Chise Hitori was a child nobody wanted. Told by her own mother that she should never have been born and passed from one neglectful guardian to the next, the young girl has grown up feeling lost, hopeless, and emotionally numb. At age fifteen she sells herself into slavery, desperate for a home where somebody - anybody - actually wants her to be there, and is purchased by a mysterious being with a skull for a head. He whisks Chise off to his home in England and introduces her to a world of talking animals, dragons, and faeries, declaring that she is to become his apprentice in magic... and also his bride!