CHAPTER 7: The Girl-Mega-Mountain
Where am I? Sabrina wondered as she stared directly up at the sky, sleep still slightly clouding her eyes. She then turned her head and saw a jolting sight: scores of miniature people, all staring at her.
This is strange, she thought briefly before recalling she had indeed grown – then she remembered her recent visit to the Mortal Realm. They weren't this small, she thought. Somehow, I must have grown even bigger.
Then something else crossed her mind: What if these people weren't mortals at all, but Brobdingnagians? It wasn't possible, she thought, since they seem so tiny. But she had last been in Brobdingnag, so if she were still here, something must have caused her to change, and change so incredibly.
Using all her willpower to remain immobile and avoid crushing someone, she did some quick math. Each of them seem about half an inch tall to my eyes, or about 1/120th my size, she thought. Brobdingnagians are 12 times larger than mortals, so I'm...1,440 times bigger than before I took Aunt Zelda's formula. That means I'm about 7,500 feet tall. Nearly a mile and a half high!
Sabrina shuddered. The tallest skyscrapers on earth wouldn't quite reach her knees. She was probably higher than any mountain east of the Mississippi. Mortals would seem like specks to her.
And worst of all, she was now obviously too big for any place, even Brobdingnag. Despite her immense size, she felt paralyzed, helpless – the ultimate freak, as Libby no doubt would heartlessly say. Tears began to flow from the young witch's eyes.
What could have caused this? she thought. Then she recalled the soda she had sipped outside the library. Some ingredient in it must have triggered off this growth, a side effect not even Aunt Zelda realized.
She slowly raised her head, keeping her shoulders as rigid as possible, and looked at the rest of her body. Scores of tiny people were gathered around her, all the way down to her feet. Boy, am I glad I wore slacks today and not a dress, she wryly thought.
However, she quickly considered her situation. At her massive scale – a Mortal Realm mansion, such as her aunts' house, would fit in the palm of her hand – there was probably not enough food in the world to sustain her, as she likely weighed hundreds of thousands of tons, if not millions. Communication with Brobdingnagians would, at best, be difficult; with mortals it would be impossible. Worst of all, she was so big she feared she would inadvertently crush people. Even Brobdingnagians were like insects to her.
So, remaining immobile, she began crying, "Get away! Get away!", trying to yell it in a way that would draw pity to her plight, and not seem threatening.
And it worked. The people surrounding her quickly fled en masse – Sabrina glanced to the right, and noticed to her relief that nobody was hurt in the process -- and within two minutes, the long stretch of beach she was lying on was deserted.
Looking about her, she carefully pulled her legs in and sat up. She glanced towards land and saw the tiny people all gathered at the bottom of a cliff, some distance away from her. Persuaded the coast was clear, literally, and she would not cause damage to people or property, she slowly got up, hoping the air wasn't too thin at the top when she stood completely upright.
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"Jack Maitland, you had better listen to me," Clifton Smallwood sternly said in a small interrogation room at Brobdingnag State police headquarters. "You are in big trouble as it is. If you do not tell us completely what happened, things are going to get worse for you. Much worse. Because one of our students is also missing."
Formerly recalcitrant, Jack gave in. "Yeah, I know," he said. "Sabrina, uh, Spellman, I believe."
"How do you know?" an officer asked. "Is this soda linked to her disappearance?"
"Yes," Jack replied. "We'd heard she was going to the library early this morning..."
"We?" the officer said.
"Yes, 'we' meaning the Science Club."
From inside Clifton's jacket pocket, Zelda seethed. Sabrina's instincts were right about this horrid group of people, she thought. They insult every good thing science stands for.
The principal continued. "So, you doctored the soda, then used it to knock her out?"
"Precisely. It didn't take much at her puny size."
"And what did you do with her?" the officer said.
Jack once again became smug. "We carried Sabrina down to the marina, put her in a little boat, and sent her off to sea." The news stunned her diminutive aunt.
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Sabrina stood fully up, and she could hear the collective oohs and aahs of the crowd, viewing her vast size. She looked out at the land beyond the cliff; it seemed far smaller than one of those miniature cities she had seen while visiting Europe during her youth. She wished she had paid more attention to the Brobdingnagian skyline before she had grown; since her size had so drastically amplified, nothing was recognizable to her.
Then she heard a buzzing sound at about chest-high and glanced down. It was a helicopter, to her scale barely bigger than a marble. She was tempted to pick it out of its flight, but soberly reminded herself that such playful actions -- even lightly blowing at it -- could cause someone harm. However, she did wave a few fingers at them and smiled, to show she meant no malice.
A sound emanated from the copter, probably some sort of loudspeaker attached, she thought. But since she couldn't hear it conventionally, she used her magic to let her know what they were saying to her.
Once the spell was cast, she heard what they were saying; it was, "Welcome, Girl-Mega-Mountain."
Well, I guess that's what I am, Sabrina thought. But will they still welcome me when they find out how much food I'll need?
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"Are you insane?" Clifton, furious, rose to his feet, causing Zelda, in his pocket, to fall over. "Do you realize what could happen to her?"
"Ah, the water was calm and she was resting peacefully," Jack answered.
"That doesn't matter," the officer told him. "Now, you said the Science Club did this act. Specifically, whose idea was this?"
"The president, Penny Chesterton," Jack replied. "She doesn't like Sabrina, and what she says, we do."
Brainpower gone bad, Zelda thought bitterly.
"Listen, young man," the officer said. "You are going to the marina with us and retrace everything that happened. Everything. We need to find her. Once that's taken care of, we'll get back to your predicament." He called the dispatcher to call an officer to find Penny Chesterton and pick her up as a suspect.
