concern you because you somehow carry yourself with you gently as a baby, you could be the first person to crawl from Indiana to the brightly lit caverns in Kentucky.'

SUSAN NEVILLE is Associate Professor of English at Butler University. Her previous publications include numerous essays and a book entitled The Invention of Flight.