La'es -- Go down to the bottom of the ocean. The word means something else, but I can't remember what.
-- Narrator (chapter 1)

Importance: This quote foreshadows and synthesizes the novel as a whole. Occurring on the first page of the novel, the reader will not make much of this line. However, in hindsight, Robinson has essentially summarized the whole present-tense plot line in. Lisa is familiar with communication from the spirit world, although struggles to fully make sense of how to implicate herself in their requests. Her awareness that the Haisla word actually means something else points to difficulty of interpreting these signs given her limited knowledge of Haisla spiritual practices. Further, by the end of the novel Lisa does end up at the bottom of the ocean when she winds up in the land of the dead. But because the foreshadowing is coming from a crow, who is a notorious trickster, it...