CHAPTER 4: Attack of the Giant Aunt
Zelda Spellman reappeared in the Mortal Realm, standing outside her house. The first thing she noticed was that it was a clear, calm night, and the stars were brighter than she had seen for years. She gazed up above her to examine the astral patterns, part of her longtime interest in astronomy.
In fact, Zelda was so wrapped up in stargazing she failed to notice she was still about 70 feet tall in heels, having neglected to shrink herself back to Mortal Realm scale, and that the top of the Spellmans' Victorian house barely reached her waist. The backyard barely had enough room for her massive feet, and her shoes were digging divots in the grass.
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Eugene Pool left the Westbridge Tavern at about 1:45 a.m. after having two beers, as he normally did, a few hours before to celebrate the end of the school year. He got into his car, making sure he was sober (he was), and began to drive home.
A few blocks down, traveling along a city street with absolutely no traffic in the still of the night, he saw something bizarre in the distance. It was a blonde woman in a blue dress looking up towards the stars – but this woman was a giant, dwarfing the surroundings she seemed oblivious to. In fact, she was so big that the house in front of her only partially hid one of her shapely legs.
Incredulous, Mr. Pool gave a second glance to the sight and recognized her. It was one of Sabrina Spellman's aunts; he had met her once at a parents' night and deemed her attractive and lively. Perhaps too much so, because he was now obviously hallucinating about her...
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With Sabrina gone to the Other Realm for the foreseeable future, Salem had taken over her bed to sleep on; it was so much more comfortable than that cat corral. But a flash of light jolted him awake – not from an electric light, but from a shiny reflection in the window.
"Is that what I think I see?" he said, looking once again. When his thoughts were confirmed, he raced out of Sabrina's room and rushed into Hilda's, jumping on her bed and waking her.
"You're not allowed to do that, kitty!" she cried as she rose from her pillow.
"I have good reason – look in the window!" Salem cried. Hilda turned left to look and saw a huge nyloned kneecap. "I've seen that kneecap before," he added, "but not at that scale!"
"Did Sabrina get homesick?"
"No, Hildy, that's your big sister, and in this case I don't mean older. I mean big."
Hilda rushed to the window, opened it, and semi-screamed upward to the giant outside, "Zelly!"
Jolted from her minute of stargazing, Zelda looked down and saw the tiny Hilda – and the tiny house. "Uh-oh," she softly said, pointing at herself to both reduce to her normal size and enter Hilda's bedroom. She achieved both, but in the process of shrinking her blue dress caught on the weathervane, and she entered Hilda's room wearing only a bra, pantyhose and high heels. Salem, who was under strict orders never to see any of the Spellman women wearing anything less than a nightgown, quickly placed his paws over his eyes.
"I think I know what happened," Hilda said, peering out the window while Zelda pointed herself into a nightgown. Hilda saw the dress above and zapped it into the room. She then pointed at the grass in the backyard to erase the impressions Zelda had made from her huge high heels.
"You can open your eyes now, Salem," Zelda said as Hilda approached her.
"What was going on there, sis? You were gigantic."
"Yeah," Salem said. "As if you were going to appear in a feminist production of 'Jack And The Beanstalk.'"
"I was coming back from Brobdingnag – that's where Sabrina is staying – and I must've forgotten to reduce myself to my old size. And I got so caught up in looking at the stars that I failed to notice how big I was!"
Salem quipped, "Well, I'm glad you didn't try to walk. You might have tripped over a car and flattened a neighbor's house."
"Well, at least it was only for a minute, in the middle of the night, with absolutely no cars on the streets," Hilda said to her sister. "I don't think anyone saw you."
"Well, it's off to my room for some sleep," Zelda said. "Oh, by the way, Sabrina is doing fine, though she's going to school there and obviously doesn't like missing her summer vacation."
"Goodnight, and let me get back to sleep. I need the rest," Hilda replied. Especially since a few hours ago, she had arranged a long-awaited date for later tonight with Drell in the Other Realm.