The officer, Clifton and Jack left the interrogation room and walked about two blocks to the marina. From inside Clifton's pocket, Zelda could feel their rapid, tense pace as she attempted to determine specifically what she should do next to find the seafaring Sabrina. Once she reached the marina, she hoped to have an idea.
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The seemingly miniature helicopter got out of the way, and Sabrina, noting the beach was still deserted, sat down. Even when sitting, she discovered she was taller than most of the buildings beyond the cliff.
Me, more than a mile high, Sabrina thought. That phrase triggered memories of a line, "I am not a mile high," from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." In grade school, long before learning she was a witch and gaining her powers, Sabrina played Alice in a dramatization of the Wonderland story and had said that line. Of course, she didn't actually grow or shrink; instead, she and her classmates had to use their imaginations.
Now, she had achieved something Alice was accused of, reaching an unimaginable scale, with size and strength that no being, human or otherwise, had probably ever experienced. The largest Mortal Realm whale was, to her eyes, about as big as an undersized goldfish.
Feeling terribly lonely, she bowed her head, closed her eyes, and tried to mentally escape her predicament, wishing that this indeed was her imagination.
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The officer, the young man he held in custody and the principal reached the university marina.
"So this is where you sent Sabrina off to sea," Clifton Smallwood asked a handcuffed Jack Maitland, pointing at a dock.
"Actually it was the next one over," Jack said with a sneer, pointing to the right.
"You put her in the boat," the policeman said, just as he received a call on his two-way phone from the dispatcher at headquarters.
"Jim," a woman said, "we just wanted you to know we have picked up Penny Chesterton at her residence, and we're bringing her in for questioning."
"Ah, she'll know I snitched," Jack said, grumbling.
"That doesn't matter," the officer tersely replied. "Now, getting back to my questioning, what were the waters like when you put Sabrina in the boat, then let it go?"
"Moving slightly, but safely."
Zelda, still inside Clifton's jacket pocket, listened intently to every word.
"And in what direction did she go in?"
"Straight," Jack answered. "Straight as can be, straight as an arrow."
Zelda peered out from the pocket at the marina docks, making sure no one saw her. Then she gazed up at Clifton, who caught a glance of her from the corner of his eye. She pointed at herself, then pointed out. Clifton nodded, understanding what she wanted to do.
Standing up, and making sure she had everything ready, Zelda pointed at herself, disappearing from Clifton's pocket. She zapped herself in the direction Sabrina's boat was sailing, to either find her if she was still at sea or anyplace it might have landed ashore. Please, let her be safe and sound, she thought as she began her magical journey.
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Bored sitting down, Sabrina decided to stand up again over the Brobdingnagians she believed she dwarfed. Once she rose to what she deemed was her 7,500-foot height, she walked along the beach, the sand muffling her mighty footfalls, although she could only go a few steps in either direction. She hoped she wouldn't get hungry soon.
About 20 seconds later, a visitor magically appeared on the beach, a blonde woman in a green dress and matching heels. She noted she was substantially larger than people standing near her at the cliff, but far smaller than Sabrina, who at first had her back turned to her.
"Sabrina!" Zelda Spellman cried, and her niece turned around and saw her – about one-tenth her size. The young witch ran, then kneeled down to hug her aunt.
"Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" Sabrina said, "although it must pain you to see me like this. Look at me – about a mile and a half high!"
That puzzled Zelda. "You are not a mile high," she said, casting a wary eye on the smaller people along the cliff to make sure none of them were looking up her dress.
"Aunt Zelda, please don't give me that Alice reference. However, I can understand your not wanting to become this big, more than a hundred times bigger than the Brobdingnagians."
Zelda was amused over Sabrina's confusion, but didn't let on.
Sabrina continued, although now she was beginning to have some slight doubt about where she was. "Well, I certainly am not in Lilliput," she said, drawing a hearty round of boos from the crowd.
"Of course you're not," Zelda said. "You're in Blefescu," which drew her as many cheers as Sabrina had heard boos. "Anyway, forget that. I have an antidote."
"You do?" her excited niece replied.
"You bet," Zelda said, pulling out the container; at Sabrina's enlarged scale, it seemed little larger than a thimble. "Drink it!" she said, carefully handing it to her.
Sabrina looked at the container she was gingerly holding in her fingers. "It's too small for me to open. I might spill it."
"Then use magic," her aunt said.
Sabrina did just that, placed the antidote to her lips, and swallowed what to her was the small amount of liquid. "When does it start?" she asked Zelda.
"Soon enough," Zelda replied. "Stand up."
Sabrina stood up to her full height, and a few seconds later discovered her height wasn't quite as full. Things were slowly getting larger around her – her aunt, the people on the cliff, the skyline in the distance. At last, she was shrinking; she could swear she heard a few groans from the crowd as she gradually began to dwindle.
Then she remembered that she'd have to shrink to at least 1/1,400th of her former mega-giant size, and that would leave her less than 1/100th the size Zelda was now. In other words, roughly the same scale these people from Blefescu, or whatever it was called, had been to her.
As the shrinking process continued, Sabrina looked down at her smiling aunt, who now reached her niece's knees...then her hips...then her waist. Eventually, Zelda would soon be looking down at her.
And, soon, she was – but at the same ratio they had been in the Mortal Realm before all of this size-changing got started. "Take my hand," Zelda said. "We're going home."
"But like this?" a puzzled Sabrina replied as they disappeared from the beach. "I mean, we'll be–"