Deleted Stories: Jumio, Goddess Of Toys

Sometimes a golden slinky slinks down the many marble steps to heaven and, on the top step, kneels Jumio, her eyes gleaming with girlish glee.

Sometimes she’ll throw a frisbee through the air and it will fall down to Earth and be mistaken by ordinary mortals as a flying saucer but those in the know say, “Ah! Jumio is playing with her frisbee again”.

Jumio loves toys because, you see, Jumio is the Goddess of Toys; she who first gave man the knowledge of toymaking.

It is said that, from Jumio, came the very first doll that was given to the very first little girl in all the world, to hug.

And, from Jumio too, came the ball; for she saw the Sun god Arkura rolling the golden orb of the sun across the sky and thought what a glorious toy it would make for all the children of the Earth.

It was also Jumio who gave us the piggy bank, although that came purely as an accident.

It happened, one winter’s day, when Jumio was flying through the air on the back of her winged rocking horse, looking in all the windows of all the bedrooms of all the children of the world to see if they were happy with their toys.

She came across the house of a businessman that was full of lovely toys but they weren’t toys for children to play with. No, the businessman played with all the toys himself.

Inside his enormous hundred acre mansion, you see, he had created a miniature world of dolls and doll houses, with miniature mountains and hills; forests and jungles; fields and deserts; puddle sized seas and oceans and little villages and towns full of doll house streets and little cities full of tiny tower blocks for dolls to live and work in.

“Ah!”, sighed the businessman as he was playing with one of his toy factories, “If only the real world were like my doll world and real people, like my dolls. Then people would do as they were told and there would be no unions or striking workers; no socialist governments taxing rich men like me and nothing would be free, everything would be privately owned”.

Suddenly, however, the businessman noticed something very odd.

A new doll had appeared in one of his toy cities; a female doll, wearing a white toga with golden sandals upon her feet and a golden tiara on her head.

“What’s this?”, he said to himself, shocked, picking up the strange doll and inspecting it, “I don’t remember buying a doll like this?”.

“That’s because, I’m not a doll”, it said, startling the old businessman so much that he dropped it on the floor and stepped back from it in fear, “I am Jumio, Goddess of Toys, and you sir, are a greedy, selfish, horrid old man”.

Suddenly, the businessman’s face went from being pale with fear to purple with rage, “W-what?!”, he stammered, “I won’t be talked to like that. Not by a little doll” and he
stamped upon the doll sized Jumio until she broke into pieces and, sweeping up the broken pieces into a dustpan, tipped them into a bin.

“Silly, stupid talking doll”, he thought, “It must be broken inside or something to insult me like that. Good riddance”.

But, as soon as he said this, he heard an odd sort of noise like the whispered rumble of miniature thunder and, turning to look at his doll sized world, he saw black clouds were forming above it and they were crackling with little, jagged, flickering lightning bolts.

“You really have put me in a bad mood now. I’m usually quite a pleasant and cheerful
sort of god”, said a voice, so loud that it made everything in his entire mansion tremble and knocked several antique, chinese vases off of their pedestals , smashing them to pieces, “But you make me so angry. For, outside of your mansion there are so many children whose parents have no money to buy them toys and you, who have so much money, could give toys to all of them but you are too selfish; a grown man living in your imaginary world. Well, I’ll teach you!”.

And then, all of a sudden, there was a great whirring and cracking and splashing sound coming from the businessman’s toy world and, to his astonishment, the businessman saw spinning-top sized whirlwinds whirling and sweeping across his toy countryside, sucking up doll farm houses left and right and little earthquakes, shaking and shattering his toy cities to the ground and mini tsunami’s rising like cat paws over mouse sized coastal towns and washing them away as they charged inland.

“My lovely toy world”, wept the businessman, trying to shoo away the tornados and getting splashed in the face by the tidal waves, “You’re destroying it”.

“It is not the real world”, said Jumio, “But, in the real world, lives are being shattered by poverty everyday and you, to whom fate has given so much wealth, are doing nothing to help”.

But the businessman refused to listen, “How can you say that fate made me rich. I’m a self-made man and I’m not going to give my hard earned money to a lot of layabouts and scroungers”.

“A self-made man?”, laughed Jumio, “Ha! There is no such thing. You owe so much to so many but all you care about is your self and your money. You’re a greedy selfish money grubbing pig is what you are. Well, if that’s what you want to be then that is exactly what you shall be.”.

And then, suddenly, the floor beneath the businessman began to split open and, round about him, the whole mansion began to shake, then the ceiling and the walls and all came crashing down.

No one, atleast no mortal, was ever quite sure what became of that businessman in the end but, when his entire mansion had been reduced to a pile of rubble and dust, the body of the businessman was nowhere to be found, infact, the only thing which did seem to survive, miraculously, was an odd, pig shaped, porcelain thing with a slit in its back as broad as a coin.