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Mr. Pool still couldn't figure out why he was seeing a vision of Zelda Spellman as a gargantuan goddess; it was certainly enticing, but didn't make much sense. As he approached a stop sign, he quickly looked both ways for oncoming traffic, and of course at this time of night there was none.
He looked ahead again, and the giant Zelda was gone. No trace of her could be found, not even when he drove past the house she had stood behind.
I'm going nutzo, he thought. First thing tomorrow, I'm calling my cousin in Burbank about that opening he said they have for a science teacher, then head out to the West Coast. Face it, this Westbridge is simply too weird for me.
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While Hilda prepared herself for her date with Drell, head of the Witches' Council, Zelda tried to come up with some idea that would dissuade Horace Mumford from proceeding further with the plant growth formula. If it could be shown to have an unwelcome side effect that was believable to mortals, he'd probably stop production. But what?
She examined the container, the one Sabrina had consumed half the contents of to reach titanic proportions. She really didn't want to alter the contents through magic, except as a last resort. Just then she felt a fly land on the back of her neck; she slapped it off, then felt her skin itch.
"That's it," she softly said. "If this formula can be shown to cause plenty of itching, production might be halted." Then she remembered the effect would have to be shown as the result of eating food altered by the formula, not the formula itself.
She pointed at the formula. "Instead of helping this witch get rich, instead create food that makes people itch." The liquid turned rainbow color for a second, then returned to its clear form.
"Now to take it to Dr. Mumford and persuade him of this unwanted side effect," Zelda said, putting a secure top on the container – thus keeping it safe from unwittingly curious half-mortals.
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"Fifty-two feet tall and I feel scrawny," a depressed Sabrina said to herself as she entered Brobdingnag Central High School for her first day of classes. While she was a good student and enjoyed learning, having to go to school again – a day after she thought she'd finished her year – was a bit hard on her.
Even with the higher heels, everyone was taller than her by at least a head. Some stared, but at least this time people held their tongues and didn't make snide comments about how small she was.
She found her homeroom, took a seat that was unoccupied, and stared at the other students who dwarfed her.
"Don't worry, you're with friends," a girl said from behind. Sabrina turned around and saw a girl in a red and silver Redwoods cheerleading outfit. "I saw you do a routine with the varsity at the girls' game last night."
"I'm not really a cheerleader," Sabrina replied. "And forgive me, but I don't recall seeing you on the squad."
"I'm on JV, so I was watching, not cheering. Our game is tonight," the girl said, extending her hand for a shake. Sabrina reciprocated and shook it, feeling as if she was shaking the hand of a Mortal Realm girl of about 6-foot-6 or so, it seemed that big to her. "My name is Minerva Lloyd."
"And I'm Sabrina Spellman."
They continued talking until the teacher entered the room.
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"So you see, Horace, the altered food has a serious drawback – it causes skin to itch terribly," said Zelda, confident her appeal would get the professor to give her the remaining plant growth formula and drop the project. "The only one who would be happy with the results would be dermatologists."
Dr. Mumford smiled. "Then I think you need to see my wife Maureen and inform her about the effects. She just so happens to be a dermatologist." He paused. "In fact, I'm going to give her my share of the formula so she can examine it."
Zelda was stunned. I didn't envision that roadblock, she thought.
"She'll come by tomorrow to pick it up," Horace said. "By the way, I don't think you've met Maureen before." He pointed to a small portrait on his desk.
She looks familiar, Zelda thought. But from where?
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Sabrina entered the cafeteria for her first Redwood lunch, and it turned out that Scott LeGrand was in line behind her. "Order some of the vegetable soup," he told her. "It's delicious."
"I'll take your word for it," she told him.
"By the way, sit at the second table from the front near the window. That's where I eat lunch, and there's normally a seat open."
She did, and when Scott took his usual seat, a blonde walked over to him and glanced sternly.
"Why are you sitting with that runt?" she said.
"Penny, please," Scott replied. "Sabrina is my friend."
"No, she's competition," Penny answered. "How can you choose her over me? I'm head of the science club! I'm used to getting what I want." Her vitriol was obvious.
