CHAPTER 8: A Little Giant's Homecoming

"–giants," Sabrina said.

As soon as that word came out of her mouth, she noted she was in the kitchen of the Spellman residence, along with Zelda, Hilda and Salem – all in their proper proportions.

"Aunt Zelda, I'm glad you remembered to shrink us this time," the niece said, hugging her aunts, then stroking the cat's fur.

"Shrink? We didn't shrink," Zelda said with a grin. "You still think you were some 7,500 feet tall before you took the antidote?"

"Talk about a girl with an inflated sense of herself," Hilda quipped.

"Well, I was more than 100 times larger than those people from Blef--"

"Blefescu?" Salem said. "You were in Blefescu? Those people are the same tiny size as the Lilliputians. In fact, they're their archenemy."

"No wonder I thought I was so big," Sabrina said, feeling a bit foolish. "So actually, I was still 52 feet tall and didn't know it."

Hilda smiled, then magically rang bells as if the kitchen were a game show set. "Sabrina wins the lightning round," she said.

"When I hatched my plan for world domination, I was going to use some of Blefescu's best agents for micro-espionage," Salem added. "They're small, but they're way sneaky."

"Well, that explains why they booed me when I mentioned Lilliput and cheered Aunt Zelda when she mentioned Blefescu," Sabrina said. "It's funny – before you arrived, they were calling me the Girl-Mega-Mountain and almost seemed happy I was there."

"Well, when Swift found himself in Lilliput – the story he used later by creating the fictional Gulliver – the residents called him the Man-Mountain because of his size," Zelda explained. "Since you were far bigger to them than Swift or Gulliver ever was to the Lilliputians, it explains what they were calling you. And no doubt they would have wanted to use you as a weapon against Lilliput. I understand those tiny countries are still at war."

"It's still difficult for me to understand all the fuss they made," Sabrina said.

"You were the first Brobdingnagian-sized person to set foot in either of those lands," Zelda said. "To protect those tiny countries, the Witches' Council has established a force field that prevents any Brobdingnagian from navigating even close to their territorial waters. Since you aren't a full-fledged Brobdingnagian, the field didn't repel you, and you sailed on."

"You learn something new every day," Sabrina said. She paused. "I forgot the book!"

"What book?" Hilda replied.

"'Gulliver's Travels,' my summer reading book."

"I'll zap it back," Hilda said, pointing. A second later, a colossal copy of the book, with pages nearly as tall as the ceiling, popped into the Spellman kitchen, propped up against the refrigerator.

"I've seen large-print editions before," Salem said, "but this one must have been designed for moles to read."

Zelda pointed and shrank the book back to its old scale, then handed it to Sabrina. "I think you have some reading to catch up on," she said. "Meanwhile, I'll call Clifton and let him know you've been found safe and sound – and that you're withdrawing from Brobdingnag Central High." And hoping that its Science Club receives the punishment it deserves, she thought.

Her niece nodded. "Fine, but before I do, there's just one little, or perhaps not so little, thing I'd like to check." She pointed, and the neon sign that had previously flashed her height reappeared. "5 feet, 2 7/8ths inches."

"Woohoo! I've grown three-sixteenths of an inch!" Sabrina said as she zapped herself into her white swimsuit and headed off to the backyard to both read and work on her tan.

THE END