As the story begins, Penny, Primrose, and the other children are leaving England’s towns and cities for the relative safety of the countryside—a less attractive target for German bombs. At their young age, the girls have seen very little of the world beyond their urban environment. While wandering the mansion’s grounds, they snatch a rare opportunity to see a forest. For these curious girls, the forest symbolizes the unknown world they must now face without their parents to lead them, and they enter it with excitement. However, the forest holds a darker symbolism as well, as their encounter with the Loathly Worm demonstrates. It is a place where the boundaries of reality are ambiguous, but unlike the enchanted forests of fairy tales, this forest is home to a monster worse than any they could have imagined.

The forest also exists in Penny and Primrose’s memories as the place where their childhood trauma originates, and it becomes a catch-all for the other traumas of the war and the loss of their parents. Journeying to this physical site represents the figurative journey each of the women must make on the path to recovery.