Oh, I get it, Sabrina thought with a bit of a grin. She's the Libby of Brobdingnag Central, where the geeks are the rulers and the cheerleaders the good guys. Boy, things are certainly upside down here. She shook her head slightly at the irony.
"Just take it easy," Sabrina told Penny. "I'm not here to cause trouble."
"Just by being here, you're causing trouble – for me," Penny answered with a sneer. "You have been warned." With that, she left in a huff.
Sabrina shook her head. "Is she always like that?" she asked Scott.
"Penny Chesterton's used to ruling the school, and she obviously considers you a threat."
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At home that evening, while Hilda was on her date with Drell, Zelda tried to figure out where she had seen Maureen Mumford before. She couldn't place her, so in the meantime she did some of the usual chores.
In what had been Sabrina's room, she pointed at the messed-up bed and magically straightened out the sheets and pillows. Salem will appreciate that tonight, she thought.
Just before leaving, she saw a book at Sabrina's table, and decided on a whim to examine it. The volume was called "The Half-Mortal's Handbook," and was a collection of essays from noted half-mortals on how their lives had been shaped by being the product of a witch-mortal marriage. Hilda had found it in a closeout bin at the Other Realm Galleria.
Zelda turned to the table of contents. There, as the fourth entry, was "Getting Under Their Skin: A Half-Mortal in Medicine," by...Maureen Mumford.
Could it be? Zelda turned to the first page of the essay, and there was the same picture of Maureen that had graced her husband's desk.
"So Horace is married to a half-witch," Zelda said to herself. "Who would have imagined it? I wonder if Horace knows?" Then she realized that if Maureen ingested some of the formula, she would grow too – something that would spell disaster for her, for her husband and for Zelda. She had to warn Maureen not to touch the stuff, but how?
Zelda went downstairs to mull over potential strategies.
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"It's been a great date, Drell," Hilda said as they sat at the top of the literally mile-high Ferris wheel, which had stopped for a moment at the Other Realm Fairgrounds. "I haven't had this much fun since the 18th century."
"My favorite was the virtual reality movie, where you were Stan Laurel and I was Oliver Hardy," the head of the Witches' Council answered. "Although those pies in the faces hurt a little."
"Oh, did I mention Sabrina is here in the Other Realm, over in Brobdingnag? She got there just in time after accidentally consuming a plant growth formula of Zelda's that eventually made her grow to that size."
"Then Brobdingnag will be a good place for her," Drell replied. "She'll fit right in."
"And the funniest thing happened last night. Zelda took Sabrina to Brobdingnag to enroll her in school and help her settle in, but when she zapped herself back to the Mortal Realm she forgot to shrink herself, so for about a minute or so, until I called to her, she was giant size, twice as tall as our house." Drell's eyes widened. "Fortunately, it was the middle of the night and nobody saw her."
Drell lost his smile. "That doesn't matter," he said, pointing...
...and Zelda Spellman, who had been considering ways to confront Maureen Mumford, appeared in the middle of the Ferris wheel seat, getting barely enough room between Drell and Hilda. "Where am I?" she asked.
"You're here to face Other Realm justice," Drell said matter-of-factly. "I have learned that you were briefly a giant outdoors in the Mortal Realm, and thus potentially visible to mortals. You are aware that practice has been outlawed since mortals invented photography."
"It was an accident!" Zelda said, giving her sister a "you didn't" look and Hilda responding with a sad, "yes, I did" glance.
"Even if no one saw you, that's a serious breach of your powers," Drell said. "Perhaps I should take them away from you for a few years."
"Drell, please don't do that!" Hilda pleaded.
"Oh, all right," he said. "I hereby give Zelda Spellman a lighter sentence – she is prohibited from altering her size for 90 days."
"What?" Zelda protested. "But what when I have to go to Brobdingnag to see Sabrina?"
"I didn't say you couldn't go," Drell replied. "You'll simply have to do it at the same scale you are now. At least you still have your powers. Now go back to the Mortal Realm so your sister and I can continue our date." He pointed Zelda back to her living room – just at the split-second the wheel began moving again.
Back in the Mortal Realm, a chastened Zelda again began thinking up strategies...but first she chased Salem off the sofa.