“Are you real?” asked the Goblin.
“Of course we are,” said Jack.
“What are you?” was the next question.
Molly started to explain, but she soon noticed that the Goblin was shaking his head, so she stopped.
“No ... there isn’t really a place called the Impossible World, which you can reach through a tree in a forest,” he said, as if confiding to them a sad truth. “It’s only a story—a make-believe place—like Dreamland.”
Molly was taken aback.
“Oh, but there is such a place,” she affirmed. “We know there is—because we have come from there.”
“I like to hear you say that—but I don’t believe you,” said the Goblin, candidly. “I wish I could. And I wish you were real, indeed I do.”
“We are real,” said Jack, warmly. “We’re as real as anything. Why, it’s you that is only—that people say are not—I mean——”